Why Meditate?

If you’re interested in health and wellness, you can’t go too far in your day without reading some article about how meditation can improve mental health outcomes, productivity, relationships, and perhaps even change the way our brains function.  Some people eagerly try meditation, while others avoid it like the plague.  Inevitably, most people find it to be more than a little challenging (unless you have superhuman patience and control of your thoughts – WHAT IS YOUR SECRET??)

When I first started to practice meditation regularly (and it was not that long ago that I started)…it was the worst.  The absolute worst.  Even worse than that, actually.

First of all, I fidget more than a five-year-old – always have.  So, sitting still for longer than two-minute intervals is a huge challenge for me.  But when I started, I would set my timer for 15 minutes, knowing full well that I would probably shift around a bunch of times and that was OK – I just had to commit to sitting for that long.

Then, once I forced myself to sit, the next obvious challenge arose – how in the world would I be able to “clear my mind”?  I’m a think-a-holic.  If I wasn’t planning my grocery list, I’d be thinking about how I really needed to eat more greens and less ice cream, or imagining all the things I should have said in a conversation earlier that day.

And sometimes the thoughts were downright miserable.  Painful memories would sometimes wedge their way into my mind, no matter how hard I tried to push them away.  And because I couldn’t successfully push them away, I reprimanded myself and remembered why I hated meditation in the first place.

This process continued for several weeks.  I would wake up, remember that annoying commitment I made to sit in silence for 15 minutes, and begrudgingly set my timer.

Then, over time, something weird (and slightly cool) happened.  The 15-minute-long sitting sessions did not always feel like the longest, most miserable part of my day.  Even though I still had tons of thoughts and very few, if any, moments of “clear space,” I was beginning to have glimpses of peace – even if those glimpses emerged for only a few seconds of the entire 15 minutes.  The uncomfortable moments were still uncomfortable, but because I had committed to sitting for 15 minutes for so many days, I knew I could endure whatever discomfort I felt for at least that long.

And then something even better happened.  Eventually, those 15 minutes began to actually feel comforting.  It’s not like the wandering mind or unpleasant thoughts disappeared – it’s just that I knew they were temporary.  I didn’t hang onto them so tightly.  Truthfully, I often didn’t even notice when my mind was wandering.  In fact, sometimes 10 minutes would go by before I realized I had been thinking about the last episode of Bloodline the whole time (great show BTW).  After getting frustrated for a moment, I came back to my breath and kept focusing on it – until I (inevitably) got mired in another series of thoughts.  And the process repeats itself endlessly.  But over time, it gets easier to disconnect and experience more frequent moments of peace and quiet.

The key theme here: It takes time.  It takes patience.  It takes trust in the process and in yourself.  It takes a commitment to consistent practice – and if you miss a day (or seven), don’t worry about it, just pick back up again the next day.  Most of all, it takes a willingness to accept where (and who) you are, with compassion and without judgment, knowing that the goal is not to strive for something bigger/better/different than who you are.  Instead, the goal is to come back to that tranquil space within you, which quietly nudges you along your path with the deepest wisdom.

 

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