Meditation has become very mainstream these days but most people still don’t adopt a meditation practice. If you know something is healthy for you, why not give it a try? And if you’ve given it a try but haven’t received any benefits from it I can understand but the number one excuse I hear from my friends on why they don’t meditate is “I just can’t sit still”. Well ya, either can I! That’s the point of meditation, to do what you can not do – sit still! Be in control, have more free will to tell yourself that you’re going to sit in silence for 10 minutes and not get up until your timer goes off! It increases your awareness and builds more mental strength.

There’s a laundry list of different reasons why people choose to meditate and they are all important but the largest benefits that I have gotten from a daily meditation practice is an increased awareness of my thoughts and feelings. Let me explain.

Why meditate?

The point of meditation is to bring peace, calmness, and more awareness to our life, do I need to say more? I can confidently say that no one will argue that we can use more of these things in our life especially after the crazy year we had in 2020. 

That’s the point of meditation, our mind tells us to go do that, and get up to go get this, or call that person back and the more we identify with our mind and listen to our mind the less conscious we become. 

You are not your mind, you are the awareness of your mind.

Humans are a very unique species. Because of the way our brain has been constructed we have this ability to be aware of our own awareness. We can have a conversation with ourselves in our own head and we can witness when our mind is telling us something that just is plain untrue. Most of our fears and self conscious thoughts are just made up by our mind to protect us and 99% of the time we don’t need that protection. What we really need is to have a practical and logical conversation with that voice inside our head and use our free will to proceed accordingly. You see, we are not our mind, we are the awareness of our mind. Your thoughts in your head are just thoughts they are NOT you, you are just the awareness of your thoughts – HUGE DIFFERENCE. 

Emotional Intelligence

This plays a large role when it comes to our feelings. Our feelings are created from thoughts, for example when you think your partner or friend is taking advantage of you then you get angry or when you think that the world is against you, you get sad. Our thoughts create emotions. Well, when we identify with these emotions we start to become them but when we have the awareness and use our free will to acknowledge these emotions without becoming them that’s when we start to strengthen our emotional intelligence which will allow us to process our feelings in a healthier way and not react on how we feel in an impulsive manner.

Back in 2017 I was recommended a book by Eckhart Tolle called A New Earth. I had no idea what this book was about but I gave it a shot and I was instantly hooked, it was very mind blowing to say the least. The ideas in this book really made you think. The author Eckhart Tolle was 40 years old living on a park bench when he decided to write his first book “The Power of Now”. At the time of writing this, “The Power of Now” has sold over 2 million copies world-wide and has been translated into 30 different languages. 

At the time in 2017 I was meditating, but not consistently, and even though I had this new found inspiration and passion for consciousness and awareness of mind identification I still hadn’t started meditating on a daily basis. “A New Earth” would continuously talk about Buddhist principles and mastering your mind and the more research I did on the subject and the more time I put into the practice of meditation I started to realize the benefits.

This book has completely altered my path and journey and I’m so thankful for A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle and all the positive results this has brought to my life.

In conclusion..

Meditate more! and be consistent with it 🙂

In this video I talk about why I meditate and my goals from meditation and how its improved my life over the last 3 years.