Why Meditate?

"Gold Leaf & Flowers" Card by Lynne Dee

I have always heard that meditation is a really good thing to do for oneself. It became one of those things on my LIST TO DO, but I just never seemed disciplined enough, in that way, to actually practice sitting still and being quiet with my eyes closed for say, 30 minutes. That always seemed like an awfully long time not to be doing anything.

Well, I have changed my mind on that. One needs direct experience of regular practice of meditation to understand the benefits of this journey. It is a process.

It’s like trying to explain the benefits of yoga to someone who has never tried it. You just have to give it a try yourself. Direct experience is the best gift to give oneself.

I was at a friend’s place two weeks ago when I picked up a book sitting on a small side table.  The title: Learn to Meditate by David Fontana. I opened up to a random page. I saw this paragraph under the headline: Levels of Thought

“…it is helpful to identify four levels of thinking. The first and lowest level is negative thought, which includes feelings of anger, fear, sadness, regret, and unease. Negative thought makes us egotistical and lazy. The second level is wasteful thought, when we waste our time worrying about things that might not happen, or about things that are outside our control. The third level is necessary thought, such as, “I must not forget to pay the electricity bill,” or  “I must remember to send a birthday card.” The highest level is positive thought, which encourages peace, harmony, creativity, love and happiness. In meditation we can free our minds from negative and wasteful thoughts and elevate them to the highest level”. 

I was intrigued. That was all I got to read on that day but it stuck in my mind that I would have to read that whole book someday. Today I borrowed the book and began to read from page one.

Over the last two weeks I have meditated in the park with a group of fellow yogis. I have discovered that my perception of time has undergone a change. Right now we are sitting still for 30 minutes, up from 15. When I began I thought 30 sounded like a long time. There are people who meditate for an hour or longer and I suppose at some point I too will feel like doing that. The combination of meditating and yoga is fantastic. There’s a calmness that comes over one. Mindfulness sets in. According to the author, mindfulness means putting the mind fully into the present, so that we are engaged with what we are doing. Mindfulness can therefore be thought of as a process of self-monitoring. It should flow continuously throughout our waking life, so that meditation is not confined to our sessions of sitting, but rather becomes a way of being.

For now we are, as a group, meditating in nature. What I love about being in a park is that there’s always the sound of birds chirping away to recall us to the present moment or perhaps an occasional breeze. Staying present can be very challenging. There are so many distractions in life, especially our own thoughts, which keep us from the present moment. Hooray for the park and nature as a backdrop for group meditation. It’s such a wonderful journey when each of us can challenge ourselves with doing something new or different outside of our comfort zone. Growth occurs there.

Back in March of 1996 I read Deepak Chopra’s book called “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind”.

I copied from his book into my journal back then: “The very act of paying conscious attention to bodily functions, instead of leaving them on automatic pilot, will change how you age.

By inserting an intention into your thought processes, such as, “I want to improve in energy and vigor everyday” your intention not to age is triggered and the body carries it out. It’s the mind body connection at work, and the power of your intention”.

In India, the flow of intelligence is called Prana. The ability to contact and use prana is within all of us. In place of the belief that your body decays with time, nurture the belief that your body is new at every moment.

There is much to learn from Deepak Chopra as well as other spiritual teachers and the Eastern philosophies regarding health and mind/ body/spirit connections. WE are lucky in the West to have such wise people share their wisdom with us and have the access to books and other materials to aid us in this journey of self-awareness.