When beginning a meditation practice, it’s natural to assume that if you can’t quiet your mind, you’re not meditating correctly.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. Meditation is not about forcing thoughts out of your mind. Instead, it’s about cultivating ease with your thoughts or any other experience you have in meditation.
For example, let’s say you sit down to practice a breath awareness meditation. As you begin to relax and focus on your breath, thoughts will naturally arise.
All you have to do is simply notice the thought and come back to the breath. If you keep repeating this for the duration of the meditation, you begin to become aware of the activity of thought without being a part of it.
If you continually bring your awareness back to the breath, you’ll receive 100% of the benefits of meditation—no matter how many thoughts you experience during meditation.
Today’s Meditation for Life session was an eye-opener for me – the reference to being on the river’s roiled surface, tossing and turning in turmoil, and then sinking below that surface to the peaceful waters below pointed out that we have that ability to simply make an adjustment to allow peace to happen. I live by the ocean, so my reference includes the surface waves buffeting me, and then sinking to that beautiful place to listen to the song of the whales. – Kathleen
Next Steps:
Find a quiet, comfortable place to spend 5-15 minutes in meditation. After meditation, comment below or go to the Facebook group and share your experiences.
Remember, meditation is not about the specific experiences you have during meditation. It’s about the relationship you have to the experience. There is no such thing as a good or bad meditation, as long as you find the time to meditate.
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