Day 300 of meditating without skipping a day! Just a couple more months and I will have accomplished my goal of 1 year solid. I got a bit of a late start with this goal, so when the new year comes around I will just overlap my goals. Okay, to be honest, I have already started working on next year’s goals because I generally don’t wait. LOL!
Thich Nhat Hanh, the master of mindfulness says, “We don’t need to sit with an intention of getting smarter or becoming enlightened. We can sit just to enjoy sitting and breathing.” And I think that is wonderful. People start meditating for different reasons, and they do it in different ways, and I think all of them have merit. It is about what works for YOU! I know my meditations vary so much depending on what I feel like I need. Sometimes it is outdoors and admiring the beauty surrounding me, sometimes it is indoors with eyes closed, focusing on the sounds of some rhythmic music. Sometimes it is a walk, or sometimes I have so much going on in my head that I do not even try to focus on my breathing or music, I let my brain drift and solve whatever problem it is perceiving. I think it might be more helpful for people to just focus on taking some quiet time, whatever that means for you, because sometimes we need to empty our minds and sometimes we just need space to think and just be. I think it puts less pressure on being perfect and more focus on just giving ourselves some much needed quiet space.
For me personally, I sit and meditate for a few reasons.
I really have always had this deep desire to understand more, to see beneath the veil. I want to know the purpose of life. I want to know what MY purpose is. I have come up with a lot of thoughts on this over the many many years of pondering it, but it is something I doubt will ever be answered, because I think it is impossible to know the actual truth until we die, and even then we may not know. But meditating gives me more answers on life, maybe not an answer to that ultimate question, but at least glimpses of clarity.
I also started meditating because I wanted to stop the cycle of stress. I know that I am a bit of a workaholic, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but I was letting my stress and anxiety run away with me. And THAT is something I did not want to continue since it is bad for my health. Meditating gives my brain some extra space to see things in a different light. I have also found that depending on how I am looking at a situation, I can also generally see how small and non-important most issues I am stressed about are.
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