How to know if Meditation is working for me?
Or : Am I making progress in Meditation ?
When you start doing meditation on regular basis, these questions will keep bothering you. In this article we will discuss about some changes you will experience in your practice to know if Meditation is working for you or not.
Just like any other endeavor worth doing, it is natural for us to be curious about our progress in Meditation. This is really important to make any course correction in between like tweaking the practice, changing the schedule or trying an altogether different meditation technique.
So, how to know if Meditation is working for you ?
Since everybody in this world is different, it is difficult to give a general answer for this question. But still here is this : You will start feeling some positive changes in you.
One of the most visible changes will be an increase in the depth of your awareness. It will happen very slowly but it is bound to happen. You will realize that all along you will be living this life in a sleep state. There was no attempt to be a witness of your own thoughts and you were a slave to the desire of your mind. Now as you start meditating, you will get a chance to contemplate on these desires and their root. It is just like withdrawing yourself from the role of a character you are playing in a stage called life and sitting in the audience to watch the play.
I know that reaching at the stage of witness is not an easy task. It takes time and consistent practice but its glimpses start appearing in the very early stage itself. Suppose you are trying to meditate for the past 20 minutes and every time you focus your attention on your breathing, your mind wanders and make you involve in a thought process. The arising of thoughts in your mind are so strong that you find it impossible to stop it. However, then after getting involved in the wandering of the thoughts you suddenly realize that you are suppose to focus your attention on the breathing. And then you come back and align your focus on the breath. Then again, after a few seconds, your mind wanders again. Then after a few minutes you again realize that the mind has wandered. And it goes on. ..
Now, tell me honestly. Who tells you during this process that your mind has wandered ? Think about it.
It’s the witness inside you. It starts showing its glimpses in the initial practice itself.
Apart from a realization of the witness, what are the other changes one can expect ?
The process of meditation, when done properly, is a huge stress buster. The problems, challenges, misfortune, ill luck, the stress of the daily life, the constant demands from various people you come into contact on daily basis – None of them will go by Meditation. They all will remain to bother you at every step of your life. However, when you start meditating, these things will no longer make you miserable. After every session of meditation, you will find energy and confidence in dealing with all of them. Though it is difficult to explain the reasons behind this phenomenon, the very process of meditation kicks in positive change in our outlook towards life. You will find yourself better prepared to tackle with all the issues that surrounds you on daily basis.
Meditation is not a miracle that will fulfill all your wishes. But it is a miracle that will makes you think over the relevance of those wishes and achieve a proper perspective about them.
So, how to know if meditation is working ? If you are doing correctly, you will get to know yourself. The accompanying benefits that will come through meditation will be the proof enough that it is working for you.