Meditation is a trance like state that individuals can obtain through different guided meditations or breathing techniques. It is something that has been around for centuries, dating back to old Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism practices. It isn’t necessarily a religion in my eyes, it is more of a way of living this life we live. I believe that if everybody took 10 minutes out of their day to devote their time to some sort of meditation, we could live in a better society. Skeptics hear some of the guided meditations, and think that they are redundant, or too soft for a man to perform. However, that is not the case. You can meditate in basically all aspects of life, whether you’re at the gym, work, home, school, or simply walking around. The following is a five-step program that a newcomer to meditation can follow in order to obtain a higher sense of self.
Step one will be building a plan. When can you perform a scheduled meditation session? Where are you going to perform this session? How will you perform your session? You need to establish a plan on whether you are going to attend a group meditation session or if you are going to do it on your own. Start off doing it every day for 10 minutes, and progress from there. Do some research on which type of meditation you want to perform. According to Villinis (2017), meditation types vary as follows: Loving-Kindness Meditation, Body Scan or Progressive relaxation, mindfulness meditation, breath awareness meditation, Kundalini yoga, Zen Meditation, and transcendental meditation.
Step two will consist of establishing a time and place to perform your meditation. If you have the time to sit down and do a good meditation session in a silent room, or with calming music, then go for it. However, most people think they are too busy to do anything extra, so why not kill two birds with one stone? As you are doing some sort of task during your day, escape the present moment. Begin to focus on the breath and eliminate all negative thoughts. If a thought comes into your mind, process it without judgement, and continue to focus on the breath. This is the basis of meditation, focusing on one aspect of your physical body, to clear out your mental capacity so that you can ruminate a goal or thought process. This can be beneficial for anyone that wants to do it.
Step three Come back to the schedule if you feel yourself veering away from it. Follow it and keep a level of discipline that you know you will perform your meditation at that specific time throughout the day. As you develop discipline, you will begin incorporating it into all aspects of your life. Your diet will improve, lifestyle choice, exercising, and even potentially the people around you might change. You will begin feeling a whole new person with less frustration, resentment, anger and more love towards others, satisfaction within your circles, focus, and even improving your relationships.
Step four will be that level of discipline that you gathered in the previous step, but this time, start incorporating it into new healthy lifestyle decisions. Use your meditation time to think what you want to do better for yourself, your body, or the people around you. Become more in tune with yourself, and your spiritual side so that you can begin to gather knowledge from your higher power on what you need to improve. Mix it up a bit and begin doing a different type of meditation that you researched in step one. Each type of meditation has its very own qualities, so you can learn something from them all. Take away something that you learn from each one and incorporate it into your own type of meditation so that you feel more comfortable with it.
Step five is your very own assessment of yourself. Do you feel like you have change throughout the course of the last six months of doing meditation? Has your relationship quality increased? Are you less irritable? These are all things that should have gotten better throughout all of this. So just remember where you were when you started and strive to never get back to the low of a level again. Continue your discipline in this new lifestyle you have embarked on, and eventually you will finalize it which that transcendental feeling coming over you. A sense f enlightenment will come to you like you have never felt before. There will not be anything that distracts you from what you want. You can do it, keep pushing forward with all of it.
In conclusion, if you follow this simple five step program for meditation, you can begin to see your life change in so many more aspects than you think. This is something that everybody can learn, and strive to be better at, but they must take that first step, sew that first seed, or make that one plan. These steps can be done in a three-month period, six-month period, or even a year. In which you will see the difference in your life, so you will find yourself continuing past that duration of time. If you don’t see any improvements in life, step back, assess, and look at it from a different angle. Each one of us is destined to accomplish more in our lives, we just have to find that accomplishment that we desire.
-Cyral I Callender III
References:
Villines, Z. (2017). What is the best type of meditation? Retrieved (April 20, 2021) from: www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320392.php
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