Meditation is a pathway for cultivating mindfulness or full awareness.

In contemplative practices, this is done traditionally by sitting quietly with the eyes closed and paying attention to the breath. However, meditation can be any activity that allows the nervous system to settle and for consciousness to accrue.

For example, meditation can be a simple intentional break amidst the busyness of the day to feel the body and give it a chance to reset to be receptive again. Or it can be a training ground for stabilizing the attention to notice more accurately. Meditation can be used to cultivate attitudes such as kindness or self compassion increasing our ability to connect with experiences and others. Or it can be a place to observe the mind and learn how it generates our sense of reality. We can pay attention to the sensory field and emotions to strengthen the capacity to feel. Or we can use meditation as a healing space to meet incomplete experiences with interest and care.

As you can see, there are many kinds of meditations. But what they all have in common is that they serve as a practice ground to restore our capacity to see, feel, know and connect with the true nature of our experience. 

The Value of Meditation

On a very basic level, by meditating, we are making time and space in our lives to re-prioritize ourselves and restore well-being. We are creating the foundation for building a healthy relationship to Self, refining our ability to be with unbiased experiences and to know what is true.

In pausing, we allow for the nervous system to discharge excess energy and self-regulate to a healthy functioning level. This makes room for unprocessed experiences to surface to be known and felt, restoring the body’s ability to generate the most appropriate response. Simply turning the attention inwards meets our basic need for empathy.

Grounding the nervous system also allows for more awareness to become available. This can then be used to notice the cues that our body and emotions continually offer as feedback. For example, a contracted body tells us no, even though the mind insists on a yes. Emotions on the other hand help us notice whether our fundamental needs have been met. With practice, both somatic and emotional awareness can be strengthened and serve as a compass to guide decisions or to warn us of when we have strayed from the path of well-being. As a result, a deep sense of self connection and self-trust develops when we no longer depend on external sources for validation.

Mindfulness allows us to see our human conditioning more clearly. A stable unreactive mind can be used to observe and learn about itself. During meditation, we witness the incredible power that thoughts have to completely seize our attention, lock us into strong emotions and diminish our agency. We see how difficult it is to just receive and accept each moment as is, without the compulsion to direct, enhance, change, understand or be in control of it. We can watch how the mind relates to experience by constantly evaluating and creating stories which can later become core beliefs. We become aware of how the inner critic is in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction with how things are. We realize how our addiction for pleasant experiences and avoidance of unpleasant ones drive most of our unconscious habits.

In becoming familiar with these tendencies of mind, we can start to question whether this default mode really serves us. We can be empowered to choose and to cultivate new wholesome habits that bring a stronger sense of satisfaction and well-being.

What would it be like to re-orient towards a more conscious life where our actions are in closer alignment to our core values?