As a result of all those thousands of hours of practice and dozens of books I read on related topics, a profound transformation took place in various aspects of my life. I’ve also learned a few things about myself and what works in meditation, and I’d like to share them with you.
“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day; unless you are too busy, you should sit for an hour” – Zen Saying
5 valuable lessons I learned
1. Different things for different people
Meditation is the mental practice of focusing all your attention, moment by moment, on the object of meditation. This could be your breathing, an affirmation, visualization, mantra, whatever. During the session the aim is to bring attention back whenever it wanders, and to release it from being busy with other things.
‘Mindfulness’ is the practice of being aware of the present moment, a space in which you notice the state of affairs (internal or external) without judgement. You could say it is a kind of meditation, or a way to integrate meditation into daily activities.
People do meditation for different purposes. Centuries ago, people only did it for spiritual purposes: to discover themselves, master their minds, or connect with something higher.
As meditation became known in the West, early adopters began to recognize that the mental and emotional benefits that come from the practice are useful in virtually every area of life – from career and personal development to athletic performance, healthcare, family relationships and business .
It’s usually one of three things that gets people started:
Specific benefit: improving your health, well-being, performance, focus, memory, creativity, etc.
Growth: personal growth, emotional healing, therapy
Spirituality: connecting with God, transcending the ego, etc.
Whatever drives you to meditate is good. You will get the benefits you are looking for, commensurate with your consistency and commitment to building this habit. But the wider you cast your net, the more fish you get – so I would encourage you to practice not just for one reason, but for the sake of the practice itself.
Every day you have to eat, shower and sleep. If you practice meditation this way, you’re more likely to stick with it, and the benefits will resonate more deeply in your life.
2. Three essential virtues
Keep these three attitudes in mind, and your mindfulness meditation will be solid: consistency, interest, openness.
(a) Stubborn consistency.
Adopt a “never zero” approach. No matter what, practice every day. Even if it’s only five minutes. Even one minute (if you start). But do it.
It doesn’t matter if you are tired, bored, busy, confused, depressed or angry. Just sit. This connects meditation deep into your brain.
(b) Stay hungry, stay interested.
Keep your interest alive. Read about it, talk about it, meet people who meditate, go to retreats. It keeps your enthusiasm alive.
(c) Have a Zen-like openness
You need to develop a different mindset to be a “successful meditator.” It’s not about results. It’s about the process itself. Funny enough, you get more results and more benefits when you forget about them.
Be patient. Don’t have any expectations for your practice. Don’t close yourself off to any goal.
So the perfect attitude would be: meditate every day with enthusiasm, but without expectations.
But you won’t have perfect posture. Me neither. That’s okay too. Just keep it in mind.
If I want to speak a foreign language fluently, studying a little bit every day won’t get me that far. Fluency comes when I begin to continually think about what I have learned throughout the day and experiment with thinking in that language.
The same goes for meditation: it should go beyond the few minutes a day you spend sitting on a cushion. That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it?
How do you do that? By reminding ourselves several times a day of the ‘quiet space’, the calmness of the mind that we experience during meditation. When you talk, eat, work, whatever. Just take a deep breath, become aware of your body and state of mind, and bring your attention back to that space. This is mindfulness in action.
Another experiment that worked well for me is to bring my strongest emotions into meditation. For a while, I took every strong emotion that arose as an opportunity to meditate, go deep into it, and figure out what it is. I can’t recommend this practice for everyone, but for me it was deeply liberating. I did it with fear and with sadness. And I can say that these things have never had the same power over me again. These negative emotions, when they arise for me, are now more like a bucket of salt thrown into a lake – not a bucket of salt thrown into a small pound. It doesn’t really get salty, you know.
So make sure you couple your ‘formal practice’ with a few 30-second meditation moments throughout the day. That is the most important element in integrating mindfulness into your life. And bring your state of mindfulness to your strongest emotions. A powerful liberation can take place.
4. Things will change
Your view of things will change. Your self-identity can also change.
But don’t panic. I’m not saying you’ll become a monk disconnected from the world, nor in a blissful hippie state. You will see how many things you believed are actually not true, and your mind will become more flexible.
I can’t say exactly what the changes will be. That depends on you, it’s subjective. In the next point I will explore one of the most important changes meditation brought about for me.
5. I am not my mind
One of the greatest gifts meditation has given me is the insight that I am not my mind, and a space of detachment from whatever is happening, inside or outside.
I now know deeply that whatever I think or feel is only a temporary movement in my consciousness. Whether it’s a worry, or fear, or stress, or a limiting belief, whatever. It appeared at some point, stays for a while and then disappears again. If there is no attachment to it – and I have learned that I don’t have to be attached to it, that it is a choice – it just passes. And even during the time the feeling exists, it no longer makes me a hostage.
Just as I watch my breath go in and out during meditation, I see the mind becoming irritated, the body heating up, and the urge for action increasing. And I know I always have a choice. A choice to act on it, make use of it or simply let it go. This is the power and freedom that meditation continues to give me.