Take a moment. Breathe. Focus your mind. Slow down and read each word. Become aware of yourself reading this sentence, this paragraph. You, sitting there, focusing on each word, one by one. Become aware of each sound as it echoes in your mind, the one you’re hearing right now, and this one, and again and again and again. The voice in your mind reading this to you, is that you? If so, then who is doing the listening?
Ideally, the above paragraph forced you into some form of meditation. It forced you to become aware of your thoughts and mental processes, and then hopefully helped you differentiate your Self from the thoughts and sounds running through your head.
What Is Meditation?
Meditation forces one to disidentify with their mind and emotions. It is perhaps the easiest to learn and most readily available personal developmental tool on the planet. The disabled can do it. Children can do it. Stephen Hawking can do it. Anyone with conscious awareness can practice it.
You can do it on a crowded bus. You can do it in a monastery. You can do it in your bedroom. You can do it now as you read this. Experienced meditators can even do it while they sleep.
The benefits of meditation — mental, emotional, and physical — are innumerable and there are no side effects to a small daily…
