4 reasons to love yourself through meditation

“You yourself, as much as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection”. A beautiful phrase told by Gautama Buddha aka Buddha, recognized by Buddhists as an enlightened or divine teacher who attained full Buddhahood, and shared his insights to help create awareness for beings to end rebirth and suffering.

Love yourself

Yes! love yourself first before expecting anyone to love you because we receive our reflection from the mirror of every individual we interact with.

Simply what goes around, comes around. Talking about love, as told in my previous blog, Valentine’s day blog will be published soon as there are a couple of days before the sweet day to arrive.

So till then, I decided to slot in this blog about meditation and why it may be needed in your life.

So what is meditation?

About meditation

Meditation is an ancient practice that transcends geographic and cultural boundaries. It is a practice where an individual trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit or for the mind to simply acknowledge its content without becoming identified with that content.

Then why is meditation important for me in life?

Some may say it is a waste of time, it is a worthless activity, or even blurt out “Huhh meditation? not cool la”.

Yeah, it may seem to be not cool, but in reality, it can cool your body, mind, and soul.

I have been personally practicing meditation for about around 8 years, which I first learned from a yoga class when I was about 8 years young, and forgot about it thereafter because of not knowing the importance of it. After that entered into my life was a brother given by GOD (I believe), who guided me through the process of spirituality based on his knowledge and that is where I picked up meditation again.

As years passed, I was on and off with the process of meditation. After a “negative” incident which occurred to me, or I can say a positive blessing at the age of 21. I was so depressed, I started overthinking (negatively) and questioning myself a lot. That is when I started getting fully involved in meditation.

Not only that I started to do more ‘research’ and studies on it which expanded my knowledge and adjusted my style of meditation. I did find a lot of positive benefits, especially to my recovery and thought process. It helps us change our perspective of priorities, we start to discover our own inner source of self-motivation, self-respect, and enthusiasm for life. And not to forget, it also helps in the enhancement of our biological process.

Benefits

Here are the 4 specific  reasons why meditation is important in our life:

1. Emotional well-being

Firstly, meditation improves our emotions and how we feel towards our-self and external sources. It allows our emotions to be present at the moment without judgment of ourselves.

Why is it important how we feel?

Because emotions control our thoughts and behavior (vice versa), which determines us. It is important to think about what we want to become and not let our emotions dictate that, which may be linked to how we feel (like anger, and sadness). It keeps our mind to be aware of ourselves and our needs.

Ranjeet aka OSHA was a controversial mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher quoted that,
“if you suffer it is because of you. Nobody else is responsible, only you and you alone. You are your hell and your heaven too.” So feel with care.

Jaggi Vasudev (aka Sadhguru, is an Indian yogi, postgraduate in English, author the founder of ISHA foundation, also said, “yoga (consist of meditation) is the science of activating your inner energies to such a vibrant and exuberant state that your body, mind, and emotions function at their highest peaks.”

2. Mental well-being

As we know a mind is a powerful tool that has the potential to allow what seems impossible to be possible in our life. At the same time, it is like a double-edged sword, which can produce both benefits and harm to our own well-being.

Working on the mind, wherein this case is meditation helps enhance brain performance, alleviate stress decrease, reduces anxiety, increases your attention and concentration span, decrease the likelihood of depression, preserve the aging brain, and helps reduces the overwhelming activities in our mind. We call it the ‘monkey mind’, the wandering thoughts of past or future which keeps us worried or anxious. Meditation also helps to cure/relieve/decrease various mental issues like PTSD (Post-trauma stress disorder), lack of focus, short attention span, and etc…

There was an experiment done in psychology on the placebo effect. Where there were three patients, patient A was given a real painkiller to soothe his pain in the injured leg, patient B was given a fake painkiller (without him being aware of it is a placebo), and patient C was given nothing. And the result was both patient A and B had relief from the leg pain within 4 hours whereas patient C showed no improvement from the pain. This shows that it was not the medicine, but it was the belief/thought/mind. which reduced the pain.

Meditation can also help you think sharp, out of the box, and be more creative. As Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian yogi and guru who introduced millions of westerners to the teachings of meditation and Kriya Yoga through his book quoted “If you have a strong mind and plant it a firm resolve, you can change your destiny; the mind is the creator of everything”.

3. Body well-being

The health of our body is also vital to function in our daily life. Without good health, it is less easy to maintain our daily tasks or even take care of our minds & emotions.

As our physical body needs well-balanced food, cleansing, and adequate exercise, it also needs meditation to increase your self-awareness in these areas and more. Besides cultivating inner peace, and calmness, it also lowers the risk of heart attack or stroke, helps cancer recovery, reduced menstrual disorders, and helps with addiction to nicotine, alcohol, and drugs instead of looking for it externally.

It is also said, meditation helps to cleanse the subtle body which surrounds our physical body. Seers (people of supposed supernatural insight who sees visions of the future) have said that diseases first start in the subtle bodies many weeks before they appear in the physical body. So meditation will keep the subtle body energies balanced. (please do your due diligence to check the reliability of this source).

Sadghuru is an Indian Yogi, mystic, and New York Times bestselling author, quoted that “human well-being will not happen by looking out, well-being will only happen by looking inwards because human experience is not up, not out, but from within”.

You may try this practice called the body-scan. Body scanning involves paying attention to parts of the body and bodily sensations in a gradual sequence from feet to head. By mentally scanning yourself, you bring awareness to every single part of your body, noticing any aches, pains, tension, or general discomfort. Check out the Body Scan, a guided audio track by the Centre for Mindfulness Singapore. <- click the link

4. Spiritual well-being

Last but not least is why meditation may be an important tool for the well-being of our spirit.  Meditation is a powerful tool for spiritual growth and is essentially a process to take one beyond the limitations of body and mind thought process. It is involved in a harmonious collaboration between the three parts, body, mind, and soul to achieve a pleasant state. It helps you become calmer, feeling light, more intuitive, and an increased sense of freedom which causes happiness (the feeling is awesome). It also increases your senses and emotions to a higher level.

And ENLIGHTENMENT is one of the essential parts of meditation (depends on your purpose of doing it) which helps unveil the unknown and dive down deep to your insights. Knowing that there is a purpose in life and a connection with something larger than yourself.

Overall the feeling is great, but not knowing how to tame that may lead to your own destruction. Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs said that “to make a growth choice instead of a fear choice, a dozen times a day, is to move a dozen times towards self-actualization”.

Now you know why meditation is important for you and beneficial but at the same time, some conclude that meditation is actually negative but I chose to see the positive side of it, partially based on experience. If you want to find out more about the negative side of meditation, you can always type to your best friend google to find out more.

My comeback

Yes, there are few things in these lists that I personally failed to understand previously, because of the distractions/temptations/challenges which I allowed to influence my
choices. Now, I have reminded myself how important and how helpful meditation can be efficient and beneficial my life. I have started adapting to meditation and its benefits in my life again.

What about you?

Believe in yourself, go beyond your limitations, hurdles, obstacles, and challenges. As we are all unique in our own way. Let’s be our best!

Summary:

1. Quote by Buddha
2. Loving yourself
3. Benefits of meditation
4. My come back;)

“Stay tuned for Valentine’s day blog next”

*Please note meditation is not specifically for a religious purpose, it is also for your own benefit*

Do share with us your stories of challenges to success in any situation (with pics if possible) in team.believetosuccess@gmail.com, I will do a blog about it. Your story will encourage and motivate others to achieve success too!

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