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BY: Gladys González
Many people believe that if the mind is noisy because of thoughts, meditation is not possible. That is not truth. The mind was created to think, so is natural to have thoughts, that is the mind’s nature. What is important in meditation is to be a witness of our thoughts, to observe them and to go back to the meditation’s anchor which is the anchor of the meditative state.
The meditation anchor can be a mantra, the light of a candle, the breath, depending on the type of meditation we practice. Let’s illustrate this with an example: If we are doing transcendental meditation we focus on our personal mantra, if it is Vipassana meditation or Mindfulness meditation the focus is to observe the breath. We just need to make sure we don’t start our meditation with expectations of reaching a specific outcome such as a calming the mind or experimenting a state or joy etc. Expectations don’t allow us to see what is really happening in the moment.
When we notice that we are thinking instead of observing the breath is a sign that we are doing well our meditation, otherwise we wouldn’t notice we lost track of the breath. When we realize our mind is wandering, we just return to observe the breath. Practice is the key. We can start practicing for 5 or 10 minutes and continue increasing the time as we progress.
Finally, we can start meditation by using guided meditations to slowly move into silent meditation when we are ready. The key to meditation’s success is practice, practice, practice. The practice will do the teaching.
Mindfulness is healing. Learn tomorrow about how to heal body and mind through meditation visit www.ocipeace.org