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Welcome to the Umatter Meditation Series
By Ned Burwell
What is meditation
- The practice of meditation is resting your attention inward toward to the most silent part of yourself.
- Meditation helps you transcend your mind, by doing so you can achieve a heighten awareness of yourself and your surroundings.
- Meditation is a simple practice of watching your mind. You let go of the urge to talk back to the thoughts dropping into you.
- It makes you a witness or an observer.
Meditation is Not
- Meditation is not for controlling the mind, rather it’s the practice of surrendering and letting go of your mind.
- Often people drift into thinking and daydreaming while meditating, when this happens you are no longer meditating.
The Benefits of Meditation
- On the surface, meditation can help you relax but as we go deeper into your practice, it becomes a tool to discover consciousness itself.
- The benefits of meditation can very depending on the depth in which one can go into the silence and hold their focus.
- It develops greater mental alertness/focus.
- This enhances your ability to process your environment.
- Meditation changes your relationship to your mind. It can stop the mind from interrupting the moment with its commentaries and opinions.
- A regular twenty-minute practice of meditation a day can not only reduce your stress, it can help clear your nervous system.
- It can also help us regulate of emotions as well.
- Promotes Emotional intelligence.
There are some Common Misconceptions about Meditation
- One is that you must stop your thoughts.
- That is takes years to be able to practice it properly get any benefit from it.
- Meditation is a spiritual/religious practice.
- You need to be in a temple, or a quiet space.
- You must close your eyes to meditate.
- If you have ADHD/ADD… there is no way you can meditate.
Some Common Obstacles with Meditation
- One of the biggest obstacles in meditation is committing
to your practice.
- When you first start you don’t always reap immediate rewards.
- Starting a new routine can be hard to do if you already have a busy life.
- Feeling guilt when you miss a meditation.
- If you miss a session, don’t beat yourself up.
- Comparing your meditation to another’s
experience or to a past experience.
- Meditations are like snowflakes, each one is unique.
- The mind will try to talk you out of doing your
practice. It will say things like:
- You need to know more about meditation.
- Your time is better spent doing something else.
- You don’t need a special room.
- You don’t need everyone to be quiet for you to get into meditation.
- No special equipment is required (Candles, incense, yoga mat.)
- Practice anywhere.
- Create a habit of no habits.
Meditation is a valuable tool to:
- Help destress yourself
- To change your relationship with your mind.
- To put yourself in touch with our heart and soul.
- It can help bring clarity and direction in your life.
- And lastly, it can connect you to the peace that lives within.
Closing Thought by Thomas Troward
“If we approach the ocean with a small cup, and only leave with a small cup of water, we cannot then say that the ocean was not bountiful, that the ocean held back from giving to us.”