Why Meditate? What Is Meditation? How To Be Mindful?

What is meditation? How to be mindful? Sounds like questions that should have a mysterious answer. The true mystery is the mind. If we are looking for reasons why to meditate we need look no further than our very own mind. Learn how to concentrate and focus the mind and meditation naturally follows.

What Is Meditation? What Is Mindfulness?

In a nutshell, meditation or mindfulness is the consolidation of energy. With the mind hopelessly distracted, we are unable to consolidate our energies. In order to do this we need to bring the mind home.

This is meditation. This is mindfulness (often misspelled as mindfullness).

Teach Me How To Meditate – Teach Me How To Be Mindful

Meditation is a very intimate and personal endeavor. It's a practice you do with yourself, with your own body and mind. No one can really teach you meditation. You need to discover it for yourself. You need to teach it to yourself.

Thus, the process of learning how to meditate relies directly upon 'you'. It's all about 'you' and, at the end of the day, it's all up to you. You've already made a terrific first step by researching online and gathering information about how to get started.

As you read on, just remember that it is you who will be teaching yourself about meditation.

What Is Meditation? Why Meditate?

The Best Show In Town

Let me ask you this, 'What's the best show in town?' Answer: The one that is playing right now on the inner screen of your mind! For each one of us the show is different, yet we are all visiting the same theatre - the free and sold-out theatre of the mind.

We spend inordinate amounts of time and energy enthralled and captivated by the drama. We worry. We think. We debate. We analyze. We weigh our options. We hope. We fear. We do all of this automatically, without really having to 'think about it'. This is the world, or theatre, of the mind.

Meditation allows us the opportunity to step out-of-the mind and leave the show behind. It gives us distance from all of the commentary and story-telling that is going on. It teaches us that there is another – even more powerful – ruler in the house. The mind isn’t the only show in town.

What Is Meditation? Why Meditate?

Self-Education Leading To Self-Knowledge

Practicing meditation is a process of self-education. You learn about your mind and the relationship you have with it. To step out-of-the-mind we first need to learn to work with the mind (see meditation methods for more on this). We work with our mind in order to know our mind.

In this process of self-education we also learn how easily our mind becomes distracted. How often in daily life do we find ourselves 'engaged' in one task, yet thinking and worrying about the next? How beneficial is this to completing the task at hand? How effective does this make us?

Most people have no idea how truly distracting the mind can be. Most of us have no idea how very distracted we usually are.

Practice the simple breathing and counting mind control techniques as recommended in how to meditate for beginners , even once or twice, and you'll belong to the small minority of people who are beginning to understand their mind.

Just through this simple meditation technique, you'll have learned much about how your mind works! You'll also have learned much about what is meditation. As has already been mentioned, the process of meditation is one of self-education, leading to self-knowledge.

This self-knowledge is the foundation for the practice of meditation. It is the rationale for it. It is the answer to the question 'why meditate'? Think about it. If we can't even get our mind to stay focused on a task as simple and straightforward as counting from one to ten, then what about our other aims and objectives?

Doe this newly-acquired awareness of ‘distraction’, perhaps, partly explain the difficulties we have following through on our goals, hopes and dreams in life? Of course, there are always plenty of other things we can blame for not living the life we want, but one of the biggest obstacles might be much closer to home than we suspect or care to admit.

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