Meditation is not a "Part-Time Activity". You need to be serious about it. 🕯️

Meditation has several benefits, both physical and mental. This makes people turn towards meditation as a means to improve their life. However, for meditation to work at the deepest levels of your consciousness, it needs be taken seriously. You cannot do meditation as a hobby or part-time activity and expect quality results. This makes most people give up their practice because they don't see immediate results which makes them discard the practice for potential alternatives which may not yield the same results as a serious meditation practice. You need to be serious about your meditation practice, and treat it like, almost, for the lack of a better example, a full-time job or business that needs your active investment.

There are many ways to look at meditation, but the one angle that I particularly like is treating meditation as "skill development". I adopted this notion from one of my favourite Meditation Masters Shinzen Young who designed and created the Unified Mindfulness System of Meditation. When you treat Meditation as skill development, your entire orientation towards it gets transformed. You realise that just like any other skill, you need to put in the hours, practice regularly, and implement what you learn in daily life to see long-term and lasting changes in your behaviour, life, and thought process.

Let me come back to the original point. You cannot treat meditation as a part-time activity because it requires serious commitment, energy and dedication to master. It's not a quick fix to your problems. It's a deep fix and of industrial strength (quoting Shinzen Young again!). This requires a thorough rewiring of your mental patterns which doesn't happen overnight. Your bad habits and unskillful behaviours were put into place after several cycles of repetition over many years of your life. Changing these patterns and replacing them with useful, and skilful patterns takes considerable work and patience.

In a day and age where instant gratification is glorified, activities that require your constant attention and investment are often disregarded or ignored. Meditation, seems attractive on the outset, but the moment you start meditating, you're often greeted with a host of unpleasant sensations and thoughts which might make you run away from the situation! Have you ever sat to wonder.. all this unpleasantness is within you but you've never really addressed it! Meditation helps you clean that unpleasantness and garbage to transform you into a wonderful human being (over time). This is a great premise to work with, but to put into into practice, requires discipline and dedication.

It's not necessary that you meditate everyday. Although if you did meditate everyday, you'd progress at a faster rate than if you didn't. What matters is constantly having a "meditator's attitude". You need to integrate meditation at the levels of your smaller and larger identities so that it fits well within the rest of your life. It should become an inseparable aspect of what you call "you" and your life. This will automatically push you to do the right things at the right time, and use meditation as a means to enhance the general quality of your life and become a better person. The goal of meditation isn't to acquire supernatural powers, but simply become a beacon of love and service towards yourself and humanity. Okay, those are big terms, but you get the idea, right?

One way to "become serious" about meditation is to write down your experiences during meditation and track your practice sessions. Becoming accountable of something and taking ownership of your growth is the best way to show your seriousness towards something. The same applies to meditation — journal, track, discuss, get feedback, and constantly evolve. Let your practice naturally and organically grow into a pivotal aspect of your life. First meditation happens within life. Later, life happens within meditation. This profound change can completely annihilate untruth from your life and give you a clear vision to think, speak and act from.

Now I get it, we're all busy. We all have responsibilities, jobs, duties, and hobbies. Why spend time doing boring sitting — isn't it so useless? Well, it isn't. The effects from your meditation sits carry forward into the rest of your life. It sort of sneaks up on you till you sit back and take stock of how far you've come! Secondly, I want to shatter the misconception that you can meditate only in the seated posture with your legs crossed. No. You can meditate will cooking, cleaning, driving, waiting in a queue, and even in deep sleep. It's an activity that can be performed any time, any where and in any posture.

You should carve out time for your dedicated seated meditations because that's absolutely necessary — it's like net practise, getting the basic skills right. Then, you should find time within the day where you can convert other activities into meditation-assisted activities. You will typically put 80% of your attention on the activity, and 20% of your attention on meditating and practising the technique. These numbers could vary depending on your interest, and nature of activity. Remember the ION principle. ION stands for Interest, Opportunity, and Necessity. Try to find "windows of opportunity" in your day based on the ION principle to practice.

The practice of combining meditation with other activities can make them a lot more fun. You're actively building your concentration muscle, which helps you engage with the activity with greater involvement and presence. Your clarity improves because you can analyse the activity with a clearer mind. Lastly, you eventually find peace and a resting zone to cruise through the activity and just let it flow through you. Do this repeatedly and nothing will seem boring enough for you to give it up. It just takes a little bit of effort and dealing with discomfort, just a little bit. If you're willing to put in that 1% of extra effort it can compound and yield great dividends for you in future. Just stay with it.

As a matter of fact, meditation helps you stay more "present" and in the moment. Don't you want to be alert, active, and receptive throughout the day? Don't you want the ability to deal with complex emotions relatively easily? Don't you want to filter the millions of thoughts you get so that you can focus better? Don't you want to be happier, more fulfilled in life? All these don't come free, you need to work for it and work with it, with mindfulness. The more present and mindful you become, the wiser you become. Wisdom makes you well-equipped to deal with the inevitable challenges of life and find ultimate peace.

So what are you waiting for? Plug in your earphones and meditate!

— Aditya Patange ✨

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