In part one I will explain what meditation is and what the benefits are and in part two next week, I'll explain how to do it.
Essentially meditation is learning how to keep your attention at the moment you actually reside in, instead of in your thoughts or stories about life.
Why is that important to do, you may ask? Well, there are many reasons and benefits from learning to be present, which I'll go through later, but one of the big reasons is that if you have your attention on your thoughts about life, you'll be limited by the story of that thought.
Each belief you hold about life is buried in your unconscious, and the way it plays in your conscious mind is via stories you create to fit the belief. This all happens without you realising of course, but for sure, each story is stemming from a deeper-seated belief.
When you have your attention regularly on your story about what you think life is, which comes from a deeper belief, then you'll expect life to be like that; and without knowing it you'll put yourself in situations where life appears exactly like that.
Even if other situations that are completely opposite to your story are going on right next to you, you just won't see them because you'll be following your story, and no matter whether the story is good for you or not, you'll just keep blindly following it because that's what you think life is for you.
You'll think in ways that relate to the story you hold about life, and you'll talk in ways that completely validate your belief about it.
Because you keep putting yourself in situations that validate your story about life, you'll meet other people with similar stories to yours that will further validate your story.
This happens so often that it becomes life for you.
Of course, you have many stories playing about different areas of life, like love, money, skills, worth and health to name a few, and they all miraculously merge together to create what life is for you.
So as long as you keep your attention on your stories about life. You'll always create life within the limits of those stories.
You may now be starting to realise why it is so important to bring your attention out of your thoughts about life and into the moment.
One of the most-used clichés in the spiritual development movement; is that this moment is all there ever is, and as much as I’d like to be as unique as I can in my explanation of this concept, it is difficult to break from the stereotypical norm. It always is this moment, and yet rarely do people bring themselves into it. This moment now is absolutely unique. Every possible potential reality that could ever be thought into existence belongs at this moment because this moment is everything there is now and everything there possibly could be. It’s never been this moment and it never will be this moment again, it is uniquely unique!
Obviously when you’re able to bring your attention to this moment, then you have ‘everything’ available to you. When conversely, you have your attention firmly rooted in your thoughts about life, or in other words, the stories you’ve constructed about life stemming from your beliefs, then you are back in the limitation of the story. So being here and now with your attention, offers the greatest opportunity for you to get out of all the limitations you experience about life, and move into limitless infinite potential.
When you have your attention on your stories about life, inspired thought can’t come in, only information related to the story can enter your thought system. When you are able to bring your attention to the moment you find yourself in, however, you are then able to access inspired thought. Your intuition, which is directly connected to your heart will be heard loud and clear. This is great news because the information you’ll receive from this place will always be in alignment with what is authentic to you and your personality.
Many of the emotional pains that people carry, and some for their entire life are all related to the story they have about life, and when emotional pain is held onto for a long enough time, it transfers itself into a physical ailment. Deepak Chopra released his first book, Quantum Healing in 1989, and it was in this book that he revealed to the world how every thought we think affects every cell in our body. If you’re holding a thought story that is detrimental to your wellbeing, it will absolutely affect your health. You can read my blog - What to do when you’re emotionally challenged, to help you release negative emotions.
When you are spending more time in the present moment, which is exactly what happens when you discipline yourself to meditate every day, you connect to the greatest life force of love, healing, infinite intelligence and potential which then enables tremendous health benefits.
Everything is always happening now which means that everything you’ve ever wanted is always here waiting for you to come and get it. Future and past only ever exist in your mind, but the reality is always happening now and so when you have your attention on your thoughts about life, which for most people is most of the time, you are essentially looking at an illusionary view of life, it’s not real at all, it’s simply a story you’ve concocted to validate your beliefs about life. The only thing that is actually real is what is happening right now.
The love you want, the wealth you desire, the freedom, happiness and joy you crave is already here in this moment, and as you drop into this moment regularly, you’ll get to experience it all at the feeling level, and when that happens your inner vibration changes and when your inner vibration changes, your outer reality follows suit and manifests in alignment with that new vibration. So in other words, when you feel happy regularly, your outer world will dance that same tune with you, so you get to experience happiness in the outer world to validate that inner feeling. This is the same with any emotion you hold regularly, like abundance, freedom, joy, love etc.
The stories you follow about life, are massively influenced by the world you live in, and in this very fast-paced world we live in, we are continuously bombarded with messages that imply our life will be better if only we had this that or the other. Obviously, when you continuously chase these desires to make life better, you’ll never find peace because life is always going to be better when you get whatever you’ve decided will make it better. But because you are following the story that life will be better when you get something else, no matter what you attain, you’re always going to be chasing something else because you’re still invested in that story, which means you are caught on a never-ending merry go round that will continuously elude you from finding any peace.
When you are able to rest at this moment, what starts to happen is that you’re able to get to acceptance about the way life is in any given moment, because of course it always is the way it is and then internal peace becomes the norm.
There are literally hundreds of benefits that come from having a regular meditation practice so before I get into the actual ‘how to’ of meditation, I’ll list a few of my favourite benefits here:
Physiological:
- Lowers oxygen consumption
- Increases blood flow and slows the heart rate
- Increases exercise tolerance
- Massively assists in physical relaxation
- Reduces high blood pressure
- Enhances the immune system
- A drop in cholesterol levels lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease.
- Decreases the ageing process
- Cures headaches and migraines
- Much fewer visits to the doctors
- More inclined to do exercise
- Significant relief from asthma
- Normalises you to your ideal weight
Psychological:
- Builds self-confidence
- Balances moods
- Resolves fears
- Tremendously improves focus and concentration
- Increases creativity
- Emotional stability
- Better relationships
- Increase in intuition
- Much greater awareness
- Increased productivity
- Massive improvement with self-discipline which is the core of all mastery
- A balance between left and right brain hemispheres
- Better social behaviour
- Less aggression and anger
- Stops worry
Spiritual:
- Peace of mind
- Helps you to discover your purpose
- Self-actualisation
- Compassion
- Wisdom
- Self-acceptance
- Self-love
- Forgiveness
- Enlightenment
- Inner guidance
- Able to live in the present moment
The benefits are endless and I honestly believe that meditation is the greatest gift of self-love you could ever give yourself.