Meditation Theory

It honestly took me a while to find a book on Meditation that I could actually relate to and want to read, but the book I chose is called Meditation and Relaxation in Plain English, by Bob Sharples. My whole essay is off of Chapter 10: Meditation for Transforming Difficult Situations, because I like to use Meditation to calm myself down so I can focus better and handle things more calmly. There was a line in the book that I wanted to quote because it pretty much defines one of the many reasons of Meditation. “The struggle is to maintain a regular meditation practice while also giving our full attention to all the many demands and delights that life presents.” In other words, Meditation won’t solve your problems for you, but it can help you solve them yourself by giving you the opportunity to take time to relax and think more clearly about things.

The Ten Simple Practices for Daily Life:

      1. Be Skillful in Your Daily Practice:
Don’t push problems aside when they come to mind while meditating; bring them to your attention so you can figure out how to solve/handle them. Don’t bury problems inside of you where they can fester and get worse.

      2. Dedicate Time to Your Problems:
Focus on one problem you want to resolve in your life or work on getting better with. Be positive while meditating; don’t focus on the failures you have had with the issue, focus on things that will make you more confident in dealing with it.

      3. Pay Attention to What Disturbs You:
If something catches your attention in a negative way, pay attention to it, figure out why it’s bothering you so you can figure out how to resolve it. Same as #1, don’t push it aside and bury it inside yourself where it will only continue to get worse.

      4. Practice a Reflecting Meditation Each Day:
Prepare yourself for the day with a morning meditation; reflect on your day at night and ask yourself, “How did I do?” and, “What could I have done differently?”

      5. Record Your Insights:
Write down creative thoughts when they come to you while meditating because if you don’t do it when you think of them, then you will most likely lose them.

      6. Contemplate on a Chosen Quality:
Set aside ten minutes each day to contemplate and reflect on a quality you want more in your life. Like patience, self-motivation, generosity, courage, forgiveness, moderation, etc…

      7. Cultivate Antidotes to Afflictive Mind States:
This will help you better yourself and see the good in others.

      8. Make Time For Reflective Meditation:
Study, contemplation and meditation. “The goal is to have that wisdom available so that you can effortlessly recall it when needed."

      9. Cultivate Friendships:
Having loving and kind support from others (family and friends) helps you meditate better.

      10. Practice Contemplative Meditation:
Bob Sharples gives two examples:

1.       Imagine you have a short time left to live and come up with what you would do in that time. Once you’re done, ask yourself, “Why do I have to wait to do these things if they are so important?”

2.       What are the 10 most important things in your life?
Reflect on that question and come up with your answers, then meditate on each one of them individually. When you’re done with the whole process you will find that your priorities have most likely changed.

The point of doing these methods of meditation is to help the person realize what is really important to them in life, because once you have your priorities straight, you can better manage your life and get where you really want to be in life. To go along with that, there are two things I would like to quote from the book, just because they kind of stood out to me and they made a lot of sense.

 “No matter how secure, comfortable and safe we are now, circumstances can change suddenly and dramatically. In a moment, all our resources and certainties can be taken from us.”

“The aim of these meditations is to remind us of what we know and yet daily forget.”

Pretty much what both of these quotes are saying is that we need to remember what is important in life and not focus so much on the things that don’t really matter, because one day we could lose the important things and then we will have regrets about not spending more time on them.