Demystifying Meditation
When I tell people I teach Yoga they tell me they can’t practice because they are not flexible, and that they can’t meditate because their thoughts are always racing.
Meditation is an act of self discovery, and so what you find when you sit in stillness is the meditation. If you sit or lay down in relative non-moving, if you actively choose to invite stillness into your day - you will move into the position of the witness. It is the witness who is able to identify racing thoughts. If you have identified your thoughts racing, you have already succeeded in meditation. Choosing to carve out time for the opportunity of stillness is the practice, no matter what you find once you get there. In the same way that Yoga Asana helps with increasing strength and flexibility over time, putting yourself into the position of the witness will create benefits such as a decrease in racing thoughts, over time.
Meditation is about getting to the stillness. I do not mean sitting in non-moving, I mean the space that stillness creates. I mean a ripple-less pond, only accessible because you created a dedicated space in your day for connection. Of course the thing you are most likely to connect to is your busy mind. Take a look at the state of the world. With all of that stimulation, of course your mind is busy. Do you know what is awesome? You noticed it! You sat in a space and time that you created and you noticed your mind is busy. That is step one, and you may be on step one for a while. Noticing your busy mind is succeeding at meditation because when you notice something, it means you are not it.
When you recognise you are not your mind, and you are not your racing thoughts, it gives you the power to change. You may choose a sense of detachment, beginning the journey to non-attachment in more areas of your life; you may choose to counter negative thoughts with positive ones, charged with positive emotions to make actualization more possible; you may find yourself working through areas of the past, integrating aspects you were in denial of; or perhaps you simply allow for everything that is showing up to pass you gently by, choosing to focus on your breath in and out of your body.
When you move into the position of witness, you are dismantling the illusion that all of the different parts of you are one. By dismantling yourself into these different parts you may begin the process of loving these parts individually. Eventually, you will put these loved parts back together with the understanding that separation is an illusion. However, you must go through the cracking open first; the breaking down, the prizing apart of yourself, your beliefs, your ego, your mind and then it becomes more obvious how it is all connected, and how we are all one.
