Meditation...
And The Art of Noticing Life
One of the most surprising things about meditation is how quickly it spills over into the rest of our day. I think that is because we start to notice more of what’s actually going on.
Mindfulness isn’t something you “achieve.”
It’s something you realize, often in the mundane moments.
When we practice meditation, all we’re really doing is watching the mind do what the mind does. It wanders. It comments. It rehearses conversations that will never happen and replays ones that already did. It makes lists. It solves imaginary problems. It creates entire worlds out of thin air.
And yet, each time we notice this and come back to the present; back to the breath, the body, the moment… we’re not just practicing meditation. We’re practicing being alive.
Yeah, I do not see meditation as being about the minutes I spend with my eyes closed. It’s about the moments throughout the day when I suddenly wake up from the trance of my thinking and realize that I have a choice to be here instead of lost in my head.
Mindfulness is simply the natural awareness that emerges when we stop trying to force our minds into silence and start getting curious about how they operate.
We notice the stressful thought before we run with it.
We notice the old story before it wraps itself around our heart.
We notice the feeling of pressure before it becomes overwhelm.
This is the gift meditation gives us; noticing.
The more we practice returning in meditation, the easier it becomes to return in everyday life. To return to kindness when fear shows up. To return to possibility when doubt gets loud. To return to the simple, fresh, ever-present moment where wisdom lives.
Meditation just helps us see life as it actually is before our thinking colors it in.
That’s mindfulness.
And for me, that’s the real gift of meditation.