One of the basic ideas behind meditation is that it is a form of mental hygiene. For the same reasons that brushing teeth regularly, or drinking enough fluids every day, or having a diet with plenty of fruit and veggies, meditation is likewise a part of healthy mind/body maintenance. Sleep is also vital to helping our minds relax. However even if you get 8 hours of sleep every day, that still means that our minds can be constantly stimulated and exhausted from “information overwhelm” or information overload those other 16 hours.
Rest your Weary Mind
This is why I think many of us are attracted to meditation. To give our “weary minds” a break during the day as well. Just like any other skill, it only works well if you make it a regular routine, rather then once in a while, or only when overly stressed.
The Murky Water Analogy
Murky vs Clear Mind Meditation
One of the simplest way to explain meditation, even if done for just 10 breaths, is through the analogy of the murky water. Picture if you will, two glasses of water (each representing our minds). Each has sand or contents, as do our minds. Now if our lives are busy, which most of us are, this glass gets shaken and stirred around a lot during our day-to-day lives. If you shake a glass of water that contains dirt or sand, you will see that the water gets murky and unclear. So it is with our minds.
The more that is “on our minds”, the more murky our thinking gets. The more information overload, the harder it is to make decisions, clarify our thought processes. And frankly with a murky mind like that, I’m sure you may have noticed too, it becomes hard to see and experience the here and now directly presented around us. Perhaps we miss the bird calling, the child smiling or the dog wagging her tail. Perhaps we end up more easily irritated, and short tempered. This seems to be part of the human condition.
So taking those meditation time-outs to allow our minds to settle does wonders for our well-being and those around us. It allows us more light and clarity coming through in our thinking. After all, if I set the glass of murky water down, and let it settle, it will began to become more clear almost immediately. Folks go on meditation retreats, in part because of a desire to settle much more deeply then a one minute or one hour meditation can do for them. Nevertheless, any settling, even if only a few minutes a day, or periodically throughout the day it is a great health benefit for the person doing it, but also to the people you are in contact with in your work or home life.
In a future post I would like to explore how settling into a meditation practice does not mean settling into ideological nests or pre-conceived ideas. What does settling into meditation mean to you?