When it comes to meditation, its general purpose can be spelled out in many ways. It may be relaxation, self-knowledge, self-awareness, and so on. But from most points of view, morning meditation is supposed to help you clear your mind and leave you with no thoughts.
For Tim Ferriss, “meditation, or mindfulness practice, it’s really about, decreasing emotional reactivity so you can proactively create your day and create your life; versus, just being a walking reflex that sometimes screws up.”
For Tony Robbins, meditation “it’s about cueing and prompting enabling emotions for the rest of the day.”
Also, Jason Connell shares 5 different perspectives on how meditation can change one’s life in his article “A Guide To Meditation: How To Do It, How It Changed Me, Its Risks, And More…”
But I get this feeling like the morning meditation process is fostered mostly as a process of having a mind empty of thoughts. And every time I’m reading about it, I’m asking myself why should I remove all my thoughts during meditation?
The importance of our thoughts when we build something
We are all living in reality bubbles, and these have been built during years of personal and professional experiences. Also, even if you believe things are one way or another, there’s only the way you think. And this happens because every word that comes out of your mouth is manufactured by a thought that’s manifested (consciously or not) inside your head.
For example, you may believe that people are responsible for their actions but when you’re talking about it you are trying to find who’s guilty (not responsible) for something that happened.
Even what we feel is generated by our thoughts.
“Every moment that you are alive, your brain uses concepts to simulate the outside world. Without concepts, you are experientially blind. With concepts, your brain simulates so invisibly and automatically that vision, hearing, and your other senses seem like re-exes rather than constructions.” — source here
So, if our thoughts are so important, why most people are trying to get rid of their thoughts during meditation?
But people are not avoiding their thoughts only when they are meditating – this shit is happening every day! Maybe your thoughts are frustrating you, or you are not comfortable thinking about some stuff.
Here’s how my process of morning meditation looks
The purpose of my morning meditation process is to know myself better. Therefore, I’m not doing it every day – just when I feel I need to understand more about what’s happening in my life.
Also, my morning meditation includes a step of letting go, the last one. So, without further due, here are the steps of my morning meditation process.
Step 1 – I wake up early in the morning and do nothing for 5-15 minutes.
Doing nothing helps me to truly wake up and to become conscious of the fact that I just started a new day.
Step 2 – I pick a topic that’s bothering me and only one! It can be anything like ‘why I don’t have _____?’ or ‘why I think ______ is stupid?’. Basically, anything that’s starting with why.
Focusing on positive things won’t be as useful as focusing on the negative ones, at least not for this exercise. You can try it, but one of its purposes is to help you understand why you don’t like the things you don’t like.
Step 3 – I try to answer that why question and then I ask it again. And I repeat this process until I’m satisfied with what I discovered.
‘Why?’ is the most powerful question out there. Use it wisely.
Step 4 – I try to let go of everything and move into an emotional place of deep silence.
All morning meditation processes should end with this step. But most of them also start with it.
Why should you focus on only one thought?
So you can understand your shit!
Usually, that thought is negative or related to frustrations. If you don’t focus and you think about more things at the same time, you’ll feel overwhelmed.
With love and optimism,
David
