The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.
I used to think silence was empty but I’ve learned through time that it is full of answers.
I’ve practiced yoga for a decade now. I started with the purpose of getting a good workout and healing my injured back. At the end of the class, the instructor would guide us through a shavasana. Shavasana is done at the end of a yoga class, laying on your back in a fully conscious pose, aimed at being awake but fully relaxed. It took me years to learn the patience to surrender in this moment. I used to lay there on my back and visualize my long program, I’d wonder how much longer we’d have to lay down before the teacher told us we could leave. My mind would even go to the other people in the class, the deep breathing I’d hear from them, the sweat I felt dripping on my mat from my neighbour.
What was the point of this shavasana? I just wanted to get up and continue on with my day, laying here doing nothing was wasting my time.
This is kind of how I approached my life. Any moment that I was “doing nothing” seemed like a waste of time. I wanted to be productive, I am a doer. Every minute I spent laying in Shavasana, or sitting in traffic, or waiting in line, was a waste of my precious time.
But it was only when I started meditation, that I slowly learned the art of clarity. Once I started mastering the chaos in me, I realized that I was not thrown into the fire, I was the fire.
We spend every living minute consumed by the outside world, and if everyone could find time within their day to make peace with their inner World, I think we’d be experiencing a different society.
When your mind becomes calm, everything around you becomes clear and simple.
The only thing you need to start a meditation practice is devotion. Put your heart into it and don’t worry about stopping your mind, because you won’t. The goal is to simply refocus it.
If you feel empty when meditating, it’s alright. Let that emptiness be a release of the material world, and if you allow it, may that emptiness grow into a beautiful spiritual energy.
Start slow. At first, I couldn’t sit still for 5 minutes in silence, and to be honest, I still struggle with it. I love to use the ap, Insight Timer, for my daily meditations. You can select any category, length, music, etc. etc. and I find it very helpful.
It’s almost as though it takes a lifetime to become “you”. It won’t happen overnight but with a meditation practice of gratitude and peace, you will find the pieces of the puzzles starting to fit in.
May you get started on the path to meditation and begin to feel more emotionally intelligent. Meditation has the ability to create magic.
