We have a 1-hour meditation group on Sunday at 9.30 am. Join us for meditation-themed discussions and a long meditation. The group is conducted via Zoom.

What is meditation?

Meditation is stillness of mind. Keeping the mind still for regular periods gradually brings about a fundamental change. By practicing stillness, eventually, a curious thing happens – you begin to see the mind as an object, instead of seeing it as yourself. You see the things it does, and you realise that the awareness feels more like your real self than your thoughts and feelings. That awareness is deeper, richer, and more stable and offers a much more contented experience of life even when you are not meditating.

Why would I want to meditate?

Stress usually comes from two things: feeling out of control, and life not going the way we want it to. Meditation helps us to see what the mind is doing when we are otherwise too busy to notice. We can see where we want things to be different but can be okay with how they are (reality). We can see where we are trying to get control of our environment and the people in it instead of working with what’s in front of us (reality). Usually, people who meditate become more pleasant and more cooperative. That is because they give up the personality games that they might have played when they were trying to be this sort of person or that sort of person. Usually, people who meditate become a lot easier within themselves because they aren’t trying to fight reality.

I tried it before, it didn’t work.

Yup. Us too. Our minds are busy, and it takes some practice to slow it down enough to even notice the thoughts, much less find stillness. There are many tools out there that teach you to slow your mind down. We look at some of them in this course too. But tools are just that – tools. Learning to hammer isn’t the same as learning to build a house, so to speak. There comes a time to put the tools down. Many of the meditation apps and classes in the marketplace simply teach the tools, with no indication of what to do with them, why you use them, and when to put them down. After that, it’s simply a matter of practice.