Why should I Meditate? What contribution will Meditation make to my life? How do I meditate? How to have a consistent Meditation Practice?
In the last post, I had discussed about the process of manifestation and what does Dandapani recommend in order to manifest our goals in our life.
One of the ways discussed was to work on our Awareness. And what is Awareness? Awareness to me is to be present in the moment.
If Awareness is to be present, Meditation is about training in Awareness. When I Meditate, I am training my mind in Awareness. I am training my mind to be aware of my emotions and to learn from them without any bias or judgement.
But Why should we Meditate? Is this another fad just like Yoga? What effects will it have on my life?
Why?
It is very crucial to ask Why Meditate? If I do not know my Why, I will not be able to generate that emotion towards meditation and hence, I will loose interest in Meditation as soon as the initial excitement wanes out.
If I talk about myself, although I have 24 hours a day, a good 50% of my time goes into activities that are professional in nature. Another 25% of the activities are purely for supporting those 50%.
Other activities that are do might be for my family, personal pursuits or for acquiring material possessions.
It is as if that my life is given on loan to work (material pursuits), to society (relationships) or technology (intellectual satisfaction).
Also, whatever little time that I do have for myself, it might go away in Distractions like attending calls, browsing social media etc.
Yes, Vacation is the time for me to connect with myself, reflect and maybe retrospect but it is also a time when your family demands your full attention.
If I connect with myself, I get an opportunity to look at things from a different perspective.
I observed that from morning 9 to evening 9, I operate like a robot, going as per plan, driving, eating, working. I also observed that I do not even know when I reached office while driving my car at 60 kmph. Although I am awake but I am not in my consciousness.
How am I going to perform if I operate like a robot? How am I going to get results if I am not aware of what is happening around me, my environment, my business, customer, products, competition.
I found my Why? Meditation gives me the opportunity to be more aware of myself. Meditation would also help me in dealing with stress and hence a positive effect on my overall well being.
I look at Meditation as a medium through which I recharge my batteries. Everyday, we use our mobiles, browse email, call, message. But hopefully, every night we recharge our mobiles to 100% battery. We hope that this will help us through to the next day.
I always like to take the example of comparing our body to a vehicle to explain why meditation is important. What do we do when that vehicle which we call as “our body” does not function, becomes ill? Do we still go out do all the work? I recuperate, I take my pills, get myself good rest and then join office.
Likewise, everyday we go through our daily routine, talk to different type of people, handle situations and then come back home. Meditation gives us, our mind, the healing that is required to recharge.
Is it too much to ask for?
What?
I see Meditation Practice as a form of connecting back to my inner self. Meditation is a form of mindfulness and I use it as a tool to work on myself.
Vijay Krishna Das in this video explains that there are 2 types of environment that we interact with on a daily basis. There is the external environment which comprises of family, colleagues, customers, vendors, relatives etc. And then there is the internal environment which includes our mind, thoughts and our awareness.
Meditation is about connecting with your inner environment. Bringing peace and happiness to that soul that is within you.
According to Headspace, Meditation is a skill just like any other skill. You get better at it with practice. And as I had mentioned in the title, it is “Meditation practice” which you will have to do consistently.
Honestly, it is not going to be a cake walk. I am in my 2nd year practicing Meditation and I know how many times have I given up on meditation. It is only recently that I started to get the hang of it. So when they say, just stick around, put all the setbacks in your stride and the beauty of meditation will start to reveal itself.
So how to do Meditation?
How?
Meditation is a straight forward process. Sit, spine straight, breath and you have started your meditation.
Easier said than done. Meditation practice requires when one to be comfortable in their skin when they are doing meditation. Any lingering issue, pressing problem will make it all the more difficult.
I recommend that meditation be done right early in the morning as soon as you rise. I found meditation in Afternoon to interfere with my daily schedule and evening was difficult since I could not focused.
Morning Meditation feels very good, as there is usually nothing on the mind and I may just focus on the task at hand and listen to my inner voice.
Although, sitting in a comfortable position is recommend, a cross legged or “sukhasana” pose is most preferred. You may also make yourself comfortable in a chair. Idea is to be seated in a position so that you can do meditation for 20-30 min.
Here it is important to note that time is very crucial. I have learned that a minimum of 1 hour a day or 6 hours a week is ideal for finding tangible difference in the quality of life. However, if we look at my earlier post on review of the book “Atomic Habits” by James clear, it was written that we must make a new habit easy and attractive.
I have myself seen that doing just 1 min meditation for 15-20 days motivated me to move to 5 mins and then 15 mins a day.
There are 2 different types of Meditation that I must talk about.
- Traditional Meditation (Focus on Breathing)
- Mantra Meditation (Focus on Mantra)
- Traditional Meditation
Traditional Meditation requires one to focus on the breathing. While breathing, there might be many thoughts coming to your mind, which you must not resist and be just an observer to those thoughts.
Here breathing is important where you slowly inhale and exhale while focusing your awareness on the breathing process.
Traditional meditation requires one to be seated in a comfortable position and placing their hands on the thighs, palm facing upwards.
2. Mantra Meditation
Mantra Meditation requires one to focus on repetitively chanting of a mantra while at the same time hearing it. It requires one to use Chanting beads which could be kept in a bead bag.
The focus here is on hearing the mantra not so loudly that you disturb others but not so softly that you do not hear your own voice.
I do a combination of both the Meditation process. I start my day by chanting the Mahamantra (Mantra Meditation) early in the morning followed by 10 min of Traditional Meditation. Below is the Mahamantra (Best among all mantra) that I chant every morning.
It takes me usually 2 hours to get through the Mantra Meditation after which I do 15 minutes of Traditional Meditation.
End Note
Meditation has helped me to lower my stress to a certain degree. I cannot say that I have reaped full benefits of Meditation. What I can say is that my views on Meditation have changed for the good after I started to notice positive changes in my life.
Meditation is a slow process. It will not show immediate results. What you can do is have faith and follow the process. You must enjoy the journey rather than focusing on getting the desired results.
I have seen those changes and there is no reason to believe that you will not see them in your life.
I do hope that you have got some ideas on Meditation. Please share your experiences with me on my social media handles which are mentioned below.
Will see you around in my next post.
“Are you charging yourself daily?”
~RG~