Here’s What Meditation Can Do For Your Well Being

In a time when we are all too busy and distracted, it is more important than ever to take care of ourselves. Alan Watts offers an introduction into the world of meditation that will help you experience life in its purest form – now!

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The idea of meditation has become so popular that even spiritual poseurs have started talking up their meditative bliss. Spiritual postures and one-uppers take over our social feeds, making it seem like a quick fix to all your problems are just around the corner. The more popular spiritual practices enter the wide marketplace, it’s like they become diluted and turned into nonsense. If you want an authentic experience of mediation or contemplation then avoid commercialized versions that are prevalent today as that kind won’t do anything for your soul.

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How To Meditate According To Allan Watts:

“Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. And therefore, if you meditate for an ulterior motive — that is to say, to improve your mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life — you’ve got your eye on the future and you are not meditating!”

The Purpose Of Meditation

Meditation is about being fully present at the moment. We remove the symbolic language, hangups of time, and experience only what’s around us at this very instant. Once you realize these things there are no limits to where or how long someone can meditate because they will find their own way when it comes down to lose themselves within meditation without thinking too much. There are so many ways to meditate. You could sit on the beach, under a tree, or even in an open field with nothing but nature as your personal instructor and guide.

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When we are constantly thinking, logically analyzing, and labeling experiences as a way to make sense of the world around us – it becomes difficult for our minds not to be filled with chatter. That constant mental noise can actually have some negative effects. When you’re feeling stressed or mentally exhausted from dwelling too much in thoughts without doing anything about them then simply sitting down might seem like yet another thing that stresses out people even more than they already were before–and this is something none of us should ever need an excuse for eliminating when possible.

“The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality. And the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think about it, and talk about it, and describe it. For — on the one hand — there is the real world and — on the other — a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds.”

Watts knew that by being part of civilization, we are bound to symbolic thinking and language. He also understood the extent to which our minds actually work all day long – even when they’re not conscious yet.

“Meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up. That is to say, that we become interiorly silent and cease from the interminable chatter that goes on inside our skulls. Because you see, most of us think compulsively all the time.”

We all know that tomorrow never comes. We can be in the future or past, depending on how you look at it, and your point of view changes with each new day- but there’s no need to stress about it because meditation puts us back into our present moment which is just as good.

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Ways To Meditate

There are many ways to meditate, and each one has its own benefits. Eastern texts provide a variety of practices – from different methods and techniques, but there is always some common ground that provides the framework for meditation. Alan Watts describes his ways on how he meditates:

“You can sit any way you want. You can sit in a chair, or you can sit like I’m sitting — which is the Japanese way of sitting — or you can sit in the lotus posture… the easier you’ll find it to do — or you can just sit cross-legged on a raised cushion above the floor. Now, the point of this is that if you keep your back erect… you are centered and easily balanced, and you have a feeling of being thoroughly rooted to the ground.”

Once you master these basics, it will be time for some fun. Throw in a mantra or two and see how your meditation goes from boring to beautiful. Join Alan Watts today so that we can all have brighter futures together.

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