Understanding the Mind through Meditation

In order to have a deeply effective and meaningful meditation practice, we need to know what we're dealing with: our minds. 

Imagine for a moment that your mind is a clear, blue body of water. There are no waves, no storms, no violence beneath the surface among the water's living creatures. Everything is perfectly calm and still.

The Ocean in Motion

Our minds are like this in their natural essence, but then we have storms that pound the ocean with rain. We have violence amongst the sea life below. Pirates mischeviously cross the water in great ships. Battles are fought. The waters become muddy and turbulent.

Pretty soon we can no longer see what lies in the sea or on it's bottom.

Our minds are just like this, but we have the potential to return to that clear, calm state. We just have to learn how to train our minds, which is exactly what we do in meditation. 

Seeing And Accepting What's There

And once we can see the bottom, we can see everything that lies beneath.

Sometimes we'll be quite pleased with what we see. We have lots of happy, loving thoughts. Other times we may not like what we see at all and feel disturbed to see that we have anger, sadness, pain, hurt, stress, anxiety, and fear.

But the first step is to see what's there and be OK with it. This is an important part of the meditative process.

When we accept the thoughts, we can then let go of the ones that do us harm.

Guided meditation for anxiety helps us become less critical of ourselves and less critical of others. 

Mental Freedom

The outcome is contentment within ourselves and with others. We move through the world with more ease and harmony.

One might say that the end goal of meditation is to teach the mind how to luxuriate in its own freedom.