What Are The Benefits of Meditation?

What are the benefits of meditation? Does meditation benefit one in coping with the challenges and pressures of modern life? What are the negative effects of meditation, if any?

Perhaps, my own personal experience with meditation may help.

I started meditation 20 years ago. My purpose then was to dissolve stress and to discover my true self.

I reasoned if I could discover and experience the self and the SELF, I would be able to live my life purposefully than what I was merely doing then - just making a career.

When I first started, meditation was new then. Meditation was deemed a practice that belonged to the spiritual confines of Buddhist monk and Indian yogi.

My well-meaning friends cautioned me that one can go mad if not properly guided. Well, I almost gone mad but not in the way they had described.

Ironically, it appears the other way round. My peers seem to have lost all aliveness and joy from being unable to cope with the challenges and stresses of life.

There was the feeling of envy that I had seemed to go about life with little of the baggage and insecurities that beset most people. This is one of the benefits of meditation.

Learning Without A Guide

Looking back, I would encourage anyone who wishes to gain real benefits of meditation to find a good guide, particularly one who is a real teacher of life.

The reason is not so much any negative effects that may arise. Rather I would say the benefits of meditation can differ with meditation methods .

More importantly, a real teacher of life would have experienced what you are going through and so can help clarify and dissolve any uncertainties and doubts that arise from your meditation experience.

The meditation methods I started out with were very simple ones - breathing and visualizing techniques of meditation. I experienced a feeling of calm and peace.

Many times, I was able to enter and abide in that state that induced a smile within me. These were the early effects of meditation.

However, the moment I returned back to normal daily activity, the carry-over effects of calm and peace soon disappeared.

My awareness of this experience spurred me on. I wanted to find out how I could extend the benefits of meditation to pervade my waking moments.

So I started the habit of regular practice. What used to be 15 minutes of meditation became 30 minutes and then 1 hour.

I also started learning many different techniques and postures of meditation. Although there is much made of adopting right posture in meditation , there really isn't a hard and fast rule to it. A posture that is relaxed and pain-free should enable you to reap the benefits of meditation.

Over time, the benefits of meditation became noticeable.

I gained a lot of insights and was able to solve problems quite easily.

My creativity expanded.

There was a time when the slightest thought of a thing, person or event would attract to me the very condition that was thought.

Friends recognized a seeming glow and youthfulness about me. They seemed curious.

I was able to sense the thoughts of others.

These are just some of the early benefits of meditation.

Some subtle; others obvious from the tangible aspects.

Compassion unfolds but this development didn’t come about until many years later.

The Process of Clearing Out

This had gone on for some years at intervals that can last for weeks.

Calmness and peace that I had experienced in the early stages was overtaken by anxieties and anger. This is the phase when you do really need the support of a guide to help you pass this stage.

I was not prepared as I had not anticipated all these. I struggled with the emotional and psychological experiences of inner transformation.

My external life became difficult and I struggled to focus. I was feeling more detached and uninvolved. Life was looking meaningless.

Some of my experiences were bizarre.

For example, one day I went to see a client for business. As I sat in front of him, his face appeared magnified as if I was looking through a magnifying glass. As a result, I had difficulty focusing on our discussion.

Another example was the electric shock I felt during deep meditation when there was a slightest sound heard.

On another occasion, I felt a bolt of electric current coarse through my entire body from head-to-toe for what appeared like one minute.

I was able to smell things others don’t.

This period was for me a process of deep inquiry, introspection and a holding-on to faith. I fought depression.

Fortunately, I had the strength of mind and character to see me through.

I continued meditation but made my own adjustments and approach.

Over the years, I hanged onto faith as I witnessed subconscious issues rose to the surface to be addressed and resolved.

I understood this later as a natural process of clearing out - a PURIFICATION.

It’s like a bowl filled with muddy water. The muddy water was cleared; the bowl was wiped clean. Now I became an empty bowl.

I had to choose once again what I would want to place in my bowl.

A New Awakening

The book “Do You See What I See?” and “Relentless Love” by Edwin Carl Smith.

That was another leap of inner and outer unfoldment for me. A new phase of personal transformation unfolded that spanned four years.

When I read Edwin’s first book, I knew the author had walked the breadth and depth of soul-searching life.

Edwin made me realise three things that generally practitioners of meditation as well as experienced practitioners are unlikely to recognise and thus, fail to gain real benefits of meditation

1. Most types of meditation limit awareness. Yet, our AWARENESS is a gift of our HUMANESS.

2. Most don’t know what to do with their lives upon discovering who they really are!

3. Most upon discovering who they really are, remain stuck to their pride of enlightened knowledge. They rather prefer to be teachers of enlightenment than get involved in the real world.

It was from Edwin that I learned how to move beyond enlightenment to re-inventing life through Original Meditation.

Edwin taught how it was necessary to allow the MIND to collapse into the HEART.

The resulting outcome of this is you become your ORIGINAL SELF - Being fully human; fully alive to life!

Original Meditation paves the way for all the benefits of meditation.

How is that so?

It does not control or limit awareness.

Original meditation graduates you from a beginner’s mind to being a beginner of life.

The latter state holds out possibilities because you are no longer imprisoned by unconscious limiting beliefs that cripples our lives.

LIFE becomes a PLAYGROUND rather than a fearful theater for experiencing material and spiritual wellness.

You learn the way to living from being a “CONSUMER of life” to being a “CREATOR of life”.

A beginner’s mind lives a life full of subconscious baggage.

A beginner of life, having released most life issues, relishes a new transformation. His life is lived as being “Fully Human yet Fully Alive” to Life.

If we reflect and search deeply within ourselves, there is a desire within each of us to feel FULLY ALIVE to LIFE.

Paradoxically, it is this very desire to be fully alive, to become fully immersed in life that we FEAR!

To be able to live your daily moments in this state of being is the seed of true wellness. Edwin refers this as being in touch with our 'Original Self'.

The Heart-Mind strategy that is at the core of Edwin's approach leads you to a life of inner and outer health and vitality that most meditation practices fail.

Original Meditation leads you to the wellness way of life.

In wellness do we radiate the energy of being fully human; fully alive.

This quality necessarily opens up to possibilities beyond what you can imagine now.

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