Benefits of Meditation
Benefits of Meditation
Meditation is the process of re-discovering, enjoying and using the positive qualities latent within you. Like any skill, meditation requires practice to achieve positive and satisfying results. By doing a little every day, it soon becomes a natural and easy habit, which generously rewards you for the little effort it involves.
Meditation energizes your awareness, bringing both peace and wisdom to a busy mind. It expands one’s capacity to love, and heals broken hearts. It also dissolves many fears, replacing them with lightness and freedom from anxiety.
But perhaps the greatest gift that meditation brings is the glow of inner peace that is both gentle and strong.
Practice of Rajyoga meditation or intellectual communion with God brings into the soul many powers. Of these, eight are important.
Power to Pack Up
With the ability to go within, one can learn how to pack up all wasteful thinking in a second, so that there is lightness and freedom from burdens and worries, though there may be many responsibilities. One’s mind is scattered over the wide world and so much drawn out to people and matters that one is unable to sleep or to detach oneself at will. With the practice of meditation, one can wind up one’s thoughts at will.
Power to Tolerate
Just as trees offer fruit to all, regardless of whether they gently pluck it or throw stones at them, a yogi tolerates any kind of behaviour and responds to even hostility with grace. In a light frame of mind, one can tolerate any kind of situation or people without even feeling that one is tolerating something. Impatience, irritation and annoyance disappear like mist in bright sunshine when one has the understanding that each soul is simply playing its role in the vast drama of this world.
Power to Accommodate
Just as the ocean accepts all rivers, polluted or clean, that flow into it, a yogi can accommodate all sorts of people and adjust to any situation. This power makes one broadminded and patient.
Power of Judgment
This is the ability to take quick and correct decisions. One gets the ability to accurately assess a situation. In a detached, impartial state of mind, one can also judge one’s own thoughts, words and actions, and ensure that one’s judgment is not influenced by any bias.
Power of Discrimination
Just as an expert jeweller can distinguish between false and real gems, an experienced practitioner of meditation develops the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad. A yogi can tell truth from apparent truth and see the difference between things of temporary value and those of lasting value, and between the superficial and the subtle. This power saves one from being deceived by illusions.
Power to Face
Meditation develops one’s ability to face loss, adversity and hardship with equanimity. The awareness and confidence a yogi develops in his or her spiritual worth gives him the courage to face any situation.
Power to Cooperate
As a result of having the above powers, one is able to share with others one’s qualities and help them in their tasks. There is no feeling of competition, so one is easily able to give as well as accept suggestions in the best interest of the task at hand. This power helps people come together to accomplish big things.
Power to Withdraw
With the awareness that I, the soul, am an entity different from the body, one can withdraw from the senses and free oneself from the influence of an unpleasant situation. Just as a tortoise retreats into its shell to rest or escape a threat, a yogi can retract himself from any situation and stay protected.