Meditation Archives - Travel and self-awareness tips

Do you know what meditation is? – Hint! It is not the marketed version.

Why do we meditate at all? Isn’t it to get better? To end suffering, to improve ourselves? To be stress free? Or some other version of it?

Most people seek out meditation to end suffering

I remember when I started looking into meditation it was to sleep properly. Thoughts kept me awake at the night and I was sleeping during the day. And it pushed me into a vicious circle of judging my situation for not sleeping, questioning my life, thinking my life was a failure and… something had to be done. The pain of being stuck was getting higher and higher.

Most of my pain was brought about by the loneliness. Not having someone to spend time with… Being an awkward kid, I was not – and I don’t think I am a very sociable person. Lack of connection also made me want to try out meditation so I will be able to transcend my thoughts, stay present and make a connection with someone, or at the very least get past the fears of rejection and talk to someone.

Knowing Anxiety – Attention, Control, Pathology of Positivity

Anxiety is a state where you are worried about the future or about something that happened in the past repeating as a memory and being afraid that it might happen again. You are never in the present moment; your mind is always looking forward to things or ruminating over the things that happened.

An exercise like, mindfulness meditation that teaches to stay present to the present moment, without interpretation and meaning-giving – will help you manage your anxiety.

Attention through mindfulness. Attention is not concentration. Concentration is exclusive, you concentrate on a particular thing. Attention is awareness, there is no exclusion or inclusion. There is nothing to accept, things are there whether you accept or not. There is no seeking, wishing or hoping. Attention is goalless. You simply are aware of what is happening, what is, in the moment, around you, inside you, the sensations, the mood, the things that arises in your perception without labels such as happy, angry, tree, chair, blue, green etc – for all of these are the meaning that we give to things. And these stop us from further being […]