Monthly Archives: April 2009

I experienced something amazing last night: deep meditation.

Meditation is simply an attempt to reach a “deeper” state of awareness. Now I’m not going to throw any philosophical mumbo jumbo at you. I’m just going to talk about my experiences with meditation, and what I did different last night in my meditation practice that has already given me such incredible results.

I began meditating in high school. It was one of the many things that helped me in my weight loss. But the real break through came during college. There was a day where I just broke down, crying. I’d just finished fighting with my mother about our usual issues: “Parth, get a job!” – “No! Idon’t want to!”

I collapsed near my bed and began crying, silently. I called my cousin up and explained the situation to him. I’m sure he was scared as he had never heard me this way. I’m usually the “macho” guy in our group. But today, I just felt like a helpless little child. I forget what I said to him, but I do remember what he said to me: “What you’re trying to do with your life is tough, because there aren’t immediate results to it. There’s no steady stream of income at all. But what you’re doing is admirable. Getting up at 4 in the morning, pursuing a dream, not wanting to work for anyone else but yourself. That’s admirable.”

He was right. I go back to that night and those words every single moment that I feel depressed, frustrated, and just plain…down.

I’ve been feeling the same way since I decided to start this members section. A million different questions pop into my head at any given moment:

• Will it work?
• What if I fail?
• What if too many people sign up?
• What if not enough people sign up?
• What do I charge?
• How can I protect myself legally?
• Why am I doing this?

Image by Yogic Trance

The Benefits of Meditation

Meditation has helped me dig deeper. It has allowed me to get up at 4 in the morning and workout. It has allowed me to stay on a difficult dieting plan. It has allowed me to realize my greatness….and I need to do it again.

Last night, I began to meditate using my usual methods: “watching my thoughts ” and “breathing,” But along with each breath, I said things to myself like:

• You need to dig deeper
• You can do this
• You will succeed
• You can wake up early tomorrow
• You’re gonna make this successful, no matter what
• You’re going to be successful, no matter what
• Stop wasting time, and hustle!
• Don’t worry about what people say
• Just move!
• Your best isn’t good enough. You need to push harder.

The key to really motivate and push yourself and achieve your dreams involves some sort of meditation. You may be meditating, and not even realizing it. Many people “reflect.” They’ll sit down, write things down on a piece of paper, and try to solve their problems in a practical manner. One aspect of meditation is awareness. Awareness is simply understanding your problems, surrounding, and beliefs. It’s simply understanding YOU.

Have you ever listened to someone arguing or complaining and thought, “If only he/she would listen to themselves?” Well, meditation is exactly that: put on a tape recorder while you complain and b**ch about your problems with a friend, and then play it back a few days later. See how you feel listening to your own voice. You might be surprised by what you say.

So meditation is listening to your inner voice, to your inner a**hole and understanding him/her. Once you start listening and understanding, you can start to reallygauge into the problems:

• Are you nervous? Why? What can you do about it?
• Are you anxious? Why? What can you do about it?
• Are you afraid? Why? What can you do about it?
• Are you angry? Why? What can you do about it?
• Are you lacking motivation? Why? How can you fix it?
• Do you feel guilty? Why? How can you fix it?
• Are you depressed? Why? How can you fix it?
• Do you feel sorry? Why? What can you do about it?
• Do you feel jealous? Why? How can you fix it?

Image by Young Adult Crisis Hotline

Stop Rationalizing and Start Understanding

Most individuals try to reason their way out of doing something really hard. Its the reason why diet books do so well. I mean come on, how many different ways do you need someone to tell you to eat less? It’s the same reason why fitnesseBooks and infomercial products do so well. The process goes something like this (and I’ve been through this as well):

1. You buy this amazing new book with this amazing new training program.
2. You’re really excited to you tell all your friends or blog about it.
3. Then you go try it and realize how friggin difficult it is.
4. The fact that you’ll actually have to do some WORK makes you nauseous.
5. You go shelve the book and sit on your coach, open up a bag of potato chips, and start watching Biggest Loser.

I knew what I was getting into when I decided to pursue my own dreams. I took the path less traveled and I knew all about the twists and turns and hills and slides. But doing the right thing – apologizing to someone, taking on a job for passion as opposed to money, reaching in and motivating yourself to lose weight – all these things take a sh*t load of courage.

I’ve talked about meditation a few times with friends and family, and a lot of them state that meditation is hard. They’re afraid to meditate simply because they’re afraid of their thoughts. I had a friend in college who told me she was afraid of being alone. She was afraid of the thoughts that come to her and afraid of how it might make them feel.

Image by wildmind

How to Meditate

Well, over the years I’ve adopted some specific rules to meditation:

• Step one: Learn to sit quietly. Thats it. In this first stage you do not need to practice any technique. Simply practice your breathing. Adopt a steady rhythm of just breathing and focus on that pace.
• Step two: Watch your thoughts. What I like to do is pretend there’s a camera in my head. As a thought comes up, I just take a picture of it. When I exhale, I imagine throwing that photograph away.
• Step three: Get to the peace zone. After step two, you’ll find yourself just “there.” You’ll be able to get to your “peace zone” rather quickly. This part is actually kind of scary,cuz you feel like you’re in this deserted area, like a forest or something.
  • Everything around you is pitch dark. Everything is silent. You see no people, hear no people, and think no people. This is the state of true inner peace, and it’sfriggin’s scary.
  • The first time I achieved this zone, I literally opened up my eyes and looked around to see where I was.
• Step four: Listen to your voice. If you can make it past step three, then you’re doing amazing. At this point, there’s no one else around you but yourself. You’re not going to hear any voices – not your parents, your friends, that random guy who cursed at you on the street – no one. So it’s just you talking to yourself. So listen to it.
• Step five – Understand your voice. Once you learn to listen to yourself, you realize what’s really deep inside of you. What’s really bothering you. What’s really hurting you in your subconscious mind.
• Step Six – Step five and six go hand in hand. Now that you understand what’s really bothering you all you need to do now is take out a pen and paper, right down some actions you can take to solve those problems, and go do them.

I read somewhere that the difference between prayer and meditation is that with prayer, you are talking to God, and with meditation, God is talking to you. Either way, the techniques that I just explained to you should help you mentally overcome any barrier in your place. You should at least try them out – cheaper then hiring a psychologist.