Meditation – Answering the Why
There is enough to read on the internet on the health benefits of meditation – minimizing chronic stress, issues related to migraine, blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease, depression; positive effects on the health of organs and the brain itself, in terms of affecting its neuro-plasticity.
(You can read/view a few articles at the end of this post, in case you are interested)
However, today as I write this, I would like to bring home my personal story around meditation, with the hope that you can identify…
My relationship with meditation started over 6 years ago. It has been a long and tumultuous journey however, also one of the most magical and beautiful growth journeys that I have undertaken.
I’ve always written to myself since my 6th or 7th grade – life was a series of self-improvement projects, one after the other. I failed miserably in achieving most of the changes I wished to see in myself (lots of roll overs to the next year 😊), succeeded in a few others. Society and the systems around, had conditioned me to notice only the failure. I continued my quest of self-improvement tirelessly.
As I stepped out of my comfort zone in India, I began to find more time to read and immerse myself in fields like philosophy and neuroscience. I quickly realized that if I continued to define the Self/my identity purely with the Corporate treadmill I was on, I would be one miserable soul on the day of formal retirement. It didn’t help that I had also started to read Stoic philosophy – it teaches you early and with crystal clarity that you are a mortal and that life is finite. Memento Mori.
My thirst for knowing myself was at its peak. My personal journey on mental, physical and spiritual health had also started to take a more conscious shape. I had questions, truck loads of them emerging in my head. I was trying to get rid of all the trappings of how society wanted me to look/how friends and family wanted me to look and find in its rawest form- what truly defines me.
This is when Jon-Kabat-Zinn and UMASS’ MBSR program came into my life.
I learned early that it is a single player game. Your only point of reference is YOU. Only the very brave, very courageous undertake the journey to Self. Most people who live in this world are in denial, constantly avoiding the mirror.
Meditation shows you the mirror- this is who you are, with all your flaws and virtues. It also takes you to a place (bringing me to the next tenet) of Self Love. Our education system and social fabric are built around inadequacies. You see it at work, you see it in your school report card, you see it in parenting styles, you see it in advertisements. If they were to say, “you are enough”, most would go out of business. Meditation takes you to a place where you begin to fall in love with yourself with all your beautiful scars, flaws. I became more accepting of myself.
The biggest growth however came when I showed consistency in meditating every day. Eastern Philosophy, captures the essence of meditation so beautifully.
Put simply, your power of observation begins with meditation. You go through days where you are feeling rushed, overwhelmed with emotion, caught up in the drama of something you felt for passionately at work, or that didn’t go your way. Peaks and troughs through each hour that sap the energy out of you. Meditation helps you recognize that YOU are not your thoughts.
To better understand this, let me start with the word Namaste. It is a greeting to wish/welcome people used in India. The best translation of it would be – I bow to the inner light/divinity in you from the inner light/divinity within me. Eastern philosophy accepts that we are all, in essence, connected beings and at a fundamental core level, we all have an inner light of awareness. This is sometimes called Purusha (for the very evolved sometimes Brahman).
Over the years, we manage to dull this light within us through habits or Samskaras. It is the equivalent of ‘ruts created on a road’. Your car drives through every time and drives over the same ruts on the road. Nothing changes. You got upset 20 years ago because someone was unfair to you and you raise your voice; you get upset today because someone is unfair to you and you raise your voice. Nothing changes.
This is also scientifically proven – neural paths that have been created and re-created over time in your brain so that when a trigger/event arises, your response would be the same; and interestingly “unconscious” most of the time and therefore in many ways out of your control.
The best parallel is the optometrist’s test. When they place lenses before you, you see the world in a certain way. When you change the lens, your world view changes. If your lens is sullied or colored by your habits and judgement, the world appears differently. You meditate and help yourself clean that lens so that your inner light/Purusa can shine through.
Meditation- with practice and over time, starts to create more space, rest, pause between thoughts and reduces the sense of ownership/control over the thought. For example, the thought “My children need to learn to write essays beautifully” is a great thought but has a huge sense of control and ownership on someone outside ourselves and therefore with it brings suffering, angst and a lot of anxiety. We also exercise this when we want our spouse be a certain way or ourselves to be a certain way. We experience the deepest grief when we are unable to control our own behavior. Ownership/control of wanting things a certain way can be very tiring and does not create too many friends around you including the friend within you.
I truly believe that meditation brings power back into our lives in a very positive manner. You start to realize how close you are to achieving so many of your other goals (and I don’t mean this in an Elon Musk way).
Meditation when practiced over time can prove to be very liberating. Think about it
– You can let go of your inscribed views of yourself (I am bad with directions, really? I am a bad singer, really? I am hot tempered, really? I am a procrastinator, really?) Well, this is what you’ve been telling yourself all along. You now have the power to change that script because end of the day, it is after all just a thought in your head that YOU have created and therefore that YOU can also change/remove. (But pray, there is only that much the Universe can deal with, so please don’t send requests on becoming a trapeze artist overnight to your brain)
– You can let go of emotions when a particularly familiar trigger presents itself before you
– You can let go of trying to explain yourself/justify yourself to others all the time
– You reach the deepest capacities of your mind
– You can watch as every storm of thought comes into your life, creates havoc and passes on and enjoy the moment as you stay non-reactive.
– Above all, you now have the choice on how you wish to respond.
It is liberating and accepting. You free yourself and others around you. You become more accepting of others. You become more accepting of yourself.
To learn more, reach out to us at Amaydi Yoga. We offer a 21-day immersive meditation guided practice in a group or individual setting, that is delivered online and across time-zones. You will be supported by audio podcasts, videos and guided techniques of Pranayama and enough core workouts to help build that meditation muscle with permanence.
Resource links:
– Why should I meditate: http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/blog/posts/why-should-i-meditate-part-1
– Meditation’s Calming Effects (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meditations-calming-effects-pinpointed-in-brain/)
– Use your Mind to change your Brain (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/use-your-mind-change-your-brain/201305/is-your-brain-meditation)
– Becoming Conscious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TeWvf-nfpA)
– How mindfulness can change your brain (https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Harvard%20Now%20and%20Zen%20Reading%20Materials.pdf)