Tag Archives: meditation

How Transcendental Meditation changed my Writing Fears Into Confidence

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He strode across the floor, his walk more of a glide than I’d anticipated, but there was confidence in it. He looked past the veil of flesh of my exterior, seeing only the soul within.
The look scared me.

Before Transcendental Meditation, I felt like I’d create a new blog post, start a new story, I’d always have that thought, just before I’d finish, “Can I really show this to anyone? How would they feel about who I really am?”

With TM came a new understanding of who I am, not just as a person, but as a writer. I no longer worry about whether someone judges what I write. For my fiction, I write for myself, for my blog posts I write to free myself and hopefully help others, which is extremely gratifying.

I’ve sat, staring at my monitor, my finger twitching, my hand on the publish button before, but now, publishing a blog post is a given. There are posts which don’t get the words out right and they may never be published, but I wrote them.

Sometimes getting past the fear of judgement is the greatest fear we deal with. It can be writing, performing or it can be our day job, but the fear of judgement dissipates.

Fear is the only thing which held me back from writing what I wanted. Fear is the only thing holding any of us back from becoming who we want to be and who we deserve to be. TM has truly been a blessing to me, one I intend to share with my wife and kids.

My fear of judgement on my writing and personal life is considerably less than before TM.

 

How Transcendental Meditation Helped Me Live in the Present Moment.

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A soft flurry, like shredded tissue paper from God’s hands fell around me.

I watched the three of them play, one snowball, another.

Their laughter and smiles infectious as they struggled to stay upright on the damp grass.

I stood at the top of the hill, a smile from ear to ear as I watched my wife and kids play and I wondered, “how many of these moments have I missed?”

When I think about the selfish person I was a year ago (and I’m not referring to suicide). I wonder about the times days like the snowballs and laughter happened, but I was too busy worrying about myself?

I could have done more for my wife and kids, I see that now, but then, I couldn’t see anything but my own ambition and ego.

Ambition which had led me astray, ego which had nearly killed my marriage, but now that I’m better and see who I was, I think about moments, small moments that I may have missed because I wasn’t paying attention to the “moment’.

But what thing stands out among everything. The person I was missed some awesome things, things which I’ll never get back, but I’m trying.

I look at my children playing, my son tearing it up on video games, my daughter and her Palace Pets, and I broke a promise to them, one I’ve been working to repair.

For my wife, whose trust and love I often took for granted, I try to make new moments for us. Moments only we know about, whether it’s laughter about me acting out something that happened at work, or doing one of the numerous voices I’m able to do, I’ve begun to find myself in the ego I once held sacred.

I look for ways to make up for the person I was, whether that’s my son telling me about school, showing me the details of his new Lego collection, or my daughter explaining the intricacies of which Palace Pet belongs to which Disney Princess.

I listen more to them now. My wife, I truly hear her. I don’t judge her as I once did. I take notice of her more and that’s the one thing I’ve noticed about TM and who I am now, I find myself more in love with my wife than I believe I’ve ever been.

I see the way she fixes her hair to try to hide the grey and the way she looks at me as if I were an alien when I respond to a question in a way my former self wouldn’t have.

I see all these things about my family, and to think, I’m different because of 20 minutes twice a day. That’s all I’ve changed.

How TM Made Me Care Again.

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Night Shot of the Lego Tumbler lit from underneath.

Night Shot of the Lego Tumbler lit from underneath.

Our strength is determined by how we deal with our lives. How we handle adversity and how we talk to others when we’ve screwed up.

After I started TM (Transcendental Meditation) I sat down with my wife and told her all the times i thought I’d screwed up in our relationship and with our kids.

It was the first time I felt like I’d accepted responsibility for something bad that I’d done.

My wife forgave me for the things which had happened and we’ve been doing better since, but I’ve been wanting to have a family project, something all of us could do together.

Family game night failed and I found my opportunity in July, when Lego decided to make a larger scale Lego Batman Tumbler.

It was something I knew my son would love, he’s always loved Bats and he’s a Lego fiend.

We started last week with 12 bags of Legos and we finished it on Monday, my son putting the final pieces together.

My wife and spent a few nights putting together the Tumbler and my son and I spent time doing the same.

It was the first time my wife and I had done a project together since we put our son’s bed together, he’s 10.

Building it was frustrating, irritating and fun all at the same time.

I learned my son is an amazing Lego builder and my wife gets more frustrated than I remember.

All of us had fun building it, our four-year old was too small, but she loved to watch it come together.

TM brought out the best in who I’ve been, it scuttled the rest and I’m discovering my life, kids and how much I truly love my wife all over again.

I know that life hasn’t always been good, and there will be rough patches, but when things get bad I now have something that can help me get through those rough patches better.

My wife and kids are important to me, possibly more than they know, and I’m learning to accept that I wasn’t always a great dad or husband before TM.

I know I’ve found something that has altered my perception of who I am and it’s been an amazing ride and it’s something I will do for the rest of my life.

I will work to get others to do it, not just because I’ve seen the benefits in myself, but I know the benefits can change who you are, and I’m really liking who I am right now and it’s been a very long time since I was able to say that.

 

 

How Transcendental Meditation Has Rewired Who I Am.

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Problems will disappear as darkness disappears with the onset of light. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

We discover we’ve found what we’re looking for in life when it falls on us from the sky. This is how TM has been, but I didn’t know how much TM had changed me until recently.

I’ve always dealt with challenges badly.

Things which didn’t go the way I wanted them to, or when something happened which wasn’t in my control, these things always made me lash out at whomever I believed was responsible.

A lot of the times it has been my wife. This happened not because of her, but because I wasn’t in control. I’ve never hit her, but words are worse than fists, as I know from my childhood.

We’ve had a storage unit for a long time, longer than we wanted, but that’s what happens when you have kids, get older and don’t want to throw stuff away.

We kept our Christmas stuff, childhood toys and a few other things in there, but we’d always paid it…

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through our banks statements and noticed the money for the unit hadn’t come out in a while.

My wife checked on it, and it hadn’t been paid in a long time.

My wife called me at work, needing to talk to me about it.

Never have I felt like TM had changed me so much as when I talked to her on the phone that night.

She explained what happened, my response, “It’s just stuff, we can replace stuff. Are you okay?”

Before TM, I would have yelled screamed and might not have come home.

We’ve talked about it since and we both agree, I would never have been as calm without TM.

All of the things we collect in life are just stuff. There’s nothing more important than the people sharing your life.

Remember when you get angry to take a step back and think, “How will this effect our relationship?”

When you look at who you are; are you happy with how you act towards others? Do you find joy when you’re discussing your life with others? And most important, Are you happy with who you are?

Five months ago I would say no to each of those. Today, I find more peace in talking to people, but nothing gets me upset, not like before TM.

I’ve found my happy place. I’ve discovered where I’m supposed to be and what I should be doing with my life.

TM has rewired who I am, and I no longer worry about my temper, because it’s no longer there.

Writing to Help Others.

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We disguise who we are from ourselves. We do this to keep others away, keep ourselves happy and to, hopefully, chase the demons we deal with.

The disguise we use often depends upon the nature of the demon. Childhood trauma is a big one, but hiding from things we don’t want others to know, this keeps us happy, but also maintains the disguise.

Keeping up the illusion gets harder as we get older, and creating ways to deal with our demons may lead us down a darker path.

A path filled with pills, bottles and cutting, but writing creates a forum for our demons. It brings them to the forefront of who we are, and more importantly who we strive to be.

Writing, like meditation is our outlet and with that outlet we discover we’re stronger than we believed possible, even if we must discover it through our fiction.

Fiction is the one outlet which we can put a character in a situation and possibly work through the issues we’ve dealt with through them.

The process is difficult, but leads us to a different path, one devoid of pills, bottles and hopefully cutting.

Finding the right story to get through our trauma may be difficult, but keeping a journal of the trauma and story ideas helps.

In the pages of our journals we find an avenue to get through the life we had, have and hopefully will lead us to a better day.

Writing fiction helps us to find ourselves through our characters. It encourages us to get through another day and discover, we are better than we were told, and it helps us to know, just like our characters, things to get better.

They get better because we keep writing. We keep trying and we decide the disguise, though useful, isn’t necessary anymore.

When we write, we discover there are others who’ve needed the help. Who’ve waited for something to help them through their dark paths.

We write because we know there’s that one book which helped us, and we want someone else to feel the same hope we felt.

We lose our disguise because we no longer feel the need to hide from the world. We abandon the disguise, we get through it and we write to help others.