Cracking The BIG “M”!
Like most good things in my life, stumbling upon meditation was incidental on the path to self-discovery and development. You see, a few years ago I came upon an inner urge to seek my purpose of being. I had all the telltale signs of living the American dream AKA a great job, good money, a beautiful home, the perfect family and the white picket fence …okay fine I didn't have the white picket fence but I’ll trade you that with a stunning white gazebo in my backyard! So here I was, having checked off most of the things that I wanted in life but lo and behold I had the incessant need to explore why I was brought to Earth. Yeah….. not convenient AT ALL!
I started my search by typing “How to find my purpose”… obviously! This was followed by hundreds of hours of reading books, listening to audio, looking at YouTube videos, listening to self-help gurus, saints, philosophers, poets, empaths, my next door neighbor…basically anyone that I thought could help me in this quest.
How does this relate to meditation you ask? Well in my quest of this unrelenting search for the essence of being I found that most of the gurus were cutting upon one specific thing called meditation that was quite conspicuously missing from my self-development practice. I decided that if I have to crack the code for listening to my inner self aka the soul as well as the ultimate intelligence aka the Universe or God as some may view it, I need to learn how to meditate!$%!*
So I decided to give myself 30 days to practice and perfect in my quest to become zen. I set the alarm every day in the morning to rise up early so I could take 15 minutes to sit and focus on my breath. After having spent the first 12 minutes trying to clear my monkey chatter thoughts, suffice to say I didn’t feel very zen at the end of my time. 2 weeks of this left me more frustrated than an anorexic being force fed fat-shakes.
It wasn't until I stumbled across something that I read from Eckhart toll about being in the observer mindset that I realized that I should potentially rise into my higher self aka the Observer self. You see the observer self is that part of us that observes us getting frustrated during meditation or getting more and more angry every time our child decides to back talk to us non-stop. So I decided to tap into that observer self as I sat down on my meditation pillow the next day. I found that as I tapped into that higher observer self, the distractions, the monkey-chatter, the random itch on my nose didn't seem as annoying. They really became ambient white noise and I found myself feeling a calmness of peace, avoiding amidst all of the life and the senses that I was in. I found myself fully aware of all five senses but also fully connected to a source of peace. It was as if my being in that moment was perfect and joyous in and of itself. I found a sense of profound gum love and reassurance all wrapped up in the very same blanket off what I can only describe as a void of the good kind of the best kind. And just like that I was hooked.
Now a former meditation skeptic like myself might wonder, what the hell was that one moment of peace and perfection to do with meditation? Well here's the thing that I experienced - it wasn't the end that I was focused on in that moment of perfect peaceful pure profound connection. It was the moment itself that became the goal. It felt re-energizing, rejuvenating and refreshing in and of itself to where the rest of the day seemed just that much brighter and worth it.
I started sitting and almost looking forward to sitting on that meditation mat just for that one moment or a few moments of bliss. Here's the crazy side effect that happened that the more I dropped into my core of peace, the more my day felt ease and Flow and the more I became privy to what I started to believe were happy coincidences. I didn't have to work at work or at home as much because life felt like it came with ease flow and immense fulfillment.
Today, many years later, I realized that I started chasing meditation in an attempt to be more effective, efficient and successful, but it wasn't until meditation or the need thereof started to chase me from within that I was truly deriving all the benefits from it.