Meditation Doesn’t Take Time, It Gives Time

How many of us spend more time designing our home than our own mind? In our home, we can move one piece of furniture here and one piece there and get things into place temporarily. There may come a time when we want to change everything and start fresh. We take everything out of the room and consciously choose what will go back into that room, so we can feel at home. But this scenario is an illusion. The room and the house are not our true home because we are not this mind. And yet this mind and this body are leading our lives. When we become interior designers of our own mind through meditation, then we can find our true home.

When we meditate, we step back. It’s almost as if we’re watching someone else’s mind except we’re more familiar with the contents. Over time, we gain distance from “my thoughts,” “my experience,” and “my desires.” We become detached to the degree that we can begin to see and feel what we want to have in our minds. We can learn to rearrange and remove the “furniture” of the mind. Some people think, “I don’t have time to meditate; my life is so busy.” All of us, to some degree, can relate to that. But it’s not true because meditation gives time.

Many of us spend a lot of time dwelling on the problems that are produced by the various thoughts in the mind. Sometimes we say, “I don’t know what to do. I have so many things going on in my life that I just don’t know what to choose.”

If we take time before we start the day to step back and allow the mind to empty, then afterwards, we experience the benefits of that meditation. When we are meditating, our mind may follow a thought, so we lose the meditation. Then we realize, “Oh, I’m supposed to be meditating,” and we pull ourselves back to witnessing. Then some time passes and an interesting thought gets us again, and we pull ourselves out again. Every time we return to the witness state, it makes a print on the mind. It’s like a camera taking pictures continually. The prints start to create new grooves in the brain. The new grooves are the positive changes that allow us to step back from the mind. We start to find our mind is clearer throughout the day.

If we learn to pay attention and listen through meditation, we can discern the inner voice of the higher mind. It may be very simple like “It’s time to clean up your room,” “It’s time to complete this project,” or “It’s time to offer kindness to this person.” When we start to follow this inner voice, when we start to listen, it will more and more determine our actions. Meditation creates the quiet in the mind necessary to hear this inner voice.

When we stop to witness, we’ve opened ourselves up for something else to come through. This is the Higher Self. Let’s not let this life pass without truly diving into our source of happiness, our true self, our true home.