Meditation and Mindfulnes

Our minds and our bodies are connected. If we’re unhappy for an extended time, our bodies become weaker and more susceptible to illness. In the same way, when we’re physically run down, it adversely affects our minds. 

If you have a healthy, peaceful mind, your perception of the world reflects that. You make informed decisions and can appreciate the goodness in your life and the lives of those around you. Meditation leads to a healthy, peaceful mind. It is something anyone can do, any time, any moment. To see what meditation can do for you, you just need to try it. Don’t imagine that you can’t!

With meditation, we can benefit our overall health by training in letting go of negative thoughts and encouraging more positive thinking. This will decrease stress and anxiety and give us a clearer mind. A clear mind leads to more discernment so that we make fewer mistakes and better decisions. With better decision-making, we have fewer regrets, and this positively impacts our overall well-being.

Well-being is an innate quality of mind, but the way we look at things clearly affects our entire physical and mental environment. When we’re absorbed in distractions, the innate well-being of mind gets lost or somehow restricted. We need to make an effort to uncover the well-being and goodness that are there already. For us, this effort is meditation, pure and simple. Meditation gives the mind space to recognize just how much knowledge is already there. And when there is clarity in the mind meditation also helps develop a healthy body.

Mind has the ability to know things. That is how mind is defined: something that is conscious and can know an object. But our minds don’t work well when they’re disturbed. Being distracted by overlapping thoughts and emotions is like asking our minds to “do this, but do something else first, but before that please think about this.” Our minds get frustrated and cannot focus. When we meditate, we focus on one thing at a time and our minds become relaxed. Our minds need time and space if they’re going to function as well as they can.

We can motivate ourselves to practice by remembering that dissatisfaction and negative emotions are contagious – by their very nature, they tend to harm others. As the saying goes, misery loves company. It is even more important to remind ourselves that good intentions and feelings are also contagious in just the same way. Just think of others. Even a small gesture of kindness has a ripple effect. If you smile at somebody, they’re touched and smile back at you.

Benefiting others starts with good intentions and taking care of our minds. And taking good care of our minds starts with meditation.