Meditation has been said to help people in many great ways and personally, I can attest to that.
Looking back a few years, I can say I have come to appreciate the big change that meditation has brought to my life and the better person it has actually made me become.
I have become more balanced mentally and I am able to do things that I wasn’t able to do in the past due to imbalanced emotions and losing focus and concentration constantly, among many other shortcomings.
I remember a few years ago when I was living with my parents, they used to tell me, “If you don’t work on your anger issues one of these days it will come to punish you”.
And now that I have read lots of meditation books and have known a lot of about the practice, the words of my parents remind of the Buddha’s quote that says, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger”.
Among many other illusions, I used to think being short tempered is a strength to get away with anything but through the years I have learned that it is actually a great weakness and you make so many enemies.
I also noticed I was permanently increasing the wrinkles on my face the more I got angrier.
Needless to say, anger is the perfect tool for self destruction. And I am glad I have been able to manage it through meditation and reflection.
As I also look back, I remember how I used to be mentally unstable. I used to overthink situations and make negative conclusions about things and people and it really hurt me.
I lost friends who didn’t understand I was the one with the problem and I got into so much trouble.
And this contributed a lot to the paranoia that I had. I would also have emotional overload that would keep me depressed, feeling lost and shut out of the world and desiring friendship that I couldn’t keep.
Boy was it a misery!
Now that I am talking about it, I am actually coming to appreciate the practice even more.
How I Began Meditation – The Journey to Finding Myself
Well, despite this weak side of me, I also liked listening to intelligent people and having intelligent conversations.
I was and still is intrigued by quotes from people who are deep and who have profound insights about life.
I used to watch a lot of action movies from China and loved Kung Fu and that is how I learned about the Buddha. I would see the actors meditating as they trained in martial arts.
Also, in my overthinking, I would have visions of wanting to become an intelligent person who is laid back as I saw from the highly intelligent people who were revered in various movies and life situations.
A few years later, I decided I would start working on myself and become the person I wanted to be.
I think it is at this period that I had started becoming aware of my terrible character and how it affected me as well as other close people.
The need to change was starting to overwhelm me.
So I decided I would do meditation and a couple of other self improvement techniques.
I went online and did some research on the best meditation techniques.
There is this Indian guru whose videos I had watched. Many people from all over the world came to him to seek answers and to find themselves.
And the way he answered them and explained his points had caught my attention.
He was also a calm person who knew the basic form of etiquette and would express his ideas in a unique, clear and precise manner.
Plus, he was over 50 years and he had a young looking face and very soft youthful hands.
I think it was his white beard and fairly deep voice that gave his old age away.
I really wanted to be like him.
I looked him up and came to discover that his name was Sadhguru.
I also searched for meditation exercises that he taught himself and I landed on the practice called Isha Kriya meditation (The youtube video I used to learn and practice Isha Kriya meditation).
I got into it immediately and did it for about a month.
Since I was still young and didn’t know much about meditation and its real essence, I decided to quit due to being conflicted about it and religion.
I needed more answers to have my mind and perspective right.
After stopping to meditate and feeling I had lost myself, I decided to keep going with my self improvement journey by trying to be aware of myself.
I would set my mind to be aware of the situations that weighed me down and I got to create that mental space to want to react better or simply remain quiet and walk away.
It actually helped as that is how I dropped the anger problem that I had.
When I would get into argument with someone, I would become aware of it a few minutes in and then go completely quiet immediately.
Nowadays, I have become a bit stronger that I am able to see an argument coming and stop it before it goes any further.
Coming Back to Meditation and Finding My Right Fit
As I learned to drop one bad habit after another, I was looking for motivation from experienced people and most of them were meditators.
One day it struck my mind that if I am able to control myself by being aware, and I have heard there is awareness meditation, why not learn more about it and see how it can push me to the next level?
And that is what I did.
I also learned about focused attention meditation that makes the icing on the cake for awareness meditation.
I have been doing them ever since and they have improved my life in a huge way.
I can’t say I am good at them or I have reaped all of their benefits but they helped me have a clear view and plan of my life and they’ve also helped me make the plan work with minimal distractions.
What made this even better is becoming the editor of IYBP, a mental health website that deals with ways to improve the power of the brain using different well known techniques including meditation.
This has really helped me broaden my knowledge and understanding of meditation and have been able to make it work in my life.
When you look at the research done on meditation and the good results it has brought, you just feel safe and confident that you are in the right direction.
My Encouragement to People Looking For Direction in Life and Meditation
I know how feeling lost can be, it is among the worst feelings in life. Not knowing who you are, where you are and where you are headed is not good.
And if you are one of these people, I understand you and I don’t judge you at all.
I would simply encourage you to take time alone and think.
Ask yourself where you are and what your life is like at the moment. And then ask yourself where you would want to be in the next 3 to 5 years.
Visualize who you would want to become.
Then look for a meditation practice that seems to match what you want to become and just get started.
From there, keep doing it and after every few weeks or days, be reviewing how it is working out for you.
As you do this, you will be able to find yourself your right fit in terms of meditation and you will definitely reinvent yourself.
This is what I did.
And this encouragement is coming from your fellow lost person who just got lucky.
I wish you the best.