Many people believe that in order to meditate, you have to free your mind from all thoughts, and enter into a blank, trance-like state. If you do this, you'll be in a trance-like state, but you won't be meditating.
The "effortless" part of learning to meditate comes from getting to know your meditative mind, again and again. And that comes more frequently when you let go of all of the ways that you think you should meditate.
Meditation is a process of gradually coming to know your own mind, coming to rest in a state of non-distraction where you release all sense of hope and fear, cease to alter your mind with thoughts, sensations and emotions, and learn to simply be, mindful, aware and spacious.
For many of us, when we begin to meditate (or even if we've meditated for a while), we can experience a certain amount of "failure" while trying to meditate. Even if we've been successful in the past, our efforts may be met with what we believe to be failure. But, what if failure weren't an option? What if there was no such thing as "failing" at meditation? What if meditation included failing to meditate?
If meditation can heal your mind, can it also heal the state of healthcare? I've never been known to think small, so my ideas about how meditation can help to bring change to the world of healthcare aren't small either. But what about this title, "Meditation Heals Healthcare's Woes!," is it possible? If you can learn to stabilize your mind, and heal its negative habits, can you take that healing into the workplace? Let's see...
What is most wonderful about this whole process is that even when you find yourself getting swept away and coming back to your meditation after what seems like hours, you can use that "coming back" as your meditation practice. That is, the practice of meditation means getting used to practicing even as your thoughts and emotions arise and you find yourself getting distracted.
Do your feelings and emotions rule you? If you're like me or if...you're human, then you've probably experienced anger, sadness, jealousy (or envy?), or emotional exhaustion. And, if you're like me, you're happy and grateful when those emotional states and feelings go away, right?! What do you do when you experience strong emotions? How do you deal with difficult feelings that just won't go away? What do you do when these experiences persist even when you try to push them away?
What is meditation anyway? (Do you get tired of me asking this?) Do people even know what meditation is? What I hear when I talk with people in my day-to-day life are things like, "Learning to meditate takes too long," and, "I tried but couldn't stop thinking," and, "I'm not religious." Yikes! People don't know what the hell meditation is! Here are a few things meditation isn't. If any of them are familiar to you, welcome to the club. If some of these seem obvious, read on. Most people get hung up on what they believe meditation is and never [...]
This week's Meditation Tip of the Week will be preempted with a special announcement: It's radio interview time!! In the spirit of helping others to help others to help themselves, I'd like to encourage you all to listen in to the live radio interview that will be happening on Monday, August 6th, at 9pm EST. If you can't listen to the live broadcast, please feel free to listen to the archived interview, it's sure to be an entertaining evening. RN.FM Radio is the brainchild of Keith Carlson and Kevin Ross, two nurse-entrepreneurs, who are working to empower nurses to speak [...]
And can nursing change the world...? I have to say that somewhere in my heart, I hold the aspiration to "change the world." Not in a Gandhi or Mother Theresa kind of way; those individuals are as rare as stars in the daylight. I'm thinking more about making a small contribution to the world, something that can make a difference to a few people who can then in turn, bring benefit to others. As a nurse, it's easy to get caught up in the "caring" aspect of nursing while forgetting that every time you care for someone from a "meditative" [...]