Is Meditation Worth Your Time and Effort?

4 Lessons That Keep Me Coming Back to the Cushion

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

I’ve practiced meditation for nearly 9 years. In the meditation world that makes me a newbie. I practice almost daily. Sometimes it’s 10 minutes. Sometimes it’s 2 hours (not all at once). It just depends on my schedule and my day. I’ve been on a couple of 3 day silent retreats and I went on my first 7 day retreat a few weeks ago.

Retreat has definitely enhanced and deepened my practice. It’s made me aware of things that were hidden and given me insights into the patterns of my brain. Most days I don’t notice huge changes in my life from my practice. The subtle magic of meditation is the gentle ease it adds to your daily existence. It won’t always hit you over the head with earth-shattering transformations (though those are possible too).

For most endeavors in life, we want immediate feedback and dramatic results. We want to improve, change, feel better, look better, or just be better, in as fast a time as possible. The problem is we’re so unaware of the small changes that are occuring, we miss our own progress and end up giving up too early.

Meditation helps address that problem by broadening and enhancing our awareness, gradually and faithfully as long as we stick to the practice. This awareness has illuminated…