Why do we really meditate?

Meditation is being pushed like crazy as the cure-all answer to your psychological problems but I realize when talking to my clients that the point is often missed as to why meditation can help with things like anxiety, depression and low self-worth.

It’s often described in “hippie-dippie, out-there” terms that people don’t connect to - myself included. In fact I remember when my mom started meditating when I was in my early 20’s and I thought she had fallen off the deep end. All of a sudden she was connected to this giant spiritual world that never was in her purview before and it made me feel disconnected from her and turned off to the whole thing.

It wasn’t until years later when I had some life changing experiences with meditation myself that I came around. 

Here’s what happened...

My husband, Mark, had hired a life coach about a year into our relationship and I watched how he was making big emotional shifts in his life. He was communicating with his parents differently, seemed more focused and centered, and just all around happier. As a helping professional myself, I was super curious who this person was who was having such a big impact on Mark’s life.

One day Mark came home and said, “Guess what!? The answers to all your questions are going to be revealed, my coach, Matthew Ferry, is having a weekend seminar you can come to!”

I was super excited and super curious, and I showed up and we rotated between meditating and having discussions about the functionality of the mind.

Now up until this point my philosophy for psychological wellness was - you take all the negative thoughts in your head, figure out how they make you feel and then trace that feeling back to the root – which normally ended up being a childhood trauma.

For example, if I was feeling anxious because my friend wasn’t returning my text, that could be traced back to when I was a child and I feared that I wasn’t likable. As I made the connection between past and present, a lot of the anxiety would release because I could see that my present fear was actually signaling an old injury and I didn’t need to be afraid now.

This system worked pretty well. I was a high functioning person with a good support system. The thing was though that this system took a lot of time. Plus, my mind was always talking to me all day long, non-stop. There were so many negative thoughts to dissect, it made it hard to be present all the time. 

What I learned on that weekend was that our minds aren’t actually designed to make us happy. They are designed to help us survive.

In other words we have “out evolved” our minds. Most of us who have the luxury of reading this blog are not facing life and death on a daily basis but our mind is still acting as if that is happening.

When we get into a disagreement with someone or we shake the hands of someone who is sick or we lose some money, we can easily go into fight or flight mode. Have you ever had the feeling that logically this situation isn’t a big deal but emotionally it feels like a huge deal?

That feeling is your mind kicking in, trying to keep you alive.

The best way to keep you alive is to put you in a hyper vigilant, anxious state - assessing danger at all times. If you are too happy and relaxed you might miss the giant tiger coming to eat you.

What does this have to do with meditation? 

Meditation is the practice of separating from this survival voice - I call it the negative mind, Matthew called it the drunk monkey.

When we stop and sit in the quiet and start to observe what our mind is saying to us, we can hear how ridiculous and silly the whole thing is. We can also observe the survival anxiety that comes up. As we switch from thinking those thoughts are important and a part of us to just observing them as part of our survival mechanism, they hold a lot less power and influence.

What happened to me?

After being bombarded with this concept and meditating for hours on the weekend, I felt present - maybe for the first time in my life. I’m not much of a crier but I looked around and the trees looked so beautiful, and I felt so much love for my family that my eyes welled up with tears.

Now I didn’t just automatically stay in that present grateful state, but once I was exposed to it, I knew I wanted to spend as much of my life as I possibly could there. By applying both the resources from my psychology background and the regular practice of meditation, the better I get at being able to stay connected to what I call my True Self.