Why You NEED to Make A Commitment to a Daily Practice of Meditation?

It’s a very necessary procedure for decluttering your mind and keeping you free and healthy to enjoy life

---

I am not a meditation expert. I don’t plan to be. But every time I try and practice meditation, I learn something profound. And so I believe it is important for every one of us to commit to a daily practice of meditation. It doesn’t have to be at the same time everyday. But if we can do that, it would become a habit and hence it would become easy to stay committed to it. But we can also just commit to it and find a good time each day to practice it.

Meditation is like a spouse, a relative or a friend with whom we commit to spend some time each day. Except that in this case, you would be spending time with yourself instead of another person. Think about how important that would be for you, if somebody committed to spend a portion of their life with you each and everyday and kept that commitment. Imagine the possibilities that can emerge out of it.

For starters, you would have somebody to talk to, for that amount of time everyday. You would look forward to that time and meeting, wouldn’t you? You would always have so many things throughout the day that you encounter which you would store in the back of your mind or perhaps on your phone these days telling to yourself that you should discuss such and such a thing with this person or that. Doesn’t always have to be a spouse, it can very well be a relative, colleague or friend.

Also, you don’t have to always talk about everything you encounter with this one person, but you can choose to compartmentalize your experiences to discuss with different people in your life. Like talk about how was your day to your spouse, talk about a topic of mutual interest to a friend, talk about work related stuff to a colleague, there’s always something that comes up which you then make a mental note in your mind to discuss with this person when you get a chance to do so next time.

So that when you get to meet this person next time, your mind will immediately activate that memory and remind you of what you wanted to discuss or do with this person. Sometimes, we don’t always remember what we wanted to discuss but we remember that we did plan of discussing something with this person. And then we try to remember what it was. Sometimes we succeed, other times we fail.

Sometimes, we even make appointments to engage in this kind of activity with this person. Like a doctor’s appointment for instance. It doesn’t of course have to be a professional engagement like that but that was just an example to understand what I am trying to explain here. Stay with me.

So where does meditation fit into all of this?

Where it fits is when you realize the importance of this commitment to set aside time to engage with yourself. Not time for an intellectual discussion or time for a set of complaints or time to do exercise or an activity like cooking or creating something, but just plain coming together to be an audience to listen to your inner most being.

It’s like spending time with this friend or spouse or child or anybody else who is important to you in your life. You don’t have to do anything except take a seat and keep your ears open. And in this case, keep your eyes closed so that your mind’s eyes may be open and your mind’s ears hear what your inner most being has to say to you.

It’s amazing what can come out of it when you do this. You will get to know that even though you appear to be one individual person, you are not really so. You are made up of a cosmos within yourself each trying to get your attention, in vain sometimes, but trying eagerly nevertheless.

Think about this for an instant: We are always scrolling because sometimes we want to be free without having to do anything but also need something to keep us busy or happy or distracted or not bored. And during that time, we simply consume all kinds of information irrespective of whether we want to do so or not. In doing so we trust that whatever we are about to read or watch would be good for us because the algorithm put it in front of us. We believe the algorithm to give us good content based on what we consumed before.

Sometimes, the algorithm makes mistakes and we end up getting annoyed or upset with that as well. But in general the algorithm of feeds such as Facebook and instagram or Substack makes a pretty good guess at what we like to spend our free time with and gives us such content.

Spending time with ourselves is also very much similar to that. It is not a bore at all. It’s just that we have to force ourselves to keep our eyes closed for a few seconds at best and focus on our breathing or counting or noticing how our hands are held together, a tiny distraction to get our mind algorithm started and that is all the time our mind needs to get the thoughts flowing within us.

And once it starts, it’s also like an endless loop of different thoughts flowing neatly one after another. Imagine not even having to perform the act of physically scrolling for the next content. Sometimes though our mind takes a small break between thoughts, almost like an ad break between content which we try not to watch and wait for the skip button to show up.

When our mind does that, it is usually trying to retrieve the next video to start playing and in that gap when we are not watching any content anymore, we can get impatient. And that’s when we have to redirect our attention again to either our breathing or how are hands are stacked up one on top of another or how our legs are more comfortable now sitting cross-legged, if we are newly doing that or something until the mind is ready for us with the next content to play to us.

So meditation then, is simply an act of scrolling also, only this time you will be scrolling on your own content which the mind wants to bring to your attention and has been waiting eagerly to do so. Just like a newly-wed wife waits for her husband to come home so she can tell him everything that happened to her that day. Or a lover who waits for her lover (boyfriend / girlfriend) to go over whatever has been going on in her mind since the last time they saw each other.

And when you give your mind that chance to speak up to you, play those videos to you one after another, it becomes more of an act of decluttering your mind. That’s because, once the video has been played to you and you have paid attention, then the video can be erased from your mind in order to keep it ready and prepared for uploading a new one into it. But imagine what would happen to your mind if it never gets a chance to play it to you even once?

It will just keep on piling video after video, voice after voice, thought after thought and try to bring it to your attention whenever and however it can, like a constantly nagging wife or husband or a lover who feels ignored or disconnected and upset.

This will cause a lot of misunderstanding between people but when it is all in your mind, it can cause you a lot of headache or stomach ache or manifest in a myriad different ways and most often there will be physical symptoms of fatigue, exhaustion or it might even upscale to other diseases or ailments, mental or physical within you.

But if you just give it that commitment, that time, if possible, on an everyday basis, then your mind will soon be empty and free to enjoy life with you.

You will always feel free and light and airy and relaxed and never need be on the edge.

You will be able to take in more challenges.

You will feel free internally and that will make you a jolly personality—somebody who is ready to dive into the unknown with curiosity, or sit down and create something interesting.

In short, go on a quest like a teenager or a child with endless curiosity, ready to invest their time and effort into anything that seems promising and delightful.

This perhaps is why children and teenagers are more open to go on quests with an open mind.

Because they don’t have an accumulation of a lifetime of thoughts that keep competing with each other for your time and attention.

When you are able to quiet yourself for just a few seconds, sometimes it’s just 3-4, then you will be able to receive the endless feed until your mind is satisfied for the day, to let you go then and live your life fully.

While this might feel pretty chaotic in the beginning with the order of things that will flow through you, it will still bring up many things important for which you were probably struggling to find a solution in the first place and were unable to.

What you didn’t know was how your mind took over that process in the background quietly and came up with a solution for you already, but how would you get to know about any of that unless you listened?

Your mind is the best friend you have been bequeathed with. Don’t let it feel ignored. Give it some love by spending time with it everyday. The results will be fantastic, let me assure you of that. And you will be so thankful you took me up on this one and decided to explore and find out for yourself if what you have read here until now is true or not.

Good luck! I hope my argument convinced you to invest sometime with yourself everyday. This is one thing that is assured to make your life a lot richer and you don’t have to do anything besides sitting still and waiting for a few seconds and give it enough time everyday if possible, by making a commitment to indulge it in this way.

In the beginning, it might feel a little bit hard, especially if you are not used to doing this by closing your eyes. You might even feel claustrophobic as I once did. If that happens, let go for a few days, find a different spot, a different time, a different position, a different seating arrangement.

It doesn’t have to be cross-legged if you are not used to it. Whatever comfortable seating will do. Just make sure you are not on a full stomach and you are not in a slanted resting position because that would definitely put you to sleep. Experience speaks! 😜

That’s all I have for you this beautiful afternoon. Here it rained again today and even though there is no sun out yet, the sky is bright and the rain clouds are still white and silvery.

Thanks a ton to Derek Lakin who convinced me to take up his mindfulness classes. You should also try them if you can. It’s like adding another 100% more on top of what I have mentioned this afternoon to make your life richer and more awesome.

Think about this!

Peace ✌🏽

---