Things That Heal Me: Meditation

Welcome to a new blog segment on Let's Get Metaphysical. It's called Things That Heal Me and is intended to help us explore different earthly and spiritual modalities for healing that are (hopefully) accessible and available to most people around the world! 

Some Things That Heal Me that I highlight throughout this segment may be more obvious things that others have long used for healing and general well-being, while other things may be a bit more outside of the box. My intention with these blog pieces is to look at healing from a more organic, creative perspective since healing is not linear or logical but rather a journey of personal art, destruction, and creating more space and love within our being. I also want to highlight how healing is self-made, no matter what privileges some may have over others in this world. Even when you do have the resources to add more tools to your life or pay to have specific external healing modalities or professionals at your disposal, you still have to face your own inner pain and walk yourself entirely through your healing. While fancy gadgets and expensive resources may at times make this process more cushiony and earthly, you do not need anything other than yourself to find healing in your being. You do not need anyone, or anything, outside of yourself, your community and the spiritual world to guide you on your healing journeys.

Without further ado, let's dive right in and see what healing we can inspire together!

To kick it all off, I want to talk about meditation. I'll be super upfront with you: I have absolutely no official knowledge of or training on meditation. I barely even know anything about the roots of meditation, where it comes from, or how different religions and cultures practice meditation in their own styles and for their own purposes. All I know about meditation is that I have spent my entire life (26 years) missing it and my whole conscious spiritual journey (since 2016) feeling salty about it.

There, I said it! I am far from a "zen" individual and I can't even express to you how much shame I have felt about struggling in this area. So, not only is this (hopefully) healing for you to receive, but it's also very healing for me to write. 

Meditation, for me, has always given me this icky feeling. You know, that feeling that you get when there is something you expect yourself to fall into naturally or be good at, or even just understand yet you feel entirely on the wrong page. You constantly feel as though others expect you to understand and just embody it, which only adds to the pressure you unconsciously put upon yourself to flow into whatever it is you are trying to do, learn, or understand.

Well, that is my relationship with meditation in a nutshell. I am a medium and have been consciously learning and developing for over 6.5 years. Every teacher and practice that I've turned to, every book I've read, and all of the techniques I've studied on my journey thus far spoke on and strongly encouraged meditation. My entire journey has been filled with messages and markers, trying to bring my attention to meditation. I sort of have always known this and understood why, I mean, if meditation is supposed to teach you focus and stillness, it makes total sense that it would be a most crucial and helpful base of metaphysical development and spiritual practice. But what didn't make sense to me was HOW to meditate. Until now!

Up until this very moment, no words or explanations of meditation have clicked for me. Up until now, I thought meditation was about training the mind, and in some ways and perspectives, I suppose it is! However, meditation is not the same for everyone. It is not an act that can be explained or behavior that can be demonstrated. There is no one particular way to achieve and practice meditation because it is not a behavior or action, but rather a tool. It may look mostly the same to everyone on the outside, but we all hold the tool slightly differently and we all use it to accomplish different goals. One moment we may need it for one thing and in a certain way, and in another moment that changes. 

I never understood how I needed meditation to show up for me because it was always something I was trying to figure out from someone else's understanding. "Teach me how to meditate. Tell me what to do." I'd say. No answer I ever got, be it from a person, a book, or a religion, ever made sense to me when it came time to try it myself. All the answers I sought only left me with more questions. I even began to say that I wasn't built to meditate and that it just doesn't work for me. That may have been true for me back then, but now everything has changed!

Recently, I read a book that fell off of my bookshelf in a most synchronistic fashion. It was called To Love and Let Go by Rachel Brathen (Yoga Girl). I won't get into this book because that's a whole other thing, but you should check it out if you feel led to do so! So this memoir-style book found its way into my life and as I read Rachel's story, I began to hear her talk about meditation quite a bit. It appeared that it was the root of her spiritual and emotional journey. "Lucky" I scoffed at first, noting that I felt slightly envious of the ways in which she described her meditation experiences and the ways in which her practice moved her. I wondered what that was like. I ached for it.

By the end of the book, her words had moved me to a place that I hadn't been before (in many more ways than just meditation). I cried so much while reading her words and listening to her journey. It was powerful. Without even realizing it, I suddenly understood what meditation was for her! Through all of her trauma and pain, throughout her challenging and beautiful life journey, she committed to her practice of meditation in order to FEEL. She used meditation as a means of channeling her own spirit/energy and as a way to anchor into the love of the spiritual world (universe, god, source, etc.). When she felt uncentered, she'd meditate. When she felt uncertain, she'd meditate. When she felt powerful, she'd meditate. The regular practice of yoga and meditation was her bread and butter that kept her fed and moving daily, no matter the degree of paradise or difficulty in her world.

As I read her story, I began to feel an urge in my body to find that place within myself. It felt deep and intelligent, unlike anything I have ever felt before. While my mind felt insecure, almost certain that it would lead to the same wall I've always hit in this practice, my body felt like it suddenly knew something I did not. So, I took the bits and pieces I've observed about meditation through my years of asking questions and googling keywords and I set myself up in my favorite Papasan chair. I used a pillow to prop my back up to achieve a straight spine, I set a timer on my phone for 12 minutes, and I used my fingers and hands to create the hand symbol, Gyan Mudra.

Once I was ready to begin I allowed myself to have no objective vision for what I was doing. I felt like that was the point. I was just feeling curious and allowing my body (and my spirit) to lead. I was unaware that what I was doing with my hands was a well known intentions symbol and was helping me to focus my energy until I looked it up afterward. I discovered that there are many symbols you can make with your hands while practicing, called Mudras, and they all have their own purposes and intentions. I felt like a whole world was opening up from within me!

I've been practicing meditation irregularly ever since then (this was only a couple of weeks ago) and what I've discovered so far has blown my mind! Meditation has always been there for me, my spirit and my body have always known what it is and what to do. Maybe it's a tool we are born with and must rediscover as adult humans with each incarnation. Perhaps our spirit helps us to remember how to move energy through the body and channel it. All I know is that after years of "trying to figure it out" and feeling like I'm forcing the experience, I finally discovered it when I was ready to receive it. When I was ready to FEEL it.

While I can't tell anyone for certain that this is how their journey of meditation will be born, I can tell you that you'll have to discover it for yourself. That very well may be an entirely different journey than mine. You may read a book and it clicks. You may jump right in, try for days, and then suddenly it clicks. You might even give up on it, like I did at first, only to shift something within yourself and return to the practice with a deeper understanding. 

I suppose what I'm saying is that I still don't know how I discovered the embodiment of meditation, I only know that it suddenly became available to me when I opened myself up to understanding it in an entirely novel way within myself. If anything, start there and be open to receiving direction from both the spirit world and your own soul.

As much as I wish that I could hand you my own discoveries, the esoteric world of spirit and meditation is not as simple as that. That is why it took me so many years to figure it out within myself; I had to discover it in my own way. But now that I'm here, I hope to inspire others who feel called to discover meditation in their own way because the ways that it has moved me, the ways that it has helped me find truth and balance is what I would call a spiritual awakening! It feels that important to me. It has opened so many doors within myself and my life, and so far has proven to be the greatest tool I could have on this life journey.

Meditation helps me to feel the energy of divine love, within me and all around me. It brings me to this space, outside of my physical boundaries and outside of my ego, where I can witness the energy of love being stitched into the fabric of the entire universe. When I am in this space, I can feel every molecule, every atom, and every particle within me and around me breathe in peace and breathe out love. 

Meditation, to me, feels like a method of focusing on any specific energy, vibration, or frequency that I need so that when I am out in the world and present with life, I can orient myself based off of those energetic frequencies, in any given moment. Sometimes I need to feel loved and held by the universe, which really helps my body and nervous system to relax and helps me to form trust in spirit. Sometimes I need to feel worthy and confident within myself which helps me to navigate my interactions and my value. Sometimes I need to connect to and feel the underlying current of unconditional love between me and those in my life so I can forgive them, appreciate them, or even let them go. Sometimes I need to feel into the flow of the universe and of destiny so that I can trust the twists and turns, and embrace the learning curves I bump up against, with grace.

Meditation has become a moment in time for me where I pause my human existence and I submerge my being in an energy that I feel led to marinate in. Sometimes I even let the spirit world bring me on a journey and show me what I need. As I lean into trust, I feel a new energy settle around and within me as it becomes known. As I receive. 

At times, my mind is heavier and wants to be loud. In these moments, meditation becomes a workout, strengthening my awareness and my ability to switch back to intentional energies when my focus has wandered. It helps train my energy to root in my body and be focused intentionally, even when my monkey mind runs away from me on the regular. It trains my consciousness to be in the driver's seat!

Throughout my discoveries and practice, I have observed for myself that meditation helps to condition one's focus. This focus can be used to grow and deepen an energy or to receive it entirely. Focus can be mental, through the mind, or it can be energetic, through the consciousness (which I feel more in my body, near my solar plexus). The latter requires us to let go of our minds and drop completely into the body. The mind is only part of the structure of reception in our being, not the source. While our mind and our bodily senses work together to create a structure for spiritual/energetic reception, they are simply just that: a structure within our being. The source of reception is our spirit, or our energy. This structure works best when we learn how to move out of its way and just hold space for that structure to exist and for reception to occur. 

While meditation is a training of the mind in a sense, it is not FOR the mental body. Sure, the mind really benefits from practicing conscious focus and from the stillness it receives when we drop down into the body. However, as energetic beings in a physical reality, meditation is the ultimate tool for tuning our physical body and energetic body into alignment with one another. It's extremely helpful for us dual beings to have a gateway to the spiritual frequency we come from, while we live here in a physical world with much heavier, lower frequencies. That, in itself, makes meditation a very powerful tool for both personal wellness and metaphysical development.

When it comes to meditation, this thing heals me because every part of my meditation practice feels like medicine for my being. This medicine ensures that I learn to create my experiences and inhabit my entire being from the frequency of love and spirit as much as possible. This aligns me with myself, the spiritual beings who guide me, and the very fabric of the universe. That alignment slips me right into the flow of life and gives me the balance that is needed to navigate my life journey, find joy in the process, and remain present with myself during challenging experiences.

Meditation exists so that we may root ourselves and our experiences entirely in love, as often and as much as we can.

Meditation exists so that we may heal ourselves!

Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash