15 - H4H News: Tune Into Essence with Meditation

Synopsis: Hope for Humanity News is a series of three to five-minute weekly podcasts designed to educate, inspire, and comfort listeners during these challenging, but hopeful times. 

Hi everyone! Welcome to Hope for Humanity News! I’m Reverend Joan Kistler.

We’ve been talking about the difference between listening to Essence and listening to the ego, and most of us would probably prefer to tune into the still, small, gentle voice of Essence than to the incessant, loud, demanding voice of the ego.

We learned that practicing mindfulness is one way that we can learn to tune out the ego and tune into Essence. Another way is by practicing meditation. What is meditation?

Mindfulness is actually a form of meditation. I consider mindfulness a more informal mode of meditation. We practice mindfulness in our daily lives when we pause to be aware of the present moment and the bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions that we are experiencing within it.

The practice of meditation is more deliberate and structured, and it can help us to be more mindful in our daily lives. When we meditate, we usually stop all motion – except for what necessary to sustain life, like breathing. Then for an extended period of time – perhaps 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or longer, we anchor our awareness in something.

Beginners are usually encouraged to anchor their awareness in their breath. So, for the amount of time that you choose, you focus your attention on your breath, following each inhalation and exhalation from start to finish. If your mind wanders, simply bring it back to focus on the breath without judgment or commentary. That’s the hard part because the ego will definitely judge our efforts and will have plenty to say about them.

That’s what the ego does, so part of meditation is accepting the thoughts and feelings that arise, letting them go, and returning the focus on the anchor – time and time again. That’s what the practice is all about – learning to not get “hooked” by the ego’s thoughts and the feelings they generate and to return our awareness to the present. In this way, we learn how to not let the ego run our lives.

There are many ways to practice meditation, so it’s important to experiment to find ways that work for you – and, of course – it is important to not give up and keep practicing!

As I’ve said before, the ego will generate thoughts to distract us from practicing mindfulness and meditation, and if it gets a chance to give those thoughts a splash of emotion, then the thoughts are particularly “sticky,” and difficult to let go.

So one more way to tune out the ego and tune into Essence is to practice emotional awareness.

How do we practice emotional awareness?

Tune in next week.