I hear people all the time say how they wish they could live more in the moment. It’s something that challenges so many, especially those with undisciplined minds. There is one tool though that can help to reverse that and it’s meditation.
In recovery, meditation has become a regular part of my life due to the 11th Step. But before I ever found the 12-Steps, I learned how to do it on my own. I took the drastic path by forcing myself to sit without movement for hours on end and focus on my breathing, even when my mind was screaming at me to move or do something else. The level of physical pain that I was carrying was the initial motivation for doing so. I had tried just about everything else to make it go away, but nothing worked. Meditation did though and it also showed me how my mind was just like a young puppy. It wandered from one thing to the next, sniffing this and sniffing that, and never being able to sit still with any one thing. Through practice, I learned how I became that way in the first place.
Ironically, I came into this world, as did everyone else, being able to live quite successfully in the moment. But as I grew older and watched my parents and their programming and patterns, I began to see how they constantly worried about the future. Eventually, I started following suit by worrying about the next day, the next week, or even the next year. All of that just created my own negative programming and patterns that mimicked my parents and kept me from living in the moment. When it became a daily occurrence for me to worry about the future, I developed chronic anxiety. That’s all anxiety really is in all truthfulness, it’s when a person is unable to stay in the present and have constant fears about their future. When a person does this with their past, they develop chronic depression instead.
Meditation is a tool that can prevent that from happening. It works to keep a person living in the moment, or simply in the present. It forces the mind to focus on what’s happening right here and right now. In the beginning stages of learning it, it’s often extremely challenging to sit there and not move. The brain screams out how much it hates doing it and it can even cause more pain in the body to surface. But don’t worry though, I’ve never heard of anyone injuring themselves by doing meditation.
The best image I can give here as to what happens in the brain when a person first attempts to start meditating is this. Picture a speeding care that’s racing down the road that suddenly has to brake hard for a red light. It usually comes to a screeching halt doesn’t it? That’s about what it looks like in the brain when it’s constantly thinking about this or that and going a mile a minute when suddenly a person tries to sit down and meditate for the first time.
To learn how to live in the moment through meditation takes practice and a lot of it too. It does get easier over time, no different than if one was trying to learn how to ride a bike. It’s not like anyone ever got on a bike for the very first time and was instantly able to do it with perfection. Ok, well maybe there might be an odd fellow out there who did so, but in most cases, riding a bike or learning anything new takes practice.
I’ve been meditating regularly now since 2003. I even went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat many years ago. All of it has helped me to learn how to live in the moment a lot better. It’s also helped me to see the subtle things I was doing without even realizing it like shaking my leg with great rapidity when sitting. It helped me as well to remember the things my eyes saw throughout the day in great detail. Ironically, it even helped me to recollect my dreams when I thought I wasn’t even dreaming.
There are many other wonderful health benefits to meditation and truthfully, it can improve one’s entire life on every level. Which technique will work best for someone is something they need to discover on their own though. I’ve usually found it best that beginners start with guided meditations because another person’s words can help to initially keep them better focused. Over time though, it’s best to sit in silence and try some of the other techniques that include breath work, counting, mantras, and the awareness of body sensations.
Currently I spend 30 to 45 minutes each morning doing my own meditations. I encourage someone brand new to meditation though to try initially for five minutes. As time goes along, it will get easier to go for longer periods. Trust me, I never thought I could do it for even that long, but I did and have since gone for as long as four hours in a row.
Meditation can truly benefit everyone. So if you should ever find yourself struggling to stay in the moment or are dealing with things such as anxiety or depression, I encourage you to begin learning how to meditate. Start by taking just five minutes of your time to try it. In doing so, you just began the path of reprogramming your mind and learning how to live more in the moment.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson