I am in a continuous state of learning about how meditation can transcend the body, environment and time. I have been meditating for over 30 years and everyday I sit, it’s as if no time has passed. What I mean by that is as I change, my relationship with myself and the world around me also changes. Every day I sit it’s no easier with time and experience, just different. I am always curious, always a student.
I recently watched a series called “Rewired” with Dr. Joe Dispenza and it helped me simplify the meditation process so I can share it with you. Let’s start with what meditation actually translates to. In Tibetan, word literally means to become familiar with. So what does familiarization mean? Nearly 95% percent of who we are is a set of hardwired thoughts, unconscious habits, reflexive emotional reactions and behaviors. That means by the time we are 35 years old, 95% of our being is running an an unconscious program. So how do we change this? The first step is to become conscious of our unconscious self.
We are thinking 60–70,000 thoughts per day. The majority of these thoughts are the same day to day. Thoughts like, I am not good at my job; she doesn’t like me; he is bugging me; that guy cut me off…When I first started meditating I thought I would be able to stop my thoughts, that is, at least when I meditated. Over time, I realized there is no such thing as controlling thoughts. I started noticing my thoughts and then the work became how do I not react to those thoughts? That’s still the work.
Sitting in meditation is to sit with uncomfortable thoughts. Let the thoughts come and go. Breath through them– let the thoughts and feelings associated with them pass. That’s how you add to your energy as opposed to depleting it. My body doesn’t want to sit. It’s the servant to the mind so why would it? This all amounts to working on overcoming some aspect of my old personality. The one that came out of trauma, outdated untrue stories, habituated patterns, and a lifetime of unconscious programming.
Sitting in meditation over and over again, is the act of firing and re-wiring. How does this work? I sit my body down, close my eyes, and put my attention on what is happening in the present moment and I breath. Some days it’s lik trying to train my 90lb labrador not to eat my unattended food. He sits better than I do by the way.
On and off the cushion, If I am focused on some person, some situation, or something outside of myself, that’s energy being taken away from being in the present moment. It takes everything I have to notice when this is happening and bring myself back. I think of meditation as a way to go beyond my body, beyond the limiting beliefs, beyond all the elements known in my outer environment and beyond the stories that have kept living in a victim state– In effect, everything that is not my higher self.
Programming is learned at a very early age because of things we have been exposed to. We make positive and negative associations. When something negative happens we pay attention to the cause as soon as we notice a change internally. For example, I got dropped in a pool and hit my head when I was learning how to swim. My mom had to teach me how to swim in the ocean because I associated that pain with the pool. These associations begin to lay the foundation of unconscious behaviors.
The purpose of meditation is to get past the analytical mind which is formed between 6 and 9 years old. Once that is formed you begin to separate the conscious mind from the subconscious mind. If everything else is 95% of the mind then we see that the conscious part of the mind is the other 5%. The place where logic, reasoning, creativity, will and faith come from, whereas the subconscious is the other 95%–those are the hardwired habits and behaviors.
We need the analytical mind to make everyday decisions. To learn new things. To navigate our life ethically. But, when we add in stress hormones and difficult emotions that are familiar to the past, we get farther into a more aroused state. Farther away from making change in a conscious state. The more analytical we are, the less suggestible we are to new information. Anyone that knows me, knows how stubborn I am. It’s called a “thick skull” for a reason, which means I have a hard time surrendering.
Meditation moves us into a state of trance. During that time we are more suggestible to information. It’s no wonder it’s taken me 30 years to resonate with why I am so stubborn. My subconscious mind was defining my life. I am currently in the process of writing a new program with a new life from a conscious state. Yes I said in the process. Some moments, it’s 10 steps back. With meditation I can let those moments pass. More gets revealed to me every day and as it does, I am excited to share it with you. Be on the look out for more meditation stories.