The Best Meditation Advice I Ever Got…

"Meditation is about developing a relationship with yourself that doesn’t depend on what your mind thinks."

It changed everything for me when one of my teachers said this. Like many, I struggled to quiet my racing mind when I tried to meditate. Just sitting down to meditate often seemed to make my mind race even faster. Perhaps you can relate.

Hearing that it was possible to shift my relationship to my mind was revelatory!

Instantly, I no longer had to be the mercy of a seemingly endless current of thoughts, feelings, ideas, and moods. Through the gift of my self-reflective consciousness, I could learn to observe my thoughts in meditation without getting so entangled in them.

Imagine viewing yourself and your world from a vaster, more expansive perspective - one not confined by your mind’s constant chatter.  What freedom!

But what exactly is this expansive perspective, according to yoga?

The sages of Kashmir Shaivism – the Nondual Tantric philosophy that flourished in Northern India between the 9th-12th centuries – offer a brilliant perspective. They describe how one, infinite consciousness limits itself in time, space, and form to become all that we see and experience in the material world, including ourselves and our minds.

In this light, meditation becomes a practice of reconnecting with that unbounded, vast awareness that lives within us, that is us.

With time and practice, we begin to recognize that we're more than just the individual narrative our minds construct. We start to identify with this expansive awareness - the abiding, witnessing presence behind our thoughts and emotions - as our deepest essence.

Instead of fighting against the mind, we develop a new relationship with it - one of observation and equanimity. Our awareness becomes a place of sanctuary that can hold whatever arises in our minds without being defined by it.

This is the transformative power and possibility, of meditation – not to silence the mind, but to become bigger than it.

PS: What does brain science tell us about our self-reflective consciousness and the expanded awareness we cultivate in meditation? The remarkable answers to this question are the subject my new course with Dr. Marjorie Wollacott. If you’re curious about how the science behind meditation can revolutionize your relationship with your mind, you won’t want to miss The Mind of a Meditator. We start September 24. Learn more and sign up here. We'd love to have you.