Have an intention for meditating: to connect to the Real Inner Self, to cultivate a fundamental contentment with what is, to bring the peace and harmony you are feeling to others.
There are many well-known benefits to meditation. It stills an over-active mind, reconnects us to our inner world, strengthens our focusing ability. Deep breathing sends a message of safety and security to the body, reduces stress, allows the immune system to work efficiently. During the 20 or 30 minutes you meditate, you stop the incessant doing and are just being, in a place of stillness and contentment.
But as soon as we re-engage with real life, the peace, and harmony just seem to disappear. And we’re back into resisting, fighting, trying to change, improve or avoid situations we don’t like. It seems that accepting everything just as it is, being at peace with anything that appears, is not compatible with the fact that we need to participate in life, control our destiny, run our own life in the face of demands from others.
One of the ways to actively practice contentment is deciding to stop avoiding things.
When we’re not actively resisting something, we tend to avoid. But we are meant to participate in life, make our viewpoint heard, make our contribution; the Spirit we connected with in meditation wants to be expressed through us. So let’s look at how we avoid issues we don’t like instead of peacefully expressing our truth.
When something is uncomfortable, we tend to look away. Not hear a remark that is difficult or disruptive, not even let it into our consciousness, but distract ourselves with another thought, start another topic of conversation. Or we come up with every excuse we can find, pretending it’s not really that bad, it could work out; that we would wait and do something about it later; not have that difficult conversation; we pretend it’s not up to us to deal with it. We retreat and we hide.
To fully participate in life without fighting or resisting, let’s stop avoiding and just honestly face up to what is. Turn towards a difficulty and see what’s really there. Turn towards a challenge, towards the things that cause discomfort, be willing to shine the light of your awareness on all the things you’ve been avoiding, for whatever reason. Usually, there is a fear: what will they think of me, how will they judge me, what’s my judgment of myself that I don’t want to see or feel? What will I lose?
When you face up to the feelings inside, you recognize and acknowledge the fear, the guilt, the shame, unworthiness, or whatever it is for you. Remember who you really are and show up in that uncomfortable situation as the Spirit you connected with in your meditation. Without any judgment or blame, with kindness, allowance and understanding but standing firm in your truth, your perception. Then you will discover the gift in the situation that was at first painful. It has allowed you to bring your meditation practice into the outer world turmoil and spread peace, compassion, helpfulness and kindness to everyone concerned.
