Meditation and Feeling Life.

As highlighted in my previous post, developing a meditation practice helps an individual to truly feel life. 

It is now dangerously easy for folks to cruise through their day in a perpetual state of distraction/dissociation through any combination of intoxicants or technology. The slightest discomfort can be numbed by a trip to your neighborhood weed spot or by pulling out your phone and disappearing into the social media abyss. 

It has never been easier for a person to “float” through the human experience, never really  being present, never fully appreciating the “good” stuff and arguably even more important, confronting the “bad” stuff. 

If you’re thinking, “why would I want to be there for the bad stuff (and why it is important)?” The answer is this.

First is that lows are a critical part of the human experience - without them we wouldn’t understand or appreciate the deep beauty, love, and joy that also comes along with being incarnate. 

Second, the lows are often the impetus for change or growth. If a person doesn’t really feel the challenges/disappointment they are experiencing in their life, there is no real desire to work through them. 

The barrier to this, however, is that it is hard to be fully present for, or dig back into difficult experiences and then begin processing them, integrating them, and eventually growing from them. The human default mode is pleasure/comfort and as mentioned several times, the modern world presents endless hits of it. 

Easier to sell is the idea that developing a meditation practice gradually increases an individual’s satisfaction/joy with “good” experiences. Over time, meditation slowly pulls a person into the present, where even the simplest daily occurrences can be recognized as supremely beautiful. 

We all know someone who has this ability - I jokingly refer to it as the “i’ll have what they’re having” effect. It is the person who looks as if they’re enjoying everything like it’s the first time they’re experiencing it - drinking a cup of coffee as if it is a magical potion (it is) or watching a sunset as if it is a glimpse of the divine (it is). 

A dedicated meditation practice can begin this process of recalibrating an individual’s enjoyment of life’s simpler gifts - no longer does a person need to scroll on their phone while facing a beautiful ocean, the ocean itself will be enough. 

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present.” -Eckhart Tolle