14: Why practice meditation?

Everyone should practice meditation in order to take a proactive role in the way that their mind is programmed. Our mind is always working on something and constantly trying to define and refine information sent to it from our senses and our conscious mind. I’ll define that action here as a ‘thought pattern’. Thought patterns are bridges between thoughts and emotions. For example, if you’re an alien from another planet and your ship crashes in the jungle, you may need to gather food. You see that monkeys are eating bananas but when you try it, it tastes bad and you vomit. Then you notice that there are green ones and yellow ones, and that the monkeys are eating the yellow ones. After some time of eating the yellow ones, seeing yellow bananas makes you want to eat but seeing the green ones makes you almost feel sick. This is actually a survival trait inherited from our animal base. As animals, it may take hundreds of generations, but at some point, you could take a newborn animal, and without training, it will wait until the bananas turns yellow. Contrary to that, a thought pattern can be developed in a harmful way. For instance, you travel to a different planet and get robbed by a blue alien. A red one helps you. The next time you see a blue alien you feel resentful even though you know that most blue aliens are peaceful. You can use meditation to ‘fix’ that thought pattern by first realizing it, and then consciously correcting it. You correct the pattern by attaching a new thought to it, to balance the mistake in logic. You tell yourself that every time you think a blue alien is bad, that it’s not because they’re blue, and that they need to be assed as individuals. When your meditation session is done you’ll probably still find that you are cautious around blue aliens, but do feel a little bit more comfortable. Eventually, when you see a blue alien you will feel the same as you do with red aliens.

Taking control of ourselves through meditation allows us to address the things in our character that we need to evolve or dissolve. All of this helps to reduce our stress.

I break down my meditation into these basic types:

1. with the eyes open

A. focus on something and don’t let the mind focus on any other thing
Example: Look at a branch on a tree, ignore the chirping birds, and everything else, immersing into the branch. Do this to develop focus.

B. focus on everything and don’t let the mind focus on any one thing
Example: Try to see everything in your eyes’ range, notice every sound, smell, etc. Do this to increase the percentage of your brain that is active.

2. with eyes closed

A. focus on something and don’t let the mind focus on any other thing
Example: Focus on a light in your mind’s eye. Do this to develop focus.
B. focus on nothing and just let thoughts go through
Example: Empty your mind but don’t ‘block’ thoughts because ‘blocking’, is a thing in itself. Just let all your thoughts and distractions pass by. You do that by not acting on the thought/distraction in any way.

C. ask a question to our higher-self/God/multiverse
Example: You twist your ankle. Later you clear your mind and ask ‘why’ it happened. I find that the more you are able to quite your inner dialog, the more you will realize our higher-self/God/multiverse IS communicating with us.

D. assess our life status and areas that need work
Example: At the end of the day, when you lay down to go to bed, think about your problems. We all go through the days, months, years, and decades pushing back things we don’t want to think about. Sort through your concerns and decide which things you can improve, and which you can’t. If your vision is a concern, see an eye doctor. Prioritize, and create a plan to start acting on the things you can change. You must then actually act on what you decided.

The more that you practice meditation the more natural it feels. A good trick that some Buddhists’ practice is you count from 1 to 10 in your mind. If a thought, other than the next number enters you mind, you start back at 1. If you make it to 2, you’re doing well! There are many other uses for meditation - it can even be used to balance your chakra energy.