Introducing Mindfulness Meditation
Meditation can Provide Mental Clarity.
In today’s society, meditation is becoming a common word in our vernacular. Meditation which was once perceived as confined to the Eastern realm of scholarly and Buddhist studies, had not merged into the mainstream of everyday life for both Eastern and Western civilizations. As lives become busier with much less time for relaxation and contemplation, meditation can provide a respite from daily stress, concern and strife. During a job transition process, the daily anxieties of life can seem magnified to a much greater degree. Concerns about find a new position, scoring that next interview and financial uncertainty about the future can increase stress levels thus making it difficult to cope and find peace. It is important during this time of stress and change to put in place a soothing contemplative practice to calm the mind and relax from the events of the day. As you incorporate a sacred space in your home, you provide yourself with a quiet sanctuary for meditation, contemplation and prayer.
The Benefits of Meditation
People turn to meditation for a variety of reasons including learning to relax, eliminating unnecessary stress and lowering tension in their lives. Meditation can seem like taking a vacation. Because when you return “home,” you feel refreshed and re-focused gaining a new perspective on life. This is critical to the job search process where each day can provide a new set of stressors. Emotional solace and being able to make sense of what has happened is critical during a time of loss. Meditation can offer the gateway to exploring the range of thoughts and emotions that come up during this turbulent time.
Bill Anderton in his book Meditation – Exercises and Inspirations for Well-Being, writes, “Meditation can put us in touch with our minds and bodies and help us to understand our unconscious motives and desires. It allows us to identify negative thoughts and emotions and to work through and eliminate unhelpful feelings. It can help one discover the unconscious forces operating in our inner lives and make changes for the better. Expressed simply, meditation is the creation of a relaxed state of awareness of mind and body.”
The Buddhist Perspective
No discussion of meditation would be complete without exploring the Buddhist philosophies of training and working with the mind by sitting in meditation. Through training the mind, it is thought that you can become more settled, accepting and relaxed when experiencing whatever live brings us. As you learn and put into regular practice a sitting meditation, you can learn more deeply how to relate directly to life, experiencing the present moment and living more in the now rather than the stories of past traumas.
Pema Chodron writes in her book How to Meditate-A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind, “According to the Buddhist dharma or the teaching of the Buddha, the intention of meditation is to remove suffering. That could be the reason why so many people are attracted to meditation, because typically people do not find themselves sitting in the meditation posture unless they have something that is bothering them.” Meditation gives you the opportunity to have an open, compassionate attentiveness to whatever is going on. The meditative space is like the big sky – vast enough to accommodate anything that arises. “During meditation one’s thoughts and emotions can become like clouds that linger and then pass away. Good and comfortable, pleasing, difficult and painful, all of this comes and goes.” This concept could seem unreachable for someone who is in the throes of a lost livelihood and daunting job search. However, meditation can be the gateway for some people to waken fully to their lives.
How Meditation can Open Your Mind
Pema Chodron in How to Meditate – A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind, writes about five qualities that begin to take form over the time that you begin and nurture a meditation practice.
- Cultivating and nurturing steadfastness within ourselves – Steadfastness means that when one sits down to meditate, they allow themselves to experience what’s happening in that moment. There is a tendency to lay a lot of labels, opinions and judgements on top of what’s happening. Steadfastness – loyalty to oneself means letting the judgements go. When one notices their mind going in millions of directions, they just stay with the experience and let it be (Chodron 6).
- Clear seeing – Through meditation, one develops the ability to catch themselves when they are spinning off, or hardening to circumstances and people, or somehow closing down to life. Through the development of clear awareness and staying in meditation, one begins to form a nonjudgmental, unbiased clarity of just seeing. Thoughts and emotions come and one can see them clearly (Chodron 7).
- Cultivation of Courage – Over time, one will develop the courage to experience one’s emotional discomfort and the trials and tribulations of life. Meditation is a transformative process, rather than a magic takeover. The more one practices, the more one opens and develops courage in their life. In meditation, one learns how to get out of their way long enough for one’s own wisdom to manifest and this happens because this wisdom is no longer repressed (Chodron 8).
- The ability to become awake to our lives – Being with each and every moment of one’s life just as it is. This is the absolute essence of meditation, learning how to just be here in the present moment. By relaxing into the present moment, one learns how to relax with the unknown. the present moment is the generative fire of one’s meditation. It is what propels one towards transformation (Chodron 10).
- The ability to become flexible to the present moment – With meditation, one may experience profound insight, or a feeling of grace or blessing, or feeling of transformation and new-found courage, but then – no big deal. These things happen and can transform one’s life, but don’t make a big deal of them as it can lead to arrogance, pride or a sense of specialness (Chodron 13).
For more information on meditation, please check out Monique Rhodes at www.moniquerhodesonline.com for wonderful 10 Minute Guided Meditations and a variety of Sleep Meditations as well as other courses. Also check out Sean Fargo both on You Tube and at his website www.mindfulnessexercises.com for a wealth of how to videos and worksheets and courses on meditation.
Check out our other blogs on career transitions and coping with the emotional side of job transitions. Be sure to sign up for our email list to receive a free copy of our Supportive Reading Resources for Transitions. As always, please feel free to reach out to us with any questions or thoughts at support@mindfuljobalignment.com. Also, you can leave your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
By: Diana C. Stephens, PhD