What Meditation Actually Did for Me

If you had asked me a few years ago what I thought about meditation, I probably would have told you it was a waste of time.

I thought meditation was basically sitting somewhere trying to completely clear your mind. Honestly, part of me thought it was something people said they did because it sounded trendy or spiritual.

I didn't really understand the point.

As I got deeper into my spiritual journey, though, meditation kept coming up. People I respected talked about how important it was, and when I started taking classes with my teacher and mentor, Orion, he helped me understand that meditation wasn't just about sitting quietly. He talked about the benefits of meditation and how it could help me become more connected with myself and my body.

I trusted him, so I decided I was going to give it a fair chance.

I'm glad I did.

The Beginning Wasn't Peaceful

When I first started meditating, I wasn't sitting there having some beautiful spiritual experience.

I was uncomfortable.

Five or ten minutes could feel like a long time, and sometimes I was basically forcing myself to stay there.

The hardest part was what happened when everything got quiet.

My thoughts got louder.

I think that's one of the reasons some people avoid meditation. We spend so much of our lives distracting ourselves. We scroll through our phones. We watch television. We listen to music. We work. We find something to keep our minds occupied.

When you remove those distractions, you're suddenly left with yourself.

And sometimes what comes up isn't pleasant.

Negative thoughts came up for me, and in the beginning I didn't really know what to do with them. I thought I needed to somehow push them out of my mind so I could get back to meditating.

Eventually, I started learning something different.

I didn't have to fight those thoughts.

I didn't have to deal with every thought the moment it appeared.

I could acknowledge it and let it pass.

That was something I had to learn through practice.

I Decided to Give It 30 Days

I wasn't immediately convinced that meditation was going to change anything.

But I trusted the people who were encouraging me to do it. I figured that if I gave meditation a real chance for 30 days and didn't see any benefit from it, I could stop.

So I kept doing it.

One of the first changes I noticed wasn't some huge psychic or spiritual experience.

It was much more ordinary than that.

I didn't need to be constantly distracted anymore.

I could be at work without always reaching for my phone. I didn't constantly need the radio playing or something else occupying my attention.

At first, maybe I could do that for an hour or two.

Then it became easier.

When I first thought about how to describe that change, I would have said meditation helped me become more comfortable with my own thoughts.

But I think it was actually bigger than that.

It helped me stop feeling like I constantly needed to escape life.

It Helped Me Live in the Present

For me, this has become one of the biggest benefits of meditation.

Before, it was very easy to live somewhere other than the present moment.

I could be thinking about something that happened in the past or worrying about something that might happen in the future.

The problem is that while we're doing that, we're missing the part of life that's actually happening.

Right now.

Meditation helped me slow that down.

It gave me a chance to simply sit and exist without needing to solve yesterday or prepare myself for tomorrow.

And over time, that started carrying over into the rest of my life.

I realized I could enjoy being where I was.

I could enjoy life again.

For me, that's one of the most beautiful things meditation has given me.

We Are Not Our Thoughts

Meditation also helped me understand something that has become an important part of my spiritual beliefs.

We are not our thoughts.

I believe we are souls having a human experience. Our thoughts are part of the human side of that experience, but that doesn't mean every thought represents who we truly are.

That realization changed my relationship with my own mind.

A negative thought can simply be a negative thought.

I don't have to give it power just because it showed up.

Meditation taught me that I can notice what's happening in my mind without automatically becoming caught up in it.

For someone who once thought meditation meant somehow getting rid of every thought, that was a pretty big lesson.

You Don't Have to Be Good at Meditation

This is probably what I would most want someone who's just beginning to understand.

There is no perfect way to meditate.

Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be.

You don't have to sit a certain way. You don't have to meditate for an hour. You don't need to completely clear your mind. And you definitely don't need to have some incredible spiritual experience every time you do it.

Start small.

If five minutes is what you can do, start with five minutes.

If thoughts come in, they come in.

You're learning.

The hardest part is deciding you're actually going to sit down and meditate.

The second hardest part is doing it consistently.

After that, practice takes care of a lot of the rest.

I know that because there was a time when five or ten minutes felt difficult for me. Today, I can sit for that amount of time easily.

I didn't suddenly become good at meditation.

I just kept coming back to it.

Give It a Fair Chance

I'm not going to tell you meditation will do exactly the same thing for you that it did for me.

That's not how I look at spirituality.

I can only tell you what it did for me.

Something I once thought was basically a waste of time became one of the things that helped me become more present in my own life.

It helped me stop running from every uncomfortable thought.

It taught me that my thoughts don't define me.

And most importantly, it helped me realize that I didn't need to constantly escape from life.

I could actually live it.

So if you've tried meditation and thought, I can't do this, maybe don't give up on it quite yet.

Start small.

Don't worry about doing it perfectly.

And keep coming back.

Because if you've made the decision to sit down and try, you've already done the hardest part.