Could I persuade you to meditate?

I know, I know – where are you going to find time to meditate?

(…the irony being that if you meditate, time just feels less squeezed as your mind starts to manage life in a calmer, more step-by-step way!)

We’ve all heard about meditation (and mindfulness) and many of us generally have the idea that it is beneficial, helps reduce stress and brings more tranquillity into our lives. However, few of us are probably convinced enough to dedicate consistent time to it. Like a friend of mine said after I told her I had meditated for an hour, ‘haven’t you got better things to do with your time?’ Well it really does depend upon what we might mean by better. This journey is handing me gifts such that each hour feels like one well spent! However, I do get that it’s maybe a little too counter-culture for many. We’re not generally encouraged to listen to eastern philosophies in our highly individualistic and driven, western world!

But I thought I’d share my experiences of it as its impact is starting to – for want of a better way of describing it – amaze me!

I originally learned to meditate about ten years ago using the method of transcendental meditation (TM). I am lucky enough to have a cousin who could teach me as she worked in the TM school in Skelmersdale. She stayed with me for a week and was extremely reassuring with:

No two meditations will be the same.
If you sit and your mind whirls continuously, that will still be beneficial. (I did find that after a stressful workday, if I sat and ‘meditated’ with a frantic mind for 20 minutes, I felt like I had at least downloaded the day and it meant the rest of the evening felt calmer.)
The mantra (she gave me one) is for gently returning to when you realise your mind has wandered off into thought (which it will do). This slowly trains your brain to return to simple mindfulness that eventually reduces the usual scattergun thinking.
You’re not forcing anything. You gently ease into meditation. (After about a year, I started to get a headache every time I settled to meditate. An experienced meditator I found told me I was ‘trying too hard’! After a session with him, the headaches went.)
Just ‘turning up’ regularly is the best thing you can do. Originally I was doing 20 minutes twice a day but I am enjoying longer stints these days. However, I think just ten minutes a day still has impact.
Meditation is always better done on an empty stomach. I can vouch for this as when digesting, there seems a lot than can distract you going on inside – certainly when you’re new to meditation!
It can take a while before you concretely notice the benefits but they build up over time and become more and more noticeable. (The analogy my cousin used was dipping the corner of a cloth into pale dye and slowly watching the colour become more and more intense.)
It is something you need to ‘practise.’ You do get better at it over time but improvement is quite gradual, so you need to take stock now and then to noticed the shifts that have happened.

My first stint at meditating did help me – mostly to be less frantic and stressed, but it was not until my return to some more dedicated practice this last year, that I have really seen the effect of regular meditation. (That’s the problem with telling someone to meditate: until you actually experience the benefits, it’s hard to understand why you would bother. But unless you bother, you won’t get to see the benefits. The benefits are rarely noticeably instantaneous!)

I would say that a key part of meditation is about training the brain to dis-identify with its thoughts (the incessant thoughts that can sometimes trigger negative emotions on their own) and tune in to, and experience, a deeper, calmer awareness which helps you realise that thinking is just a flighty, often unreliable, whisp-of-a-thing! That may or may not mean something to you. So instead, let me list the benefits I have noticed in other ways:

I am definitely calmer and have far less ‘gotta, gotta, gotta’ flustered type agitation!
I sleep so, so much better!
I am far less reactive and my responses are often more considered…because…
I am more able to observe my thoughts and emotions in any moment with enough detachment to more objectively asses them. I am not so ‘in’ my thoughts and emotions letting them run amok and consume me! I am more of a distanced observer and more able to discern whether they have a useful message or not. I feel far more emotionally fearless without the baggage of anticipation or rumination.(I have more recently found it helpful to consider emotional pain as ‘energy’ or a ‘block’ and making myself aware of it seems to make it dissipate. This might seem a bit too woo woo for some – certainly my younger self would have told you where to go if you’d said this to me!)
There is far less residual imprint from the day. So for example, after a really busy day, I used to sit down to relax in the evening but lingering thoughts of the day’s busy-ness would intrude. I sit down to relax in the evening now and I fully rock up to relax with the day well and truly left behind.
I feel more fully accepting and therefore, more connected, to others. This is apparently a common effect and why meditation is said to reduce individualistic/egoic tendencies. I feel more love, compassion and understanding for everyone, even the poor mother so strung out she is shouting at her toddler or the man who nearly knocked me off my bike!
I more frequently feel happy! Not a chase after a dopamine ‘buzz’ type elation, more of a ‘oh this is a wonderful blissful calm to be experiencing!’ My brain seems to more frequently tune into this current moment and the sights, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes available, as it is far less bothered by thinking trying to dominate and consume my mind. I often find myself walking down the road smiling – like a weirdo! Others do generally smile back though.
I have a considerable reduction in ruminating on the past or anticipating negative things happening in the future. In fact ‘kicking myself’, indignation over what others say or do (aka taking offence), holding steadfastly onto unrealistically high expectations of self or others, impatience, feeling lastingly disappointed and anything else that requires me to mentally hold on to wounding or unhelpful thoughts, happen far less! It really does enhance the ability to let go!
Tuning into a calmer, deeper ‘bedrock’ of some kind gives a perspective that really ‘shows up’ thoughts and their associated feelings for what they are – often flighty tricksters with a negative bias and not always to be believed! Contact with this ‘bedrock ‘ also has a stabilising and grounding effect.
I am starting to feel/think/believe (I am not sure what the verb is) that ‘personality’ as a set of tendencies in thoughts and behaviours, is something you don’t have to hold on to. We often have identity labels such as ‘I am messy, I am chaotic’. I think these can be extremely ‘strong’ and influential in how we approach life, but with presence, we can at least start to question them, and possibly eventually escape them – although me disliking admin for example, might remain a rigidity within me for some time further!
The greater focus on the current moment seems to have made me far better at listening to others and truly receive what they care saying, I have more ideas, I am more able to cope with adverse events, forgive, accept changes, accommodate others, think more flexibly (which means I am open to considering a greater number of possibilities and brings about new insights), as I have reduced involvement with a constant chatter going on in my head (thinking). It also brings greater clarity and more enjoyment of everything – including the simplest of things.
The reduced involvement with unhelpful and incessant thinking is helping me see – for example – that what another person is doing is not necessarily irritating in itself. It’s the thoughts/judgement (and resulting feelings) I attach to what they are doing (for example, ‘they are being disrespectful/thoughtless/inconsiderate’ ‘I can’t cope with what they are doing.’ etc.) that could trigger an irritated response in me. This is great for me focusing on and taking responsibility for my own reactions.
I have started to see (with some objective detachment) how the pesky brain/thinking /ego ‘tries’ to hook you into believing your thinking is 1) accurate 2) important 3) to be wholeheartedly believed as the objective truth – and what regular pickles this potentially gets people into!
I feel closer to having the capability of seeing objective reality with less denials and distortions, less conformation bias, more willingness to hear things that are uncomfortable etc. I think that’s because my ‘assessment’ of anything is more ‘in the moment’ and more free from prior ‘baggage’!
‘This consciousness’ has become more pleasant – enough that I no longer feel the urge to alter my consciousness with – say – alcohol.
I feel quite certain that when I am ‘buzzing with presence’ , I am giving out ‘something’ that some other people react to. Again this might sound a little too woo woo for some so to put it more rationally, if what I am ‘giving out’ (even unconsciously) is more positive and accepting, I guess it is likely to impact on all my interactions beneficially.
And lastly, when I stop meditating, it sometimes feels like I have to find the physical world again! I have to come back gently because of this. The effects of meditation seem most noticeable immediately afterwards and slowly fade as the day goes on although I have noticed a general move in the direction of all the effects listed above increasing bit by bit.

So what do I experience when I meditate?

Each meditation is different and I notice subtleties relating to tiredness or diet. When I feel physically great (or when I have been fasting), my meditation tends to be better.

Within any mediation I will be either:

saying a mantra over and over,
thinking thoughts,
finding a space where there is no thought (sometimes very briefly, other times it’s more extended) during which I sometimes get a (pleasant) lifting sensation or sometimes a delightful feeling of bliss.
doing a, ‘I just had zero thought’ realisation which, of course, means I am thinking again!
Also, if I am tired, I sometimes teeter along the edge, in-and-out of a dream-like state with a lot of ‘visuals’ which somehow doesn’t feel as beneficial as more alert meditation, but it probably means I am getting some kind of rest!

Generally though, I find that in any one meditation my thinking becomes less and less noisy although the journey to greater quiet is rarely a straight diagonal descent for me. If I were to draw a graph of what happens for me most of the time, this would probably represent it.

At the start of my meditation, my thoughts can sometimes be quite loud. ‘Here I am, pay attention to me,’ they say and before I know it, I am just thinking. Slowly, though, the thoughts become quieter and I can sort of release myself from them by returning to the mantra, or sometimes just to stillness. Towards the end of my meditation thoughts do still appear but they are more like little mice in the distance scurrying across the horizon, almost saying, ‘yes we’re here but please don’t pay any attention to us and certainly don’t get involved!’

I have also noticed that I used to need quiet to meditate as I was so easily distracted by noise. I think it’s probably better to start in a quiet environment when you are new to meditation. However, now I can meditate with noise going on around me. This is because the noise itself was never the problem. It was what I mentally attached to the noise that caused the agitation, such as: ‘Oh no my meditation is ruined. Why can’t they be quiet? They are not respecting my meditation – they know I am meditating. They are bound to disturb me again.’ I seem to be able to let this attachment go now so the noise passes by without having impact and making so much fuss!

Meditation does require some dedication and you need some faith that it will eventually bring about positive effects in order to stick to it and make it a regular thing. But I will add it doesn’t take too long before some of the beneficial effects kick in like: fewer frantic thoughts and less stress being triggered. It has transformed my outlook considerably and I am so glad to have embarked upon regular practice. I do appreciate it can be really hard to settle to at first and it seems like a big commitment. It’s also not an instant fix and it does take practice but after years of looking for some kind of ‘answer’ to making life feel more meaningful and less tricky, I think meditation is probably the best answer I have found and I have tried out a fair few!

P.S. A little while ago, I went to see Paul Foot – the somewhat surreal and playful comedian. He did a lot of his usual stuff but his main message was that of an ‘awakening’ of some kind after thirty years of depression. This sounds somewhat similar to Eckhart Tolle’s experience. There do seem to be a few people who manage to arrive at greater ‘presence’ this way: suddenly after time in crisis. However, I feel for most of us, we can only increase our presence consistently via some kind of mindful or meditative practice. Let me know if you know otherwise!

P.P.S. If the ego could be thought of as the part of us that always hungers for more and is never satisfied, needs to consider itself as totally separate, different from and better than others, needs external approval, makes comparisons, needs to be right, subjectively judges, is self-focussed or absorbed, rigidly holds on to shoulds and should nots as to quickly dismiss others as ‘wrong’, can take offence, needs opinions to be agreed with etc. then meditation helps us step away from that ego!

P.P.S If you want to read more about meditation I would recommend (almost anything by) Matthieu Ricard. He is very clear, convincing and explains things very well and optimistically in a variety of ways. For more on ‘presence’, Eckhart Tolle is great. Deepak Chopra is persuasive and gives a range of justifications for the value of meditation. You can’t go wrong with the wisdom of J Krishnamurti -although he doesn’t promote meditation as I think of it; he’s all for simply living in the now/present/moment with optimum awareness. Sam Harris seems a bit agitated but he tries to explain spirituality scientifically and separate from any influence of religion. Thich Nhat Hanh (is greedy with Hs) is soothing.

UPDATE – August 2025

I think for my own record, I will periodically list any further developments I have noticed from my meditation practice.

I have mostly moved from a mantra, to breathing, to settle to my meditation. Breathing in, I imagine energy from the ‘earth’ moving up through me and as I breathe out, I imagine energy coming from the skies, down through me.
In the main, I seem to access stillness more readily than when I first meditated – within meditation and at other times. Thoughts still arrive but there’s more ability to ‘see’ them as less significant. I am able to access a blank mind more readily in real life too. One evening last week, I could be forgiven for thinking I had some kind of brain damage, as there was so, so much less thought going on in my head. It was noticeably unusual. Thinking has become more of a tool that I use, than something that intrudes on me with it’s random subject matter.
My hands and feet start to tingle the moment I start to meditate!
There’s still curiosity about emotions and the process has become more subtle – like I am tuning into more tiny ‘flutterings’ and ‘twinges’ of feelings! I can still discover myself letting some emotions get the better of me but my curiosity helps diminish any irrational thoughts contributing to them. I’m mostly still able to be indignant about things being imposed on me that I don’t value: admin comes to mind- but I can breathe through it!
I have come to realise that greater insight comes from the fact that in any moment there are fewer denials, distortions or prejudices that the brain can exercise because of past conditioning and experiences. This means your far more freed-up to actually see what’s in front of you as it is. You’re not guarding against possibilities, making decisions about something before you’re presented with what’s in front of you in any moment, you don’t anticipate things loaded with assumptions, or influence the moment with preconceived ideas – for example!
There’s greater clarity of what’s going on for other people and as a result, providing the comfort another needs is more frequently ‘hitting the nail on the head’.
There is less need to speak, be noticed or be heard – so there’s more listening. I recently was talking with an acquaintance who was really angry and distressed about a personal situation in her family. I stayed ‘present’ and watched her need to vent subside over about ten minutes. I said one thing at the end, which seemed to ‘hit the nail on the head’ and then hugged her. I couldn’t have remained that present but detached before. I would have chipped in, added my emotion, offered advice and put myself all over it! It taught me even more about how powerful attentive listening can be.
I haven’t been drinking alcohol for months but at a local festival I (got over-excited and) decided to try it again. I am glad I did try it as it taught me for sure that it’s not something I want to do any more! ‘This’ consciousness has become far more appealing than the one you get when you dumb things down with alcohol.
There does seem to be a reduction in ego, specifically around any concern about what others think of me. I have lost my need to impress others which used to be quite strong (although I rarely managed it in conventional ways and often ‘missed’!) I am also less impressed by others – not in a ‘you don’t impress me’ type way, more just seeing that achievements are not what genuinely connects people or what makes them ‘valuable’. What does is a deeper universality – and it sort of makes us all the same! In other words, there’s not ‘better’ or ‘worse’ to be found in any of us!
‘Letting go’ seems to have become conscious enough for me to immediately notice when I am not letting go! If I am letting something get under my skin, I see it, I look for the specifics of what it is I am holding on to, I am curious about the need to hold on and possibly why (as in what am I deciding to be affronted by and is it a sensitivity I developed at some point that needs releasing?) and then I challenge myself.
A ‘spiritual journey’ appears to increasingly give the gift of being able to resist instinctive urges. I am still curious about why this ability to ‘transcend’ is available to us all (despite not often being chosen by many) when our animal instincts and reactions can be totally understood as developed for survival. Why do we have the capacity to access inner stillness that can obliterate instinctive thoughts and behaviour? What are we accessing exactly? It certainly feels like something much bigger than me. I might have to find a Zen master somewhere to answer that! UPDATE WITHIN AN UPDATE. I was pondering this with KID 2 and KID 2 simply said,’ Well the thing is mum, I suspect it was there before we developed the cognitive abilities that over-shadow the quiet. Animals are far more present than us – they don’t ‘hold on’ to or ruminate or catastrophise over the instinctive reactions that help them survive. So with meditation, you’re probably enhancing your ability to access that place of no thought, so you can see the ‘extra layer’ thought is.’
As a fascinating-to-me side-line, I have realised I have aphantasia. This means I have no mind’s eye and cannot picture things in my head. This realisation came about from sharing experiences of meditation. It’s another classic thing where you don’t know how your mind deviates from the centre of any normal distribution until you hone in on something very specific! I looked it up and it explains 1) why I have a degree of face-blindness (and many strategies I wasn’t conscious of for compensating for this such as reading people’s body language to see if they recognise me). 2) Why I am such an abstract thinker (they often go hand-in-hand). 3) How I function very much more in the 3D conceptualisations of thing rather than 2D (I am better at sculpting than drawing for example). If you ask me to picture an apple, I can’t see one but I could create a model of one in clay, smell one, ‘sense’ one and give you very specific details about the journey to an apple in the fruit bowl! Strangely, counter-to many write-ups of aphantasia, I have a good memory. I’d love to hear others’ experience of aphantasia as it’s a very new kid on the block for me.

UPDATE 1st October 2025

Further things I have observed and noticed:

I am taking increasing pleasure in just watching people going about their everyday business: friends chatting, children riding furiously on their bikes. etc
It seems like many more strangers are smiling at me but also saying, ‘Do I know you?’
Synchronicity has ramped up or I am noticing it more! Things are currently regularly coming in twos – so much so, I don’t really baulk at them any more. (Take the most recent one: I had a passing thought that I mulled for a it that I could live another 50 years – unlikely, but possible. The next day my uzband said, relating to nothing, ‘I could live another 50 years!’)
My sense of what I am tapping into has become more like a universal energy, a deep source or something that is enormously omnipresent.
I can see the ego’s temptations: wanting to compare, dissatisfaction, not feeling like I’m doing enough or even just being enough, being drawn into emotions being triggered by thoughts alone, being offended by others judgement of me, any need to impress others, any notions of superiority, wanting more, thinking my opinions need to be agreed with, needing to judge etc. and mostly resist them through awareness and understanding that it creates such agitation ultimately.
I am entering into a very blissful state for most of the hour now. Occasionally it takes a little longer if there’s a lot going on, but mostly it’s very deep, very quickly. I also feel like I can just trust I will descend/ascend/bliss-out (whatever I am doing) now – it’s become second nature. Reducing thinking seems much easier.

UPDATE 28th January 2026

It’s easy to believe that meditation practice will continue to tick-along as it is -status quo with bliss. Recent events have reminded me that as practice deepens and consciousness increases, there will always be further shifts to have (unless – perhaps – you’re Buddha!).

I will describe a very recent ‘unfolding’ (and some of what I learned) in chronological order:

My meditation was noticeably even deeper than usual. My background thinking was generally much reduced- although that had been true for a while.
Events in my ‘external life’ relating to my childhood family were testing me but I was in denial of this, pretending everything was fine and using meditation to ‘soothe’ me.
I spoke with a very wise and astute friend who saw through my ‘I’ve let it go’ and she challenged me very directly and pointed out some of the things I was clearly holding on to. This triggered some emotional pain (but I always welcome that as I know it’s going to teach me something). I could feel the emotion trapped in my torso! I could not meditate the ‘pain’ away so I sat with it. I meditated with it too and accepted it. It felt like there was no escape from this pain. All previous methods I had unconsciously used to deny, suppress or ignore it were clearly no longer working. This felt very deep-rooted.
I became confused and reached out to some friends who I know are on similar journeys. A few books were leant to me. I opened one of those books and BAM: there was a description of what I was experiencing – and what’s more – it told me what to do about it! The book is called ‘The End of Your World’ by Adyashanti’.
I believe that this pain was from babyhood/very young childhood and linked to the feelings of fear, having no right to exist, complete non-acceptance/not being wanted and and being fearful about reaching out to try and get my needs met. This was deeper than the ‘pain’ I had worked on previously. (This links to how when I was born, my mum was really disappointed because she really, really wanted a boy, a big fight broke out immediately after I was born over feeding and my mum and dad’s relationship deteriorated – apparently overnight – because my dad was happy with his two girls, but mum could not accept this. There would have been a lot of shouting. I was also a ‘difficult’ baby – whether chicken or egg – this would really not have helped!).
My increased awareness had shone a light on this pain and there was no escaping it. With the guidance from the book, I worked to look even closer at the pain: the feelings, the thoughts and assumptions associated with them. I accepted it all (watched myself try to squirm away -but fail) and slowly unpick them as the untruths they are. I still feel quite raw but the most painful part of the process seems to have really helped.

UPDATE 15th March 2026

I have started to see clearly that in any one pure moment most people distort any objective reality right in front of them with their thoughts, emotions, tendencies/personality.
I saw someone being stressed last week and it confused me as she was stressed about things in the future that in all honesty, were far from a life or death kind of situation. That sounds arrogant. It just relates to the point above. I also realised how reduced my incidents of stress have become. In fact I might muster up a tiny bit of agitation now and then, but that’s it (although pride comes before a fall)!
Negative emotions can still be triggered (I think ‘of course’ is what I say here!) but they get processed far more quickly (and I like to think more objectively), last for far less time and don’t trigger ruminations.
The emotional pain I spoke of in the last post has gone. The ‘knot’ in my torso isn’t there any more.
There are physical symptoms. During meditation there are occasional involuntary twitches in my hands, sometimes on my arms. I sometimes feels like someone is tapping me on the head. My feet and hands still tingle the moment I settle to meditate.
A long term pain in my neck and shoulder from lifting my left shoulder – for a lifetime (that I have been told is down to upwards chi by a shiatsu practitioner and an acupuncturist – both always worth a try whatever your beliefs) is massively reduced and sometimes disappears.
I need less sleep and I usually feel wide awake when awake. When it’s time to sleep, I fall asleep quickly.
Being more ‘in the moment’ seems to mean I can often immediately forget something I just thought. I was worried initially until I read somewhere this can be a symptom!
I attended a weekend course recently and had no need to tell anyone about me. Obviously if they asked, I would share but I was mostly interested in and paying focused attention on what others had to say.
Coincidences (or ‘synchronicities’) are still happening regularly.
I have lost interest in some things I used to engage in – social drinking occasions being one definite one.
‘Letting go’ comes far more easily. For example: my bike was stolen recently. Historically this would have agitated me for some time. Any negatively disappeared quickly, there was a little inconvenience, I felt sad that people have to ‘survive’ in such a way and appreciated my ‘privilege’ that I could afford to buy another (second-hand!) bike.
I feel very expansive, free, open, connected and in need of little.