Originally written 08-06-2015
I wish to meditate more often because of the power of concentration it gives you. Once you are aware of what you think of you can more easily direct what you think of. This has an incredible amount of useful applications in your life. From noticing and accepting emotions, to altering your perspective on events to change what emotions you feel entirely.
No emotion is felt before the thought that causes it. It doesn’t have to be audible or internally vocalized; a “flash” of understanding or a contradiction to the reality you keep in your mind can be an instant emotional trigger, either positively or negatively. Being aware of this change in your mind can help you understand what happened and, if you wish, you can even figure out the underlying cause and change your perspective on the event to alter the way it makes you feel. This is very tricky and is only possible if you allow yourself to not cling to your negative emotion, as if you’re justified to feel that way, and instead allow yourself freedom from the negative impact it had on your state and potentially change it so much so that it creates a positive impact on you. Everything you feel is based upon how you individually interpret the events in your life.
Not only would power over attention give great power over your personal perspective, but it also gives you incredible concentration. The less distracted you are by other neural synapses firing in your head or other stimuli, internal or external , the more fully you can dive into whatever it is you wish to concentrate on, opening up previously forgotten depths of learning and increases in skill. We all forget life as a baby, how incredibly difficult it must have been for an infant to first realize control over limbs, and later even finer control over fingers. How incredibly difficult it must have been for us to figure out how to contract specific muscles in specific ways at specific amounts with our minds. How difficult for us it must have been to learn how to balance and stabilize ourselves. As adults we hardly devote a fraction of the willpower we exhibited as babies, desperately struggling to match the humans capabilities around it. As it is, the more deeply into a task we devote our attention, the better we absorb the information. There are different levels of willpower, and we slowly diminish the amount we exhibit. I not-so-secretly believe this is the reason babies sleep so much and why as we get older and older we seem to need less and less sleep. But the rate at which children and babies learn is incredible in comparison to the way we learn as we grow up. The way they focus and their lack of concrete definitions is intrinsic to their learning abilities.
With greater focus comes greater power over addictions. I used to like to say “oh, I don’t have an addictive personality.” This is bullshit. Everybody on the planet has an addictive personality because we all have the same neurotransmitters, some of which we absolutely love. One of the best ways to overcome addiction is gaining greater willpower. One of the best ways to gain better willpower is to gain power over your own attention. If you don’t think of whatever monkey it is on your back, you won’t notice there’s a monkey needing satisfaction. And even if said monkey rears it’s head, having an enhanced introspection and awareness of your own state will give you plenty of time to alter your thought pattern before acting on your habit.
Meditation has been shown to have incredible effects on the mind. This type of brain training can have incredibly positive impacts on a life, changing the fulness and richness and vibrancy one experiences in one’s life.
Rich Mind 