Meditation has become a non-negotiable to my mornings. I do it with my 7-month-old every morning. He seems intrigued by it himself which I find fascinating, almost like he knows. He watches and he listens – mind you – I’ve been practicing short meditation since his entrance.
So why do I meditate? There are multiple benefits but for one, there are proven benefits to our mental health, particularly our stress levels according to a study in the Clinical Psychology Review. Additionally, I also find that it connects me to my actual being – an unlimited source. Meditation demonstrates that you are not your thoughts, you are the person watching your thoughts. That information itself connects you to a certain state – a state of watching, of not being pulled by thoughts and emotions and connects us to what I think is our actual being.
However, as opposed to being in meditation, when we are so attached to our thoughts, we are so immersed in them, it is very easy to think we are our thoughts. It is easy to react when we’re so attached to what we think is our identity, as opposed to responding. When you are aware of your thoughts, only then can you change your thoughts and when you can change your thoughts, you can change how you feel, and when you change how you feel, you can change your personal reality, and in essence your actual personality starts to shift. You do not need to be the person you always have been; you can change. However, that takes practice, it takes practice to change, because we have strong neural networks of everything we have been. We’ve been practicing being ourselves for our whole lives, so deciding to change takes practice because we have been on autopilot for so long.
To break it down further, our personality is ingrained in us. According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, an international lecturer, researcher, and author of You are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter, Breaking the Habit of being Yourself, Evolve and Becoming Supernatural, your body is habituated to a certain stimulation. It is probably used to a certain emotional state. If you are used to being stressed or agitated, your body will find a way to try and get you that hit. It will tell you to check your phone, check your emails, find a way to be in the emotional state it knows. But when you sit down to meditate you are telling your body you are the mind, it is not the mind. When you decide that you will meditate and that you will not just go to your phone, to your email, you show your body a new state of being. You start to overcome its emotional addictions. Like anything, the more you practice it, the more automatic it becomes. Now, you start telling your body that this is the new you, this new state is something you practice and while you keep overcoming yourself (or your old self) you start to become a new person, the person you are practicing being in your meditation.
With the decision to meditate and the action of doing so, you begin the process of overcoming yourself, and when you begin to overcome yourself, you begin to create the life you want.
Leave a Reply