I have to admit that through my life I've had my doubts about meditation. I have always been a "do-er" rather than a "sitter". I could not logically construct in my mind the means by which meditation might be beneficial. I tried it a few times and it just felt like sitting. I had the wrong idea about what it was and what it was supposed to do; I expected some state of mystical trance that I never reached and so I blew it off.
I was wrong. Sitting is the point. It's the one thing I never do, just sit.
Our reflection assignment asks us to give a few (4-5) examples of a time when meditation was beneficial for us. For me, meditation has been beneficial since about the third week when something finally clicked for me and I understood that doing nothing was the point. Past that, I have so many examples of times when meditation was beneficial that I don't even know where to start. Meditation is beneficial to me in every minute of every day. It's hard to even describe the impact that it has had on my life. I will describe a few instances here.
Work
I'm a bartender and my job is frequently difficult and stressful. I have always allowed myself to be fully drawn into a hard moment. If work is stressful, I am stressed. If it slows down for a bit, I stay stressed. When I get stressed, I get angry. It used to be difficult for me to control my reactions when I got angry, but that has subsided over the years and I'm able to stay on a fairly even keel even when I'm very frustrated.
It hasn't stopped, though. I still get upset when I'm stressed out and I still stay upset when the stressor goes away. Not so since meditation. I'm not perfect, but a few weeks ago I was having a very rough night (two huge local bands on the same night and a lot of very drunk, very demanding, very cheap people), but I took advice that I got from the class and in a quiet moment, I set everything down and just looked around for a bit. I reminded myself that I'm just here, and I cleared my head and listened to the room. It's a practice that I've employed countless times since, and it's one that I would not have learned if not for this class.
Home
I have had trouble falling asleep my entire life, even when I was a very young child. I can never seem to just clear my head and pass out. I have these negative and repetitive thoughts that go on a loop. I had very bad anxiety for a few years in my twenties and it's never really gone completely away.
I spent a lot of time wrestling with these obsessive thoughts at night, trying to replace them with positive thoughts or to remind myself that it's okay, my life is good, blah, blah, blah... But this just leads to more obsessive thinking. It's very cyclical. The mistake that I was making, and I learned this from falling asleep in class while doing yoganidra, is that I was trying to fight thoughts with more thoughts. In meditation I learned how to become aware of my breath, and how to clear my head of thoughts, and how to feel my presence in a room. Now at bedtime I remind myself "You are nowhere else but here. It is no time other than now." After that I become aware of my breath and my body and I fall asleep very quickly. It works every single time.
If I got no other benefit from this class, this one thing would be more than enough. For me, being able to just fall straight to sleep, is revolution.
School
Additionally, even though I was a bookworm when I was a kid, I don't read books as an adult. I can never focus on them long enough. But I recently took some of the things I'd learned in yoga, and I used the same kind of present attention while I was reading one night, and the words basically popped off the page for me. I was able to sit through an entire novel just a few nights ago. I haven't done that since grade school.
Play
I love to be outdoors. I love riding my bike and hiking and swimming and climbing. I spend so much of my time in my head, though, that I feel like I never really get to appreciate these things. Sometimes when I'm outdoors, it's almost like I'm watching a nature show on TV. That's how disconnected I have felt from the world the past few years.
I recently began once again to use the present attention that I've learned in meditation to better appreciate nature. I'm not perfect on this one yet. There's a lot going on outside and it's easy to get distracted and end up back in my head. My plan, though, is to meditate outdoors in nature frequently this summer. My first two destinations are a mountaintop and a lake to attempt mountain and lake meditations. It's my hope that getting better at meditating in those kinds of environments will further help me to stay calm and present in situations that are not ideal.
Conclusion
Meditation has made it's way into most parts of my life already. I know that we should go into our practice without expectation and not necessarily looking for the places it has been beneficial, but the truth is that meditation has legitimately changed my life for the better and I do look forward to what this practice can do for my life in the future.
