Tag Archives: transcendental meditation

Ignoring Fear and Living

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Whatever future, whatever past, each day brings us to our very last.

These words are something which ran through my head the other day during meditation. I’m not sure where they came from. Maybe I tapped into something which was screaming to be heard, or my mind thought, “let’s screw with him”.

It’s possibly the first and not the latter, but neither would be surprising.

Our future is there in front of us, yelling at us, telling us we can do amazing things, if we’d just do them and quit stalling or being afraid, but fear is always what keeps us from doing things.

Fear drives us to commit horrible crimes and fear creates people who otherwise wouldn’t be heard if not for their fear.

Stealing away from fear, our lives are our own. They are run by us, and only us. We do the things we want, because fear has less hold on us than anything else, but the fear is always there, it’s just hidden away.

Our past may not be the way we wanted it to be, no ones never truly is, but it’s there to learn from, to destroy the fear residing inside and chase the demons of our past into the night.

The night holds fear, but only for those who fear it. There are many things to fear in our world, none of them are truly about fear, more about we believe fear to be.

Fear is that heartbeat in the bottom of your throat, the gasping for air in pool and lies we’ve told.

Our fear, our past and our future are nothing but what we make them out to be. They stand by waiting to be called into battle, but there is little we can do until the battle call is heard.

Fear keeps us from fulfilling who we should be, and not who others believe we are.

Fear disrupts, causes chaos and changes our very subtle rhythm in our hearts, There is nothing more controlling about fear, than the pain of fear.

This pain causes things to wear us down. Take our mind from us and causes us to question who we are, or who we want to be.

The fear of our lives is under our control, how we control it determines how we live our lives, or if we live our lives.

We fall through our lives, waiting for the very last, living in fear of that last day.

We should ignore the fear of our last day until it arrives and then only at that moment when our last gasp comes out will we know that our fear of death meant nothing.

Crawling from the Chasm of Doubt and into the Pool of TM.

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When we think about truth, we usually think about the opposite, lies.

What if the opposite of truth weren’t a lie, you just didn’t know the truth to begin with?

This is how I came to understand my life before TM. The fact that I’ve improved my life, relationships and writing through TM isn’t the big thing, it’s discovering the lie we’re told as kids.

The lie says this: We have to follow the things those before us did. We must have the family, job and spiritual life of our parents h. At least that’s what I believed growing up.

In truth, we’ve always been in control, but the things we didn’t know about who we were are great enough they were overwhelming and thus creating a chasm of doubt you’ll struggle to climb out of your entire life, not mention the loss of creativity due to trying to climb from the chasm.

Each day we wake up and decide what to do with our life.

What if you could get past the lie and create a world all your own and dive into a deep, calming pool twice a day? A pool filled with radiance you’d never felt before.

This is how TM (Transcendental Meditation) feels.

I wake up an hour earlier than I did before TM, I go to bed earlier and I have more energy than I did in my teens.

One the biggest, and most obvious to those who know me is the feeling of your mind being at rest all day. There are hiccups, but for the most part nothing bothers me.

I go through my day job with such energy people have asked what I’m taking. None of them know what’s going on, and I like it that way. I like to keep them guessing.

My creativity is higher than its ever been. I can recall my dreams, and nightmares, with clarity; something I’ve never been able to do before.

Writing is no longer as difficult as it once was, the editing side still is. The first draft comes faster, I get in a rhythm earlier and I hit “The Zone” earlier than I have with anything I’ve written before.

I’m taking more time to enjoy my wife, kids and my wonderful 16 year-old dog.

Honestly, there a million ways to describe TM, but until you try it, you’ll never understand.

If you have any questions about TM, ask them here or find me on Twitter.

Stemming the Tide of Depression with Transcendental Meditation

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In September my grandfather passed away and there were a few things about that which set me into a severe depression which no one noticed, not even my wife.

The depression lasted until late February, but it’s been a recurring thing for me since. I’ll get all melancholy, and now that my wife knows what I was going through, she knows what to look for.

Since breaking through the depression, I’d found myself going in and out of depression. Thoughts of suicide ran rampant through my mind on a daily basis during the depression, and lets just say it’s a good thing I don’t own a firearm.

My reasons for trying Transcendental Meditation (TM) stem a lot from the depression I fell into, caused by events following my grandfather’s passing.

In early November I got shingles, I knew this was from the stress of my grandfather’s passing. I also understood that I was beginning to spiral, though I hid it well from my wife, family and co-workers.

The catalyst to get me into TM was a breakdown I had at work, caused by an interaction with a co-worker, who said, “I don’t care what’s wrong with you.” His statement sent me over the cliff.

After work that day I cried in my car for twenty minutes. It was hard sobbing, uncontrollable crying. The type of crying you’d do as a kid. I called my wife on my way home and told her I needed to do something, and soon.

After that day, I knew I had two choices, be done with living, or truly start living. TM is my way to live.

When I attended the first introduction meeting I knew I would do it before I walked in. The next week I took my first lesson. That was one week ago. I feel more awake, and for the first time in a very long time, I feel alive.

TM is a lot like other meditations, except for the mantra. When you learn TM, your teacher gives you a mantra, it’s a word, phrase or combined words which create a tone, that centers you in a way that makes your body drop all its defenses and sends you spiraling into a deep pool of bliss.

I can’t tell you my mantra, because each one is special to each individual. I keep it as a sacred thing.

I can only speak of my experience, but TM was my last stop before jumping. I’ve backed away from the cliff in the last week and I’m now more comfortable in my skin than I’ve been since before my parents were divorced, when I was 8.

If you have any question or comments, please ask them.

 

Diving to the Source, my First Experience with Transcendental Meditation

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Have you ever felt like the world wasn’t what you were told? Have you ever felt that there was someone hiding behind a curtain and eventually they’d jump out and say, “Gotcha”?

I’ve been following a path that many of my generation have. I moved away from faith-based religions and into Eastern Philosophy and have considered myself Buddhist for at least ten years, maybe longer.

In the last few years that hasn’t been enough for me. My meditation practice had fallen off, or been non-existent.

A lot of this was because of a hectic life of a day-job, wife, kids, writing schedules and in not practicing my Mindfulness Meditation, I’ve become more angry and lost faith in who I am, was and where my life was headed.

I wanted something more than Mindfulness Meditation was offering.

My search began to narrow in the last six months.

I watched a speech by David Lynch about Transcendental Meditation, and from there I listened to his audio book of “Catching the Big Fish”, after that I listened to Transcendence by Norman E. Rosenthal on audio.

After listening to those as well as reading Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation I found myself in a place I hadn’t been in a long time; I was without direction.

On Monday I had my first TM session and though I was a bit apprehensive and thought that maybe, just maybe there would be a man with a small alien which he would attach to my spinal column, nothing close to that happened.

The truth is, I’ve never felt something as profound, spiritually like TM. The session was easy and transcending was easier that I thought it would be.

It was as though I were on an elevator and the cable snapped, but I could still control the descent.

The closest feeling I can compare it to is the sound of my kids the first time I heard their cries, it was that life altering.

This post is different from my usual writing posts, because honestly, after my first TM session I feel different.

Going forward I believe my sessions with TM will help me along my path, as well as lead me to new ones, but going forward my perspective is forever altered.

If you have any questions, please ask them below. If I can answer them, I will.