My tryst with meditation
When we think of meditation or mindfulness various images conjure up in our mind such as relaxation, calmness, quiet and for some extreme forms maybe Nirvana (pun intended).
The very essence of meditation is to calm our mind and stay still which is the complete opposite of our fabric of being “the monkey mind”.
And hence in our busy lives we don’t find the place for meditation. We resist it.
And it was the same for me. I have a busy life, I have so much to do everyday, so much to achieve, so many problems etc. etc. As a person I am a very solution oriented person. I see a problem, my instant reaction would be to break it down into pieces and find a probable solution. And hence in my fabric of being meditation was an activity and didn’t provide any solution to any of my problems. And hence I resisted it.
I also observed that for most people the start of meditation happens only when something is broken, when there is some impact in our life or when we want to fix something.
And like most people I resorted to meditation when I was going through a tough patch in my life. And with such a disturbed mind it was extremely difficult for me to even sit for 5 mins without negative thoughts. I felt sleepy, I felt more irritated after the meditation.
But then one day while fighting my resistance for meditation; I decided to try something different. What if rather than calling it “meditation” I start calling it “exploration”. That thought gave me an instant positive feeling.
I was able to fool my mind to enjoy that activity by just changing the name of the activity. And that clicked. That changed the narrative for me. I changed my calendar title from “meditation” to “exploration” and started with 5 mins initially.
In those 5 mins I just explored all the thoughts that were coming to me. I didnt resist anything. Slowly, my mind got trained to sitting still for longer time to 10 mins, 20 mins and right now at 30 mins.
While mulling over the problems during my meditation I realized that a lot of that noise don’t matter.
And now it is a way of life. It was not easy. But gradually it has become a way of life for me. It still requires a lot of discipline and perseverance but it’s a journey and I hope to get there soon.
Summarising my learnings:
•Meditation is not just about relaxation, calmness of mind but its about finding your own reasons. What do you want to get out of it. Like for me its to just find solutions to things that are bothering me in those moments of solitude
•Its natural to get irritated, sleepy and find it difficult to do it in the beginning. Its okay. Keep up at it and it will come. I can vouch for it. It’s a lifelong journey so don’t rush
•There are multiple ways to practice meditation like focus led, concentration led, thought based. I would recommend first start with just sitting still for 5 mins and see how you feel. Once you do that for some time do your research and become a part of one philosophy which appeals to you. For me, after doing all different types of meditation I stuck to transcendental meditation as a practice.
•Don’t wait for a trigger. :)
