Scientific studies are beginning to offer verifiable evidence of various ways in which meditation can assist us in living more satisfying and fulfilling lives. At a minimum, for example, meditation can potentially assist us in reducing the stress and anxiety that some of us live with, day in and day out. It can also help us to develop and maintain a positive attitude or outlook, both in our personal lives and at work. And in a much more profound way, meditation can help us connect or reconnect with a part of ourselves that we may not have been very aware of – our very own inner world, that part of us that some would call the soul, or the Higher Self or the Godself.
Regardless of our individual motives for doing it, meditation can assist us in a wide variety of ways, including some ways that may really surprise and delight us. I like to call this journey “The Magic of Meditation”, because if we are willing to start to practise meditation, and stick with it, the positive changes that we may experience may seem almost like magic. It is just a matter of getting acquainted with a part of ourselves that we as individuals may know very little about, at least consciously.
I have quite often heard people say they would like to try meditation, but they have already decided they can’t do it. “I’d like to try it, but I could never sit still that long,” they might say. People who are new to meditation might typically start out by meditating for 15 or 20 minutes, morning and evening. And the thought of sitting still for that long seems virtually impossible to some people. They just cannot imagine sitting still for that long, and trying to quieten their minds.
As individual human beings, we are all different, and our minds work in different ways. Some of us generally have a lot more mental activity going on than others do, for whatever reason. Perhaps some of us were just born that way. Perhaps things happened to us when we were growing up that shaped us in this way. For some of us, the mental activity is, or seems, almost continuous. And that may leave us thinking we could never sit still in meditation and quieten our minds for even 2 minutes, let alone 15 or 20 minutes of meditation.
(Some of us may not even realize that we have a lot more mental activity going on in our minds, compared with most other people. After all, we can really only know for sure how our own minds work.)
Meditation can potentially help us learn to quieten our minds, no matter how impossible that may seem to some of us. At least, that has been my experience. And I would further suggest that those of us who have a high degree of ongoing mental activity are probably among those who can potentially benefit most from regularly practising meditation.
I am not referring here to the ability to think deeply. It is one thing to be able to focus our thinking on one thing, and stay focused on it as needed — in our work, for example, or simply thinking about anything that needs our attention. It is quite another thing to be able to sit down and quieten our minds for a few minutes, when we wish to. For some of us, that latter task is a very tall order. We may find our minds constantly ruminating on one thing after another – going over and over things in our minds, almost non-stop. It may feel like we are almost afraid to be in quietness or stillness, or unable to stop what seems like compulsive or obsessive thinking.
And so it seems to me that those of us who think we will be unable to sit still and quieten our minds through practising meditation may be among those who could most benefit from doing it. All that is needed, it seems to me, is our willingness to try it – to actually take the time for ourselves to do it, and to stick with it for a sufficiently long period to learn and make progress with it. Like anything, learning to meditate effectively can take time, and it will take more time for some of us than others. And like so many things, what we get out of it will depend on what we put into it.
Meditation is not really hard work. It mainly requires a willingness to begin doing it, and then to maintain it. It will help us if we can maintain an attitude of openness toward it. It can help to do it with others, and to find the right teacher. There are different kinds of meditation, and approaches to meditation. It is not a one-size-fits-all situation.
We can all learn something from meditation. We can all get better at quieting our minds, and learning to go inside. We can all delve into the Magic of Meditation, and delve as deeply inside ourselves as we are willing to go. We can all be part of this journey, if we are Willing to take that first step for ourselves, and then a second, and so on.
Are you Willing?