Why Meditate?
Meditation helps make your life better in many ways. We could spend a lot of time looking at the evidence or you can google this and find evidence from scientists, teachers, priests, even jail wardens supporting this. We can also spend a lot of time looking at why this happens like a weekend conference I spent from a mindful society in Toronto.
But that's kind of saying exercise is good or quitting smoking is good. We can also talk about the massive need for well trained meditation guides in schools, hospitals, corporations and of course yoga studios. This is not just a new wave of wellness paradigm but a change that is sweeping the world. Remember this, very few people wake up without an alarm. That alarm clock is ringing all over the world. You can only put it on snooze for so long. Or you can wake up.
A regular meditation practice is the first step in responding to the alarm and waking up. And waking up is not some big complicated step, it is letting your true self shine through. I am sure you have come across people who have this ease about them and peace that resonates through. You are witnessing the truth. For some, it comes naturally, for the rest of us we have to do something. That something is not to acquire. You cant get it in a store or read in a book. It is in fact a process of losing a whole lot of stuff.
If you carefully look at yourself as well as most others, you see millions of stories in everything we say or in the ways we act, even in the ways we sit or relax. This all happens because your body mind has picked habits. Meditation is learning how to relax out of these habits. What ends up happening is that the true you starts to shine through. And just as we picked up these habitual stories that cloud over our true self, a regular mediation practice replaces them with a habit of self abidance, staying as true self, initially for some time and eventually all the time.