I’d like to start off today with a quote I just recently discovered:
“Meditation is to religion what the laboratory is to science.”
–Paramahansa Yogananda
Myself, I would have phrased it differently, substituting the word “spirituality” for “religion” as I associate religion with dogmas and strict thought restrictions, but the principle holds just the same.
The more I meditate and the more regularly I do so, the more mental space it gives me to observe what’s going on in my life, both internally and externally. I ran a 30-day challenge back in November to meditate daily, and in January I fell off the wagon here and there. I never gave up, but I wasn’t as good about it as I wanted. In late January/early February I started meditating again. I being a man who likes to stack the deck in his favor given the proper environment, decided to try a new approach: a method whose strength was tied to it’s simplistic method. This helped, but regular meditation has helped even more, I think. I’ve been meditating twice a day (once a day in a busy/long day) ever since.
If you want to get in touch with your spirit, I cannot think of any technique, trick, or tip more effective and elegant then meditative practice. Like the quote above, it’s not something where you meditate for a while and then you’ve meditated all you need and can halt the practice. Instead view it as an ongoing process, like science. When a physicist makes a breakthrough, they don’t sit back and say “well, I’m good”. Instead, they’re interested in finding out what their breakthrough means to the Big Picture. Meditation is no different.
If you don’t know how to get started with your meditation practice, then just try a few out. There are a lot of good forms of meditation out there that can help you along. Ultimately it is about doing what works for you, and sticking to it so it gives you the results you’re seeking.
If you’d like to read more about how to make the most of your meditation, please subscribe to the RSS feed.
P.S. If you’re interested in the meditation technique I’m using, it’s called the Foundation by the Higher Balance Institute.
