Meditation for the Every Day Person

Remember that episode in Seinfeld where Jerry talked about how he can’t have a threesome, because he’s not an orgy guy? How he’s not ready for it, because it would mean that he would have to dress differently, get new curtains, new lighting, etc?.

Well, that’s kind of what I think the average person thinks of meditation. They think it’s this “new age” thing that doesn’t mesh with the identity they have of themselves. I get that, because I think I’ve shared these feelings in the past.

I’m more or less a “normal” dude. Now, I don’t watch hardly any TV and pretty much constantly do things that increase my knowledge about a host of things, so that makes me a little out of the “norm”. But I don’t consider myself “new age” or anything. I’m not vegan or even vegetarian. Not that there’s anything wrong with these things, but I’m just mentioning them to let you know that I’m pretty much a “normal” dude–although vegetarianism is becoming more and more common these days. Anyway, I think it’s unfortunate that people have limiting beliefs about meditation, because I think it’s a very necessary part of being a human being. It’s the key to having an awareness of who we really are at our core.

The other barrier to making meditation more mainstream is that people feel intimidated by it. They think that there’s a very specific way of doing it and that you need the guidance of a meditation guru or you need to be in the “right” environment or state to do it or something.So people just don’t even bother with it. I’m sure having a meditation guru would help, but like a lot of things in life, meditation is one of those things that you don’t need to wait until everything is perfect. Just do it. Waiting for everything to be perfect is just another way to procrastinate or another way to rationalize and make excuses for yourself.

I’m sure there is a lot involved in meditation–especially if you want to be a guru or something. But for the “average” person, it’s enough just to know a few basic principles and just to commit yourself to doing it regularly. I’m sure the more you do it, the more things you’ll discover about it yourself. The benefits from just doing meditation imperfectly but regularly are vast. It can increase your ability to think more clearly, as well as so many other health benefits, such as reducing stress, which is the root cause of so many ailments. But, to me, meditation is just a way of conditioning myself to be more fully present in the moment in my everyday life–and that’s EVERYTHING.

People get too hung up about what they should or should no do when it comes to meditation. From my perspective, people can do pretty much whatever they want, in terms of posture and the environment and even length of time. Everything is really up to you. For example, you can sit, stand, or lay down. You can sit cross legged or on a chair. You can open your eyes or keep your eyes closed. You can set an alarm for a certain amount of time or not. You can listen to meditation music or sounds or not. You can stair at the wall, or at a beautiful scenery or at a plant or whatever. It’s all up to you.

I like to keep my eyes open, because it think, wrongly or rightly, that this will make me more conditioned to snap into this meditative state in my everyday life (since I keep my eyes open in my everyday life). I like to sit in a chair, since it’s more comfortable so I don’t have to concern myself with my legs falling asleep or getting tired or whatever. But none of these things really matter, unless you’re trying to be a meditation guru or something. What matters is that you are spending time with your Being–the “real” you. I like to spend 20 minutes meditating, because it’s long enough to get myself into the “higher consciousness” state, but short enough to fit into my schedule. The key to meditation is to draw your awareness inwardly and the way to do this is to be aware of your breathing. That’s really all you need to do when you meditate is to just be aware of your breath. The reason why this is important is that if you draw your awareness on your breath, you draw your awareness away from all the noise in your mind. When you’re meditating, you’re supposed to quiet your mind and not think. But if you focus on not thinking, then you’re thinking and possibly even punishing yourself for thinking, etc. generating more noise in the mind. So rather than trying not to think, just focus your awareness on your breath. And if a though comes to mind, like, “I have to do my taxes”, just acknowledge that you have that thought and bring your awareness back to your breath again. Don’t chastise yourself for having that thought. Just draw your awareness back to your breath. Also, unless you want to be a meditation guru, you don’t need to worry too much about breathing a certain way. Just breath normally. Just the mere fact that you’re drawing your awareness on your breathing will automatically cause you to breath in a manner that is a little closer to the way meditation gurus breath.

There’s a lot to meditation, I’m sure, but if we just keep it simple and less intimidating, we’d have more people operating on a higher level of consciousness in their everyday lives. More people would be fully present more often in their lives, and, I know this sounds hokey, but the world would be a better place. Imagine how much fewer mass shootings we’d have or just mindless violence in general, as well as childish conflicts.

One more thing I’d like to add, if you do decide to meditate. Commit yourself to do it regularly NO MATTER WHAT, because there’s never going to be a good time to meditate. Everyone is so busy and meditation is naturally going to be low on the priority list, so if you don’t commit to doing it NO MATTER WHAT, then you’ll likely never do it. Or you’ll do it for a week and then one day, you’ll skip it, because you just can’t find the time and then the next day and you’ll find that you don’t have the time for it and then you’ll find that you end up never doing it again. There will never be a good time to meditate, just as there’s never a good time to exercise. These are the things we MUST commit to, or we’ll never do them. Meditations and exercise don’t have deadlines. They don’t have due dates. You won’t lose your job if you neglect doing them and there’s really no one to answer to, but yourself. The way to get yourself to do these things is to do them NO MATTER WHAT. Do them even if you’re dead tired, and would rather be sleeping, because this provides you with a negative anchor, so our subconscious mind would be less reluctant to think about skipping it the next time, because it knows that if you try to skip it, you’ll have to do it when you’re dead tired and would rather be sleeping.