1. MEDITATION RELIEVE STRESS
Meditation allows our brain to activate it’s “rest and digest” part of the nervous system which allows us to process our day to day life without becoming overwhelmed. Whether you had a bad day, or you have court hearing the next day, mindfulness allows you to accept our life situation as is and let go of the heavy burden of not letting go. It’s almost like carrying a 10 pound luggage forever. If you walk long enough, no matter how strong you are you’ll eventually collapse out of exhaustion.
You can read my article relating to stress and mindfulness meditation here
2. MEDITATION INCREASES CONFIDENCE
Ask a 2 year old child “who are you?” That child will say “I am me!” As the child grows older it’ll derive its sense of self from things or activities such as “I am a basketball player”, or “I am the smartest boy in class”. Their self esteem starts deriving from how often he/she meets those standards. In order to feel good the child must outperform and be better than everyone else. Unfortunately this comes with a caveat and the caveat is that this form of self esteem is not sustainable.
My definition of self esteem is having a good feeling about oneself for no logic or reason.
Most people don’t understand that having true self esteem comes naturally as a factory setting in all human beings. Children are able to walk up to another child and spark up a conversation or a friendship with little to no effort. They live in their own realities, they aren’t afraid to fail, they aren’t afraid to look silly and above all they aren’t running around focused on their self image (up until the age of 3+).
At about the ages of 3+ we tend to substitute true self esteem with the ego (identity derived from external things). If you have all the “money, hoes and clothes” relative to your neighbor, then it would make sense to feel good about yourself.
This is a fallacy because someone will eventually have or be better than you at something. You can be enjoying yourself playing with a Nintendo but as soon as you see someone with a Super Nintendo you’ll look at your NES suddenly there’s less joy. We want that SNES! This is why we lose the childish ability to enjoy the present moment as a result of comparison. This is why focusing on the present moment makes life much more enjoyable. Comparison diminishes the true value of what already is.
In order to develop true self esteem we must not identify with external things such as “being the better fighter” or “being the most attractive”. These are all external things that will eventually end and when they do end we’re back to square one and in need of an identity. If you lose all of your confidence and sense of self once you lose all of your possessions or stop doing that activity, were you really confident?
True self esteem goes beyond the external. It’s not and it can’t attached to logic or reason because logic and reason changes over time. It’s an essence that lives and derives from being in the present moment. It’s found through letting go of the ego, letting go of comparisons and fully loving and accepting everything as is.
To go even further, when we feel low self esteem there’s usually chatter in our minds reminding us why we should feel low self esteem. But the root of your low self esteem comes from the thought itself. Thinking of what someone said to us in the past, what Jonny has compared to you, or how someone is having a better time than you are all emotionally charge your thoughts.
When we are present to the moment we are able to identify the thought patterns and observe it as they really are, as thoughts. They’re nothing more than thoughts and the only way to free ourselves from making an identity out of those thoughts is through observing them rather than making an identity out of them. I’ll quote Edkart Tolle who said it best:
To use an analogy, the vastness of the sky is your awareness and the clouds are your thoughts.
Remain the sky (the awareness) and allow the clouds (the thoughts) to come and go. You are the awareness behind the thoughts. This applies to any kind of negative thinking – it arises, you recognize it as automatic– it’s a thought. You are the awareness that knows this (low-self esteem) is a negative thought pattern. This way you are no longer feeding the conditioned thinking, so you are taking your identity out of thinking and no longer renewing old patterns.
Removing your identity out of thinking is letting go of the ego. Once we let go of the ego we then allow the true self esteem we experienced as children to arise.
3. MEDITATION GIVES YOU PATIENCE
This is a trick statement and I’ll tell you why. Meditation doesn’t make you patient, rather, it allows you to let go of impatience. Impatience comes from the mentality of wanting to be in the the future because there’s hope that the future will be better.
When we meditate we allow ourselves to feel the full range of emotions without resisting what is already happening. It’s there already, and getting frustrated about it doesn’t do any good. Subsequently when we feel impatient, rather than complaining about it, we observe it and let go of it through becoming present to the moment. Meditation enables you to understand that the future won’t bring happiness and joy. When the future comes it’ll come in the form of the present moment. You’ll end up repeating that cycle until you learn to let go through accepting what already is.
Patience is a natural state that comes with being accepting the moment. You know very well that getting frustrated won’t make the red light turn green! Instead, you’ll be dissolving impatience through the present moment. The mistake people make is attempting to force patience. By “trying to be” patient you’re not surrendering to the present moment because it means you’re hoping that you become that in the future. Letting go of impatience, in turn, allows you to experience patience.
Letting go comes first and then through the acceptance we will experience calmness and tranquility.
4. MEDITATION REDUCES THE EGO
The ego is the mind’s replacement for true self-esteem. Similar to a scar whenever the body gets an injury. It feeds off of praise, individuality, comparisons, and external possessions. The ego manifests itself through thought process that produces feelings of superiority/inferiority, cockiness, humiliation and/or a sense of entitlement.
Notice how children are naturally happier and more apt to being themselves from early age. As soon as they are able to think and they start receiving roles such as “your a boy” “your a girl”, they start attempting to meet those standards and the feedback becomes their main source of positive emotions and from where they begin to derive a sense of self.
We have to understand that the ego is all that most people know as their identity. Subsequently the ego is from where all of our life stressors derive from because the ego is always trying to change reality to fit who it thinks it is. When we start drawing our positive emotions and happiness from within we stop drawing a sense of self from the ego and as a result our true selves start coming emerging out of the shadows.
5. MEDITATION GIVES YOU THE ABILITY TO SEE BENEATH THE SURFACE
Seeing beneath the surface is being able to see the reality of things and not letting surface level fassades blind us to the truth of what is. For example, when a child curses at you and says to you that he hates you, most of us wouldn’t take it personal and might even laugh at it.
Why is that? I believe it’s because we see the reality of things that they are just words, we understand that he’s a child and he doesn’t know any better. That doesn’t mean that he’s void of punishment, but that they don’t affect you. When we see the reality of how things in life really are we will tend to laugh at it and become nonreactive to things. It’s just that the mind enjoys labeling situations in order to have some prominence inside of your mind.
A real life example is a famous actor who has experience success that most of us can only dream of having. This actor might have been in the best movies, received multiple nominations and won multiple Oscars (except Leonardo dicaprio). When we look at them from the perspective of the external accomplishment we’ll compare it to ourselves and we’ll either idolize them because we believe we can’t do it or experience some sense of lack of self worth.
Why is that? That’s because we are focusing on the external and not seeing them as who they really are. Meditation allows you to see things as they truly are and with that view you’ll understand that he’s no different than you or me. He just worked harder, created his luck and when the opportunity came, he took it!
If your wife is having a bad day and she’s nagging at you, rather than allowing yourself to be dragged down with negative emotions, you’ll act with understanding and love because you understand that she’s had a bad day. That doesn’t mean you’ll let her talk down to you, rather you’ll act with that understanding.
In a way you’re sort of able to see the glitch in the matrix and navigate through difficult situations with wisdom.
6. MINDFULNESS REDUCES ANXIETY
In over 187 studies meditation has been shown to have an overall positive effect on anxiety and stress. Additionally, research has shown that meditation has worked with 90 percent of patients with clinical anxiety in significantly reducing anxiety.
But why does meditation reduce anxiety? Dr. Zeidan from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center ran a studied to find out how meditation affects anxiety. He stated the following:
Mindfulness is premised on sustaining attention in the present moment and controlling the way we react to daily thoughts and feelings,” stated Dr. Zeidan. “Interestingly, the present findings reveal that the brain regions associated with meditation-related anxiety relief are remarkably consistent with the principles of being mindful.
source: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/mindfulness-meditation-may-ease-anxiety-mental-stress-201401086967 https://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2013/Anxious_Activate_Your_Anterior_Cingulate_Cortex_With_a_Little_Meditation.htm
10. MEDITATION INCREASES EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE
Resilience is defined as being able to spring back up from failure. It’s being elastic to life circumstances and able to adjust to anything that’s thrown to you. Most people aren’t emotionally resilient because in order to be resilient we must be able to handle pain and continue moving forward regardless of how we feel.
Meditation allows you to experience the full range of negative emotions without getting emotionally overwhelmed. Meditation allows you to mentally “push the reset button “and return to a place and stillness. You become like water. Bruce Lee said best:
“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Source: https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Mind-Open-Finding-Purpose/dp/157224643X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?tag=livanddar-20
11. MEDITATION INCREASES CREATIVITY
Meditation allows the brain to promote “divergent thinking” which allows the brain to generate new ideas. This is a bilateral effect of reducing stress in the body and as Eckhart Tolle says “stress is wanting something to be what isn’t”.
Let’s say that you have a paper to write and you are struggling with coming up with an introduction or whatnot. Rather than getting frustrated that you’re not coming up with material, accept the current situation, take a deep breathe and once you align yourself with what is you can then come up a solution from a place of tranquility and stillness. This is where creativity naturally flows from, but don’t align with the situation for the sole purpose of getting creativity because that’s being outcome dependent. Rather, just accept the situation, be present and allow creativity to flow through you without an outcome in mind. It’s a paradox because you know you are doing it for the outcome, but you’re not “reliant” on it in order to feel good about yourself.
In the bhagavad Gita it says that we are entitled to the labor but not to the fruit of our labor. Just know that this process is what creates creativity so don’t try to force it.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3887545/
12. MEDITATION HELPS YOU QUIT SMOKING
Meditation has been shown to affect the area of the brain that is responsible for self control and after a few weeks into the study some of the participants reported smoking less for no reason.
Source: Yi-Yuan Tang, Michael I. Posner, Mary K. Rothbart, Nora D. Volkow. Circuitry of self-control and its role in reducing addiction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2015; 19 (8): 439 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2015.06.007 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22993051
Source: https://pom.sagepub.com/content/41/1/42
15. MEDITATION REDUCES THE FEELING OF LONELINESS
Studies have linked loneliness with increase rate of Alzheimer’s disease.
In a study by psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he said “We always tell people to quit smoking for health reasons, but rarely do we think about loneliness in the same way,”. He studied 40 healthy individuals whose age ranged from 55-85. Half of the participants were given daily group meetings, individual 30 minutes meditation and daylong retreats. At the end of the 8 weeks the two groups were given a questionnaire and the meditation group reported feeling less loneliness compared to the group who didn’t meditate.
The reason why I feel meditation works with getting rid of loneliness is because we stop comparing ourselves and our current experiences with previous experiences. The ego requires the external (people, places and things) and time (past and future) in order to create an identity of “being alone”. For example, the ego LOVEEEES facebook, and when we login and see the photos of our friends having fun we tend to feel worse about ourselves. The ego starts saying “ohh I’m so sad, I’m alone. Look at the evidence! They have friends, and I don’t. Damn I suck”. The self talk that derives from comparison is usually destructive in nature.
Being present allows you to accept the moment as is without comparisons. Better is only better when you are contrasting it to other experiences. Being present to the moment erases comparisons and accepts EVERYTHING in life as is. The “is-ness” in things is all you need because that’s all you’ll ever have.
If you’re living alone and all of your kids have left you may label it as being alone. What causes the negative emotions is the labeling of the situation. Labeling is changing the “is-ness” and changing the “is-ness” causes suffering. You want to change the situation that already is.
Accept that the past and the future is an illusion. Accept everything that’s your life and once you do that loneliness will naturally dissolve in the present moment. You’ll find enjoyment in anything you do because it won’t be held in the light of comparison. You’ll appreciate it for it’s individual worth (I understand this is a paradox).
Source: https://www.livescience.com/18800-loneliness-health-problems htmlhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159112001894%2020
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