Meditation

I have noticed that meditation has become increasingly popular, but most of us have different ideas of what it is, how to practice it and the effects it has on us and on the world around us. Talking with various people from different groups and walks of life, I realized that the only commonality I could find is that the practice of meditation increases our perception of calmness and control. Does it make sense or is it a misconception? Why meditation seems to produce a sensation of calmness, tranquillity and control? In this article I’ll share my take on meditation, why I practice it, how I do it, when I do it and the effects I’ve noticed.

Without going into details on different types and techniques of meditation, I’ll start off by explaining what it is. The word meditation means “getting familiar with”. Therefore, I see meditation as the process wherein we go, or attempt to go, beyond my analytical mind. The analytical mind can be seen as the bridge between our conscious mind and our subconscious mind. It uses our five senses (sound, sight, taste, smell and touch) to analyse what’s happening in our external environment in order to identify similar events to which we’ve been exposed, so it can chemically instruct our body to respond and produce the best possible outcome based on previous experiences (memories). The best possible outcome can be translated into the least painful one. The least painful is usually the one which consumes the least amount of energy. Thus, we can conclude that the analytical mind analyses our external environment through our feelings and emotions, identifies similar past experiences and signals the body to behave in a certain way to produce a predictable result in the future.

So, meditation can be described as the practice of observing non-analytically what we think and how we feel. By observing how our thinking process influences the way we feel without judging whether it’s good or bad, we become familiar with our thoughts. We are therefore intentionally disengaging our present experience from everything known to the analytical mind, our own personality. In other words, meditation allows us to transcend our physical and emotional limitations, thereby allowing us to experience all possibilities of the present moment. It is fair to say, then, that our analytical mind can only create a predictable future, as it’s constantly instructing the body to replicate in the future something we’ve experienced in the past in order to save energy for when it’s really needed. This means that our analytical mind is responsible for making us literally reproduce past behaviours based upon the emotions of our past experiences. However, although our past experiences don’t require as much energy to be reproduced, our past experiences didn’t necessarily take us where we truly wanted to go. That’s why most of us struggle with overcoming procrastination. We are basically allowing our analytical mind to use our vital energy to reproduce a familiar event from our past which doesn’t not equal our ideal future over and over again. This is what it means to feel stuck…in the past.

Practicing meditation, therefore, should allow us to experience the novel possibilities of the present moment. It should allow us to regain control over what we think and feel. While meditating, the analytical mind is no longer in control of our thinking process which ultimately determines how we feel. Basically, it allows us to regain control over the thoughts/intentions we focus our attention/energy on and consequently regain control over the sensations we feel in our body. Perhaps, that’s where the idea of control many people describe comes from. When we feel in control of a situation or event, our body naturally experience calmness and tranquillity. However, that’s not exactly how meditation goes about. Our analytical mind doesn’t like to give up control, after all its job is to protect us from painful experiences so we may save energy for when it’s truly necessary. Therefore, when we go into meditation our analytical mind resists giving in and it strikes back to regain such control. So, it goes thinking “your boss is awaiting that email you haven’t sent yet”, “you’ve got all ingredients to make your favourite sandwich but if you don’t do it right now you’ll get stuck in traffic and will be late to work” or “jeeeeez, you need to get out of here and scratch your back. It’s so itchy!”. Thus, while in meditation we catch ourselves engaging with a plethora of thoughts produced by the analytical mind. But if we then mindfully return our focus/energy to our breath or to an intention/thought we want to be engaged with, we experience a sense of victory. Every time we redirect our attention/energy to where we want it to be, we are winning the battle against our analytical mind, hence experiencing a novel experience. This experience is the rehearsal to the future we want to create where procrastination has been overcome and fear of the unknown knocked out.

Meditation, for me, is a daily practice where I align my mind and body with my intentions and vision for the future. I focus on what I want to create or have in the future and I imagine myself living that future reality in the present moment as if it’s happening right now. I smell, hear, taste, touch, and see that future moment so my brain produces the chemical signature of happiness, gratitude, pride, love, abundance that I expect to feel when the future arrives. This is the definition of neurochemically experiencing the future in the present moment. Meditation literally frees my body and mind from the familiar past and predictable future and gives me the opportunity to feel the physical sensations of the future I want to create so as when my analytical mind is making automatic decisions, the things which haven’t happened yet are no longer unfamiliar to it, therefore the analytical mind no longer wants to avoid it. 

Therefore, that extraordinary and abundant future we all crave and work so hard for no longer feels separate from our reality. We no longer feel separate from our goals as if we are over here and our dreams and goals are over there. This is because our mind doesn’t know what’s actually happened and what’s a fantasy. That’s why our dreams feel very real sometimes. Furthermore, we’re all capable of producing the emotions we believe will make us happy, blissful and whole in the future right here and right now. Thus, meditation gives us the ability to literally create whatever we want in the future right now and by practicing it consistently, it inevitably reprograms our autonomic nervous system (ANS) to create the thoughts, emotions and behaviours which align with the personal reality we truly want. If our ANS has been programmed to create thoughts, emotions and behaviours of stress, fear, jealousy, anger, hatred and frustration that’s what we will automatically produce in reaction to everything that happens in our lives. Moreover, it has been scientifically proven that meditation points at the possibility to reprogram the ANS to create thoughts, emotions and behaviours of freedom, joy, love, gratitude, happiness and selflessness.

To conclude, the best way to reap the rewards of meditation is to practice it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Meditation slows down our brain activity. When we’re fully awake, our brain activity (Beta brainwave) is directed towards cognitive tasks and the outside world (alertness, attentiveness, engaged in learning/problem solving, judgement, decision making etc). If we reduce our brain activity a bit (Alpha brainwave) we feel relaxed, present and at peace. If we further reduce it (Theta brainwave), we tap into our creativity, intuition, light sleep, dreaming and fantasizing. This is where we most commonly want to get when meditating. Therefore, right after waking up our brain activity hasn’t picked up yet so it’s a perfect time to meditate. Also, right before we go to bed, our brain is tired and not overly aroused by daily activities. Taking these into consideration, my morning meditation is intended to align my mind with my purest and highest intentions, where I rehearse the behaviours I want to present to the world to attract my goals. Late at night, I meditate with the intention to let go of my daily activities so my mind and body can work harmoniously on restoring, repairing and healing whilst I’m in deep sleep.