Meditation Demystified: 3 Secrets Every Beginning Meditator Should Know
Three Essential Secrets to Mediation
If you, by chance, have found yourself wondering what it means to practice and how one is supposed to regain control of their attention if it goes rogue the moment you close your eyes, you are not alone. Thankfully, there are supportive practices that can help you to regain control of your attention. This post will outline 3 Secrets Every Beginning Meditator Should Know.
Beyond Belief
Meditation has long been touted as one of the best ways to reduce daily stress. Only moments after you close your eyes, you're liable to experience distracting thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that will likely leave you wondering why you even decided to practice in the first place.
From random thoughts that rapidly spiral into a swirl of unrelenting mental activity to rattling off the long list of things you have on your never-ending to-do list, developing a consistent practice can sometimes be daunting.
Many are more than willing to create a reality of our choosing. Not just any average, mundane, run-of-the-mill reality, but one that cultivates a fertile ground to harvest our most coveted desires. Despite your best intentions, dropping into a practice that calls us to sit with our innermost thoughts, which are liable to run amuck, will surely make beginners believe they are doing it all wrong.
It’s a commonplace for beginners to believe that meditation may not be an ideal fit simply because widely published images of individuals assuming mediative postures fail to capture the complexities of all that unfold beyond closed eyes. Likewise, a significant disconnect exists between what aspiring practitioners perceive and what is.
Mindful Awareness
Meditation is the practice of going within to pay undistractable attention to all that occurs moment-by-moment. At any given time, our attention is dispersed in many different directions simultaneously (i.e., multitasking). According to societal norms, multitasking is a celebrated skill set that signifies agility and productivity, some of the most sought-after essential career skills. In every sense of the word, we as a collective spend excessive time residing in every other tense (past and future) but the present.
We’re either juggling parental responsibilities or attending to our many obligations while working to steer clear of burnout as we do everything we possibly can to maintain some semblance of work-life balance. This is just a glimpse into the many random things we can have going on at any given time. Even showering leaves space for excessive thinking and contemplation. If left to our devices, there is little to no time to reclaim control over where we’re placing our attention. By being in a perpetual state of constant doing, we reside more in our imaginations than in the present moment.
Our attention can be so dispersed that it’s common for us to live in our heads, with our attention bouncing anywhere from the past, back to the future, and back again, all in one fell swoop. We’ve become so accustomed to living in our heads that any attempt to journey within and sit in practice is met with a flood of distracting mental activity that snatches our attention away from our intended focus.
This raises an interesting question, what does it mean to be in the present? So glad you asked. At any given time, variable sensations, feelings, emotions, and the like constantly occur within our minds and physical bodies. The more attentive we are to the external activities and actions outside of ourselves, the less available we are to experience all that flows in, as, and through our awareness.
Meditation Demystified
Thanks to the invariable distractions competing for our attention, it is often easier said than done. Most are familiar with the idealized meditative postures and positioning; however, beyond the poised postures, meditation is achieved by settling both the mind and body into a calm state, as the practice calls us to pull our attention away from the many things that may distract us from residing in the present.
One would think that simply being able to focus on any particular task equates with being in the present. However, the key to residing in the present moment lies in calming both the mind and body and closing our awareness to all outside of us, along with objectively observing all that is taking place within the scope of our awareness without judgment or attachment to a preferred outcome.
Observation empowers you to transition from identifying and internalizing your thoughts, beliefs, actions, fears, worries, and anxieties to observing and accepting them as something passing through your awareness. Much like the clouds that pass through the sky, our thoughts flow through our awareness similarly. If you observe and accept each moment as it unfolds, without trying to change, force, resist, suppress, or identify with what is passing through, it will simply pass through unencumbered.
When holding on to the things that cause discomfort, we create suffering. In essence, what we resist persists. In other words, the more we replay thoughts of discomforting experiences, the more we regulate ourselves to live in the past. Releasing judgment and accepting all that passes through our awareness frees us to live in the present.
3 Secrets Every Beginning Meditator Should Know
1. There’s No Magical Formula
Despite anything that you may have been led to believe, forming a meditation practice doesn’t happen overnight. Like most things, developing a practice that meets you exactly where you are in your journey takes time, patience, and consistency. You are a unique emanation of the Divine, meaning no one else is quite like you. Therefore, there is no comparison to anyone outside of yourself.
2. Release the Burden of Comparison
When we look at others, who may outwardly seem to have it all together, curating images on social media that make it appear that they are consistently doing practically all of the things “they" say one should be doing to “go about it, the right way.” Thankfully there is no right or wrong way to practice, as no two individuals are the same. There is no comparison because we are each individualized expressions of the Divine, with our unique path.
3. There is no Right or Wrong Way to Practice
Although there is more than one singular way to do a particular thing, we have collectively been conditioned to believe in duality and that there is a right and wrong way to do something. We are increasingly acclimated to an err on the side of caution, being attentive to ensure that we do everything in our power to do things the “right way.” However, when it comes to mediative practice, there is no ideal practice, only universal principles, and law.
Thankfully, this frees you to release yourself from any limitations that make you feel obligated to mirror your practice after others when it may not fit your individualized needs. Permit yourself to remain open, available, and receptive to exploring different modes of practice, taking what resonates and leaving the rest until you form a customized practice tailored to meet you exactly where you are in your journey. Know that this practice is static as it evolves as you continue to grow and unfold to higher heights.
The Mindful Minute
A brief five-minute practice support you to pause, breathe and reconnect with the truth of your being.
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Thank you
I love that one of your main points is that there is no wrong way to practice. Just stopping before you sit down at your desk to work for the day and taking one mindful 5 second deep breath is more that 99% of the population does.
Thank you for sharing this.