Many people in the modern world can feel adrift, uncertain and looking for meaning without any real idea of what to look for. These people can often feel lost, searching for something that they don’t even understand. Some people fill this void with horoscopes, or physical experiences like vacations, meals, and parties.
However, many overlook spiritual options, like meditation, that could offer more permanent meaning and motivation.
Living Your Best Life Through Mindfulness
Mindfulness Meditation
Meditation exists as both a physical and spiritual practice. Many religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, incorporate meditation into their religious practices. Secular and atheist practitioners can also find peace and comfort in mindfulness, though, and this is part of the lasting impact meditation has had on human culture.
In short, mindfulness and meditation refer to the practice of clearing one’s mind and focusing on something apart from the moment-to-moment senses before us. Meditating can help you center yourself, gather your thoughts and focus on your overall goals and life purpose. Physical movements, such as those seen in yoga and tai chi, can help practitioners enter a meditative mindset.
Living Your Best Life
While “living your best life” might be a relatively new turn of phrase in the Western tradition, the message of “living up to one’s potential” is pivotal in many religious and spiritual movements that incorporate mediation. Many people who feel lost or adrift might find purpose or meaning within themselves by looking beyond the merely physical aspects of the world around them. That’s where meditation comes in.
Deciding on a mantra, focusing on sacred geometry and other such methods can be used to enter a meditative mindset. These methods can help the practitioner to clear their mind and find peace, comfort and meaning within their own soul. In some traditions, this involves manipulating the “life energy,” “ki,” or “prada” of the practitioner. In others, this is a purely mental exercise that helps to calm nerves and focus thoughts.
Clearing Blocked Chakras
Another large focus of some practitioners of meditation is the process of “clearing blocked chakras.” Sometimes this means a spiritual cleansing of the body’s pools of life energy, though in secular terms it could also be seen as a form of self-guided therapy. In either case, clearing one’s own chakras is seen as a way to purge negative emotions and invoke more positivity and meaningful action in one’s life.
These practices need not be explicitly religious in nature, though there’s nothing wrong with exploring spirituality while meditating. Self-guided, free-form meditation can be a wonderful way to realize one’s own potential, to clear the mind and to bring greater clarity and focus. Try it some time, and watch as your focus and determination help you to realize your best self, and your best life!
Kat Sweet
Add comment