Spirit Odyssey
Meditation
Meditation: Your Path to Clarity
Spirit Odyssey
Meditation
Meditation: Your Path to Clarity
What Is Meditation?
Meditation is like giving your mind a break and tuning into what’s happening inside and around you. It’s about sitting quietly and paying attention, whether it’s to your breathing or just noticing what’s going on. Instead of resisting or pushing things away, meditation helps you accept and be okay with what’s going on right now. It’s like using a special flashlight to understand yourself and what’s happening in the world better.
Why You Should Meditate
Meditation offers a profound journey of self-discovery and growth, leading to greater inner peace. Through consistent practice and a willingness to explore deeply, it enhances self-awareness, accountability, and focus. This transformative process fosters not only a better understanding of oneself but also enables more meaningful connections with others and the world around us.
By creating a mental space conducive to receiving insights, meditation equips us with the tools to manage priorities effectively and navigate life’s challenges with clarity and intention. It transcends skill levels and concentration, making it accessible to all, yet its transformative power lies in the commitment and dedication we bring to our practice. Ultimately, meditation liberates us from limiting attachments and empowers us to lead more fulfilling and intentional lives.
When we purposely choose to do nothing, something special can happen inside us. Even though we’re not moving or doing anything outwardly, our minds will eventually start to see things differently. We notice that our thoughts aren’t just random—they actually follow certain patterns and are connected in interesting ways. It’s like looking in a mirror and realizing that we are part of what we see. This helps us understand that our thoughts are not separate from the world around us they’re intricately a part of it.
I didn’t realise I could change my life by simply sitting and meditating, yes it’s simple but it’s not easy, all the things you’ve been avoiding will come up and you’ll have to work through it. But there’s tremendous reward in doing so
The mind is a fascinating gift and just sitting doing nothing but in a deliberate way can forge new mental skills and emotional intelligence that are transferable to all domains of life, greater patience, improved memory, thought management, etc
If you’ve never meditated before, perhaps you’d like to give one of my guided meditations a try!
But that doesn’t meant experienced meditators can’t benefit from these too !
You can find some below
How To Meditate
In the same way that there are many ways to define meditation, There are also many ways one can practice the art of meditation, but here i’ll give you my two favourite ways to meditate.
Meditation = staying aware of what is already the case. In other words meditation is an act of surrendering to yourself and allowing what is happening to take place without resistance. So simply allow whatever is taking place in your direct experience to unfold, when you feel the bubbling up of resistance in your mind and body, you allow it, you let the resistance bubble up and fade away. You hold the intention to have no other intentions but to just be until the timer rings.
Another way to practice meditation is the watching method, Where you deliberitely place your focus on different aspects of your experience whether it be your breath or the sounds of a clock ticking, this method is versatile as you can switch the object you are watching and how long you are watching for, For example you can start by noticing the flow of the breath
Then you can zoom in to the sensation of the breath on the inside of your nostril, You can then switch to focusing on the buzz of the air conditioner, You can then focus further on the pitch of the air conditioner, the tone or the volume. You can then focus on the rhythm of and insensity of your heartbeat, you can even cross reference and notice how the the rhythm of your heart correlates with the activities of the mind.
Once you get the hang of do nothing meditation and the deliberate observation technique, you can begin using both throughout your meditation sessions and throughout your day. You can start off your meditation by doing nothing for the first 5 minutes or however long feels natural to you, then you can begin to intentionally place your attention on different facets of your experience and soak them in.
Shinzen Young a great meditation teacher has a paradigm for meditation called focus in, focus out, The first is acknowledging that during practice we can choose to set our attention outwards, we can focus on the external sounds (Cars, Dogs barking, Mothers shouting) external sights (Trees, Bottles, Phones, Walls) External Feelings ( Cold air, The soft meditation cushion) The second option is focusing in, where we set our attention on Internal sounds (Mental thoughts) Internal sights (Mental images and pictures) or Internal Feelings (A sharp pain in the stomach or the feeling of happiness in the body)
Now the beauty in this paradigm is the ability to mix and match and select which technique you want to use depending on what suits the scenario you’re dealing with best.
For example if you want your thoughts to slow down you may try to focus in on your thoughts and observe them, however in some cases this may backfire and cause addedd resistance, you could continue to observe your thoughts and this may directly tackle the root of the resistance, or you could switch and begin to focus outwardly on the external sounds, You can jump from one sound to next in quick succession or you can take your time and focus on the different sounds at your own pace. This act can ground you back into the present moment where reality is actually taking place, beyond just the borders of your mind
Or instead of switching to focus outwards you could relinquish the observation technique and switch to do nothing, now you have no intentions to place your awarness/attention anywhere and you are in complete acceptance mode, allowing yourself to be wherever you are.
For even more information on how to meditate, check out these posts!
