Does meditation help you?

I’ve tried meditation techniques to help with my darn, unexplainable fear of public speaking.. it works ok I guess. Mostly it just makes me sleepy.

I’m a novice but I think it has immense potential, to say the least. Apparently David Lynch finds his inspiration while in deep mediation. I only mention it because I find that slightly inspirational.

I try to meditate every morning and also if I am feeling particularly stressed or depressed. I do not find it to be the panacea that some people claim, but it helps. I am looking for a meditation group that meets once a week. I previously tried meditating with a Buddhist group, but stopped when I found that most of them believed in reincarnation.

I’d have to answer this with a “Yes, but…”

There’s an irony here. We see ourselves as being incomplete, lacking in this or that, needing help to make us what we want to be. Many people turn to meditation as a way of “fixing” themselves, in the same way they might do physical therapy to heal a broken body.

But that’s not what meditation actually does. It makes you sit down and take a good, long, steady look at that mind of yours. It’s mind looking at mind. In a sense, it doesn’t change a thing; it only observes. There’s no “point” to it other than to see the mind as it already is.

If we go into it with the assumption that we’re broken or lacking in some way, that idea will act as an impediment to our meditation. Any assumptions at all about the way we are have to be put aside. You can’t get a clear, unclouded view of mind if you think you already know what’s there.

In another sense, meditation changes everything. But the change results from clearly seeing that there was never anything to change in the first place; we’ve all been whole from the start, our brokenness just an illusion. Just hearing that said isn’t very convincing, and doesn’t do anything to relieve our sense of lack. The wholeness has to be seen for oneself, and that’s where meditation comes in. The meditation doesn’t make you whole; it just gives you the time and space to see that you always have been whole.

I practice Transcendental Meditation and I have seen great benefits from it. You can visit my blog and read about my experiences by searching for Transcendental Meditation.

yes…when i can put my mind to sitting down and doing it… (which is…rare)