Why Meditate
Why Meditation
We all have minds. We often get caught up in over-identifying with the mind and/or allowing some habitual patterns to go unchecked. But we are more than the mind and habitual patterns. The mind is undeniably a valuable tool. Meditation is good training for the mind.
I really liked the explanation Roger Walsh, a professor or psychiatry, philosophy and anthropoloty at University of California at Irvine gave regarding meditation in the Time Magazine article on Meditation, August 4, 2003. He said that Western psychiatry on recently recognized attention-deficit disorder, but for thousands of years, meditative-contemplative traditions have recognized that we all have attention deficit to one degree or another, and meditation is training to reduce that. Our minds are infinitely creative when it comes to creating diversions. The more we are ruled by the mind, the more its limitations prevail. This article stressed how meditation reduces perceived stress, increased focusing abilities and brought a sense of greater harmony. The article gave a simple formula for meditation: find a quiet place, close your eyes, pick any word and repeat it over and over with every out-breath. There are many meditative techniques that revolve around the breath and imagery regarding energy circulation in and around the body during the act of breathing in and out.
Daniel Goleman is known for his bestseller book, Emotional Intelligence. He also authored Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them, A Scientific Dialigue with the Dalai Lama. In that work he related some of the benefits of awareness-training strategies such as meditation, which included strengthening emotional stability, enhancing positive mood, and enhancing immunity. In Kosmic Consciousness, Ken Wilber relates that those who meditate regularly for four years will on average be two stages higher on any scale of human development when compared to non-meditators.
David Hawkins, MD, PhD wrote in Power vs. Force that students of spiritual disciplines didn't go weak from negative stimuli as tested by kinesiology, whereas those with more ordinary consciousness did go weak. "Perhaps the very process of progress toward enlightenment could be shown to increase man's ability to resist the mutability of existence." (pg 18). On page 312, Hawkins makes the point that "Socrates taught that man's purpose is to dedicate his life to the enlightenment of his soul (the light) rather than the pursuit of materialism and the senses (which leads to darkness)."
Make your own conclusions but what I present here is very favorable to meditators. For those new to meditation, check out work by Jon Kabat Zinn, Dr. Andrew Weil, and programs such as Wild Divine, HeartMath, Self-Realization Fellowship, TM (Transcendental Meditation), Silva Method, as starters.
One word of caution: it has happened that those who have focused too exclusively on their inner lives at the expense of their outer realities, such as work and relationship, can get in regretful situations. One might do best to consider that one has at least two aspects to respectfully regard, both the inner and the outer aspects of living. Equally problematic can be those who pay little or no attention to their inner lives. They very well may be holding more than themselves back when you consider the benefits mentioned regarding meditation.
One of my favored forms of meditation is to grow a feeling of appreciation, gratitude and/or love through recalling memories that bring these feelings to heightened recall, and allow those feelings to be strengthened in the heart area, holding those feelings, growing those feelings with each in-breath, and releasing such feelings outwardly with each out-breath. It’s a nice boost to one’s biochemistry. For a variation on this mediation theme, see my web site page entitled, "Seeds of Light Meditation" at www.DrLCorvallis.com
We all have minds. We often get caught up in over-identifying with the mind and/or allowing some habitual patterns to go unchecked. But we are more than the mind and habitual patterns. The mind is undeniably a valuable tool. Meditation is good training for the mind.
I really liked the explanation Roger Walsh, a professor or psychiatry, philosophy and anthropoloty at University of California at Irvine gave regarding meditation in the Time Magazine article on Meditation, August 4, 2003. He said that Western psychiatry on recently recognized attention-deficit disorder, but for thousands of years, meditative-contemplative traditions have recognized that we all have attention deficit to one degree or another, and meditation is training to reduce that. Our minds are infinitely creative when it comes to creating diversions. The more we are ruled by the mind, the more its limitations prevail. This article stressed how meditation reduces perceived stress, increased focusing abilities and brought a sense of greater harmony. The article gave a simple formula for meditation: find a quiet place, close your eyes, pick any word and repeat it over and over with every out-breath. There are many meditative techniques that revolve around the breath and imagery regarding energy circulation in and around the body during the act of breathing in and out.
Daniel Goleman is known for his bestseller book, Emotional Intelligence. He also authored Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them, A Scientific Dialigue with the Dalai Lama. In that work he related some of the benefits of awareness-training strategies such as meditation, which included strengthening emotional stability, enhancing positive mood, and enhancing immunity. In Kosmic Consciousness, Ken Wilber relates that those who meditate regularly for four years will on average be two stages higher on any scale of human development when compared to non-meditators.
David Hawkins, MD, PhD wrote in Power vs. Force that students of spiritual disciplines didn't go weak from negative stimuli as tested by kinesiology, whereas those with more ordinary consciousness did go weak. "Perhaps the very process of progress toward enlightenment could be shown to increase man's ability to resist the mutability of existence." (pg 18). On page 312, Hawkins makes the point that "Socrates taught that man's purpose is to dedicate his life to the enlightenment of his soul (the light) rather than the pursuit of materialism and the senses (which leads to darkness)."
Make your own conclusions but what I present here is very favorable to meditators. For those new to meditation, check out work by Jon Kabat Zinn, Dr. Andrew Weil, and programs such as Wild Divine, HeartMath, Self-Realization Fellowship, TM (Transcendental Meditation), Silva Method, as starters.
One word of caution: it has happened that those who have focused too exclusively on their inner lives at the expense of their outer realities, such as work and relationship, can get in regretful situations. One might do best to consider that one has at least two aspects to respectfully regard, both the inner and the outer aspects of living. Equally problematic can be those who pay little or no attention to their inner lives. They very well may be holding more than themselves back when you consider the benefits mentioned regarding meditation.
One of my favored forms of meditation is to grow a feeling of appreciation, gratitude and/or love through recalling memories that bring these feelings to heightened recall, and allow those feelings to be strengthened in the heart area, holding those feelings, growing those feelings with each in-breath, and releasing such feelings outwardly with each out-breath. It’s a nice boost to one’s biochemistry. For a variation on this mediation theme, see my web site page entitled, "Seeds of Light Meditation" at www.DrLCorvallis.com
posted by Marcia A. Liberatore, MD www.DrLCorvallis.com at 2:22 PM
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