Did you miss the previous post about my book launch? If so, you can Click Here to read it.

Please join me this week as I post excerpts of my new book on meditation. The posts will culminate on the final book launch date...Sunday, June 25th. I hope you enjoy the remainder of Chapter One. If you missed the first portion of the chapter please click the link ^ above ^ to read it.

Each chapter of this book has a section entitled Putting It Into Practice that gives you practical prompts on how to apply what you’ve learned in each chapter to your personal life.

Chapter One (continued)

Meditation is Liberation

Before I found meditation, negative self talk looped in my head almost constantly. By continually thinking negative internal thoughts and comparing ourselves to others, many of us fall into a rut of sabotaging the quality our own life experience.

“I’m not smart enough”, “I’m not as good looking or successful as they are”, “This certain person doesn’t like me”, “This idea will never work.” Sound familiar?

Marianne Williamson said, ”Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”

This quote is important because I’ve come to realize that subconsciously most of us know exactly how powerful we are and it terrifies us. Why? If we admit that we have the power to transform ourselves and accomplish anything in life it’s impossible to blame anyone or anything else for our own unhappiness. Think about this for a moment.

Most of us have heard of the word, “institutionalized” and know its meaning but few of us realize that we have become institutionalized ourselves. Nothing illustrates this concept better than my favorite film, “A Shawshank Redemption.”

As unbelievable as it seems, it is common for prisoners who have been incarcerated for decades, when released, to find themselves unable to deal with freedom. Freedom terrifies them. Some even end up breaking the law to get back into prison. These people, who at first grieve because their freedom has been taken from them, strangely begin to find security and comfort behind the bars that keep them in bondage.

The same phenomena occurs in our daily lives. When we’re young, most of us have clear dreams and aspirations but if we’re not mindful, as the ocean erodes the sand, the routines of life slowly wear our dreams away. After a few years our dreams are pushed back into the farthest corners of our minds and are likely labeled as naive illusions.

As our daily routines literally become etched onto our brains, even though we may be miserably unhappy in our lives, we lose our ability to even imagine a different way of living. We become so dependent upon the routine itself that we forget that other options that would make us far happier exist and are just a decision away!

As you will experience, meditation is many wonderful things but first and foremost it is a process of relearning who we really are and unleashing the awesome power that each and every one of us possess. We are like sleeping giants that merely have to be awakened.

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

Take a moment to access your strengths and weaknesses. What are you really good at? What things about yourself would you like to improve? What are your personal and professional goals for the next year?

List the answers to these questions in the Notes page at the end of this chapter. After a few months of meditation practice, revisit these notes and use them as a guide to see how far you’ve progressed in your development.

Click here to read the next post in the series.

Thank you for reading. Please join me here on Sunday, June 25th for the final kick-off of The Perfect Pause!

*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.