Many of us are trying to get into the habit of practicing meditation every day. However, we do not feel that it is working as expected. We have been reading amazing stories about enlightened people who through mediation can achieve higher levels of awareness, and that is not working as well for us. Why is that? It is becoming a little frustrating, and we may even want to give up at some point.
How can we become good meditators? First of all, we must understand that doing meditation is not competing with anyone and even more not compete with ourselves. Allan Lokos, an author and a founder of a meditation center in New York City, said “So what is a good meditator? The one who meditates.” Moreover, that is entirely true. We are all excellent meditators as long as we keep practicing every day. Why are we getting frustrated? Frustration kicks in when we have an expectation. We may think that once we have meditated daily for a year, we must be experts. So, what are we doing here is that instead of trying to let go of the life habits like competing, being superior, expecting more, we apply those principles in meditation. The art of meditation is to let go. None of the principles learned in our society, in school or with our families do not apply. We must let go of those habits and learn something new while doing meditation. The beauty of it is that is not going to be learning as we do in school, but learning of inner-self. Through breathing, we try to let go of our thoughts. They still come, but we peacefully we acknowledge them and let go. We stop talking to ourselves, and we refuse a conversation with that thought. As a result, we may realize, that fewer thoughts are coming in and that is becoming little by little a common practice.
What is happening when we apply the let go principle?
Many of us are practicing meditation because it is relaxing our minds and bodies. We can even take care of health problems. As much as that is excellent, meditation intent is to connect with the source, and all other things mentioned above are just collateral side effects. Of course, the side effects of meditation differ from the side effects of medication. Connecting with the source and let go, the light that is flowing through our bodies is helping us to balance our energy, and with that, we reset the state of our beings to the original condition.
However, going back to the meditation purpose, when connecting to the source we receive the gifts of the Creator. We express ourselves in many ways that bring peace and love into the world. Some of us became better writers, better painters, better singers and we remember how is to be a messenger of God. Happiness becomes the real concept and not a prefabricated one. We become the whole once more and with that we have a different understanding of the life and the world. All the things we have mentioned above are just happening, and again we do not have to expect any of them.
We just have to understand that our souls, bodies, and minds need mediation. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “The true practice of meditation is to sit as if you were drinking water when you are thirsty.” We can safely say that practicing meditation; we are feeding a thirsty soul.