Meditation

It occurs to me that it's mentioned in my tagline, but I don't really talk much about it - I thought I'd redress the balance a bit!

I've been practicing Raj Yoga Meditation as taught by the Brahma Kumaris for four years (almost to the day). For some people, meditation is a hobby, something they do to unwind, and face the stresses and complexities of modern life. This is partly true for me too, but its more than that - it's a lifestyle choice, and it informs decisions I make throughout my life. I was, it's fair to say, drifting pretty aimlessly before I began to practice. I gave up smoking (both regular and jazz cigarrettes!) about the same time I started to meditate (a few days after in fact). For the few years before I stopped smoking, my taste for Mary Jane was seriously undermining my ability to function properly. At it's worst, I was smoking half an ounce of skunk a week, which is plenty enough to interfere with your day to day life - there are certainly people that smoke more than that, but I'd say I was in the 80 percentile...

It was a series of events that conspired to take me from the life I was living then to the much more clean living me you find today. I met a therapist who was clearly a very special person, and underwent a course of counselling which allowed me to begin to address the extremely complex childhood I'd had. At the end of that therapy I mentioned that I'd like to look into some kind of meditation - he said he'd done a bit of investigation when he was my age, and had settled on Raja Yoga as the path for him. Since I respected his opinion I asked him if he'd teach me, which he did. The course I took was seven weeks long and changed my whole life. It covered a whole range of topics, philosophical and practical and made a lot of sense to me (although it was also pretty challenging.) Anyway, by and by I decided I'd give the whole process a go, and made some big lifestyle changes and began to practice meditation. It came to me slowly (it's still coming) but I began to experience some of the incredible joy and power of the meditative experience and I decided to put it at the forefront of my life. I meditate every day, for at least an hour, and ideally more - mostly in the early hours of the morning, before the day proper begins.

Some days, I don't bother, and I always regret it, because the burdens of the day are inevitably heavier to carry. Meditation has made me lighter, happier, and more able to make being positive minded into a practical and solid reality, rather than an aim. There's still a long way to go, but it's better than it was...