Meditation 101

I'm offering my services as a meditation mentor, so I thought I'd begin posting a few pieces about meditation. So for this inaugural meditation article, I'd like to begin with what I feel is the most essential item you need to begin a meditation practice--commitment.

You have many reasons to begin meditating. You might be seeking relief from pain, or a lower risk of heart disease, or mitigation of the effects of stress. Medical research has shown that meditation can have many benefits for your health and well-being. Or, you might be trying to improve your golf game--many top athletes and coaches practice meditation. Or you might want to achieve enlightenment, or develop the special powers mentioned in the Yoga Sutras. But your initial motivation can change or even disappear with time. Your medical condition might resolve, you may lose interest in golf, you might lose interest in your spiritual or esoteric path.

Difficult circumstances can challenge a meditation practice. It's easy to meditate when there's plenty of money, no danger of losing your apartment or home, no chance you'll miss a meal. When you have plenty of leisure time, it's not hard to spend a few minutes each day meditating. But circumstances change, you may lose your job, or you may get a new more demanding job, or you may start a family. Time may become more precious.

But there is one thing that will guide your meditation practice through the perils of shifting motivation or challenging times, and that is commitment. Commitment to a meditation practice--internal commitment, not commitment to someone else or some group--this is what will keep your practice alive.

How can a person have commitment? By realizing that a meditation practice is worthwhile in and of itself. This only happens via meditation--more meditation can develop more commitment. It cannot be put into words easily. It's an inner knowing that builds up slowly as you experience meditation over time.

An enduring, resilient meditation practice stems from meditation practice. Whatever gets you on the cushion or the chair seat at first, whatever put the idea of developing a meditation practice in your head--that will take you only so far, like the push a parent gives a child when they start learning how to ride a bike. You have to start pedaling yourself. That's when commitment will grow and your meditation practice will really start rolling.