What is Mediation?
- “It is exactly like muddy water left to stand in a glass. Little by little, the sediment sinks to the bottom and the water becomes pure.” (Taisen Deshimaru)
- “…Like great scuba gear. You can see, hear, touch, and taste your thoughts without drowning in them.” (Laurie Fisher Huck)
- Meditation is not a noun, but a verb. Meditation is a dynamic process, like the liquid flowing state of water as opposed to frozen ice. This is what I mean when I say that meditation is a “doing,” an “active verb.”
- Meditation is not the goal; it’s the journey. In just the act of sitting down to meditate, you’ve already achieved your goal.
- Meditation is not the menu; it’s the meal.
- Alfred Korzubski, a famous Polish mathematician, once said, “The map is not the territory.” The best way to understand the “territory” of meditation is to actually meditate .
Main issues and challenges:
- “I feel really stressed out.”
- “My thoughts are out of control.”
- “I feel as if I’m drifting through life.”
- “I keep flying off the handle at my co-workers and family.”
- I need some peace in my life!”
- “I can’t concentrate.”
- “Something’s missing, but I don’t know what.”
- “Everything seems OK, but still, I wish…”
Practice is cumulative and builds the “Mindfulness Muscle.”
- Albert Einstein said that the most amazing phenomenon in the universe is compound interest.
- Each meditation period is a deposit into your account, where it earns a hefty interest rate.
- In time, those small deposits aggregate and compound into a huge payoff: the ability to live life in peace and calm.
- Where else can you get a greater return on so small an investment?
Meditation is an ongoing process, not a goal. There is really no place you need to arrive.
Examples of progress
- A feeling of being both more alert, yet calmer. This goes hand in hand with a sense of being more present in the moment – here, as opposed to elsewhere or elsewhen.
- A sense of being more emotionally stable and less swept away by the highs and lows of life’s roller coaster, even in the face of serious life challenges.
- The deepening ability to neutrally observe the rising and passing of thoughts, images, and sensations during meditation
Re-source: Release
In the world of fly fishing, “catch and release” means that after you catch a fish, you unhook it and release it back into the stream. This is exactly what you want you to do with every thought, image, and body sensation that you “hook” during your meditation period.
- Your private stream of consciousness is brimming with a lifetime of thoughts, events, and emotions.
- This means that in every meditation period, you are going to hook thoughts, images, or body sensations that you’ll feel compelled to tangle with.
This simple act of thought releasing is your ticket to freedom – the freedom not to engage.
- Keep doing this, and allow it to lead to deeper states of awareness, clarity, and peace in everything you do.
Meditation is allowing what is.
- Meditation is not about experience-hunting for special states of consciousness that go by names such as “enlightenment,” “self-realization,” or “nirvana.”
- When you meditate, just meditate without any preconceived notion or agenda about what is going to arise.
- Stay open to what comes up and then see what happens.
- You don’t need to name anything.
craving and resource from “8 Minute Meditation” – Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life – by Victor Davich