Why meditate?

Why meditate?
"Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom."

-- Buddha

Meditation is considered an essential practice for those who seek self-knowledge and self-mastery. Why? Basically, meditation brings awareness of how our minds work. Over time, we become watchers, able to detach from the thoughts and emotions that play out in our minds.

With this detachment, we gain the freedom to choose whether or not to act on our thoughts and emotions. We learn to distinguish between objective reality and our mental and emotional dramas.

"Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."

-- Hans Margolius

Explore your fears

"Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them."

-- Marilyn Ferguson

In our world of duality, fear and love sit at opposite ends of the continuum. Fear belongs only to the personality because it believes in separation and impermanence. The soul never knows fear because it understands the unity of all.

When fear arises, we can invite our soul to sit with our frightened personality. What soul energies are waiting to be acknowledged? When we bring higher energies into the presence of lower energies, the lower energies are transformed.

"What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it."

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Live now

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

-- Annie Dillard

We lose the power of the moment because we're so rarely in it. We're reliving the past or speculating about the future. We continue to believe that tomorrow's the day when I'll be more capable, more wealthy, more fit and more loving. Meanwhile, I'm just putting in time, dreaming of better things but not making any concrete move to realize them.

When you find yourself thinking of the future or the past, bring your awareness into the present moment. Really experience how you feel and what’s happening around you, without judgment. If we can treasure each moment, our lives will be rich, no matter what we have accomplished.

"Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever."

-- Horace Mann

"If, before going to bed every night, you will tear a page from the calendar, and remark, 'there goes another day of my life, never to return,' you will become time conscious."

-- A. B. Zu Tavern

What is your body saying?

"Many people treat their bodies as if they were rented from Hertz -- something they are using to get around in but nothing they genuinely care about understanding."

-- Chungliang Al Huang

"As we explore the extraordinary interplay of energies between the many aspects of our personality -- our needs, unconscious reactions, repressed emotions, aspirations and fears -- with the functioning of our physical system and its capacity to maintain itself, we soon realise how very wise the body is. With its intricately detailed systems and operations it portrays infinite intelligence and compassion, constantly giving us the means to understand ourselves further, to confront issues we are not looking at, and to go beyond that which is holding us back."

-- Deb Shapiro, Your Body Speaks Your Mind

Scan your body with your awareness. Are you experiencing any aches and pains? Any stiffness?

What might your body be trying to tell you about how you are living your life?

"Your body is the ground and metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopedia, your life story. Everything that happens to you is stored and reflected in your body. In the marriage of flesh and spirit divorce is impossible."

-- Gabrielle Roth

"What is always speaking silently is the body."

-- Norman Brown

steps to self-actualization

5 steps to self-actualization


"Every human action, whether it has become positive or negative, must depend on motivation."

-- Dalai Lama

Monitoring what motivates me has helped me see how I am growing. I do things for different reasons now than I did 10 years ago. As we pay ongoing attention to our motives, we can see how both our conscious and unconscious attitudes are changing.

Here are some ways that our motives can shift with rising consciousness:

- I desire

- I want to collect things

- I want to know

- I want to serve

- I want to be

What are your motives as you participate in life?

"There are three kinds of people and three kinds of richness:

- people who want to have, to collect

- people who want action, work and labor

- people who want to be

The real richness is in be-ness. People can take all that you have, all that you collected. People can stop your labor, or an accident can stop you. When you are, you never lose what you are."

-- Torkom Saraydarian

"You are what you think. You are what you go for. You are what you do!"

-- Bob Richards

"A good intention clothes itself with power."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson