That is one thing that I've benefited from more than anything else.
I am continuously benefiting. It is enriching the way I work and how I live. It is meditation. This episode will be a promotional content, not about me or my services, but about meditation.
I have been reflecting recently as I was writing my book, the gift of being unfulfilled at work. Well, it's not that recent because now I'm in the editing stage, but editing stages, rewriting your book over and over again, all the memories come back and I remember how difficult it was to understand what I really love, what I really enjoy doing and what is important to me.
There were many things that I was told that was important, that I was told I was good at, that I was doing because I have always done so, and I wasn't feeling anything about those things. They were the things that I did.
The most vibrant feeling that I was having was the unfulfillment, hence the title of the book, this anger, the rejection, the not wanting, the not knowing. All the information was coming in the form of experience and understanding "This is not what I want, and this is not what is important to me". We talked about this as via negativa understanding something with what it is not in the previous episode in the 41st episode, this is very valuable way of understanding, but it's not super sustainable because that means you will always need to be guided by not wanting. You will always be resourced from outside. Something outside should tell you to be able to start moving towards a new direction.
In this world of finding work you love, you have probably seen it, there is mention of "find your passion, do the work that is in line with your passion, passion", and I wasn't feeling passion for anything, or I didn't know.
I am skeptic about this word, passion. I think it's overemphasising your interest or your current desire for something.
But I believe we all have unique inclinations the way we perceive world, the way that we show up in the world as ourselves, we are different, you know it, I know it, everyone knows it. And this difference is important in the world. It makes a difference for us. In being together, we can see the world differently and we can create the world together in the most beautiful way. So it's important to bring different people together, different characters together in a work environment. And this difference that you have the uniqueness that you have is usually covered under layers of learning. What you have learned when you grow up from your parents, from school, from society, from your friends, what you were taught that was not good about you or the way you worked, because it was not something that would bring good money. Maybe it was standing out in the crowd and you, you put layers and layers. You put cement on you. You made these parts of you really covered and fixed and hidden. And also the parts that feel these unique parts about you get numb.
I have found out meditation being the best or for me, it was basically the only way, to let these layers get loose, the layers of cement that was used to cover who you were, to get the detached. They don't disappear immediately, but they are also not part of you. So when you stop the grip, stop holding on to them and stop using them as well, just stay, you can see these layers around you and in front of you.
While you see them getting looser, you also start feeling what is underneath. This was how meditation has helped me so far. It's really very interesting. That's not how I started meditating. I didn't start to understand who I am. I exactly don't remember what made me start meditation, but I think when you start a journey and you start walking, then you discover all the related surrounding scenery.
And when I was interested in personal development because of my general unfulfillment at work, but also my search for meaning, and also feelings of depression, I have come across meditation as one of the important supporting activities for wellbeing. So I picked up meditation. I used a couple of apps. But it didn't really stick. I couldn't make it a habit. And I also judged myself because I couldn't make it the habit like I couldn't make habit any of the good things I wanted to accumulate and I want to start, and this became another problem in my life, another unmet goal.
And then through some people I follow, I got to meet my own meditation teacher, Susan Piver and she was offering free meditation instruction. And I joined her and I loved it. I received her emails with meditation instruction. I started doing these meditations and by the time I developed a connection. I was connected to my teacher, to Susan Piver and through this connection, I started coming back to doing meditation and I never left.
I increased my connection. I joined her community, Open-Heart Project and it completely changed my life. The deepening of my relationship, my connection with my teacher and through this power of connection, the motivation to do the meditation practice increased my ability to do it every day and also extend the time. And when I extended the time and the frequency, actually, without putting a hard goal, it became a habit for me. It became part of my life. And through this habit of meditation, I have noticed parts of me that I wasn't aware of before, because as I was describing the process to you, the layers of added knowledge, this cement was lifted. And of course this seeing also comes with grief, with anger, with sadness, all those emotions that were stored. That was the reason to cover yourself and make it hard like cement, because you didn't want to feel that anymore. So these emotions come up, but also something very fresh, something very original, something very lively comes up as well in meditation.
I have discovered for me this pleasure in speaking. I knew my pleasure in food. Now I embrace it. But also this feeling of using the voice, the sensation of the voice, using your mouth and lips to express and this feeling of ideas or inspiration coming to you and transforming into words and merging into the space, I could feel the genuine love for it. The meditation opened my sensations. I noticed that I was enjoying touching. I enjoyed reading my books, touching the pages of my books. I enjoyed wearing nice clothes because of this feeling of the texture of the clothes. Meditation practice helped me to be more mindful so that I was now aware of pleasant moments when I really enjoyed my experience in life. That is different than unfulfillment, learning through negative experiences. Now, I can also stay in the positive experiences and be there and enjoy these moments. And that helps me not to search for more experiences like this, but this ability to enjoy and being in the moment where you enjoy things, expand to the moments where there is nothing. Nothing may be special or nothing so funny, but you are able to breathe. You're able to sense, use all their senses in any moment in the calmness. You also enjoy your own presence and being alive in this world.
I told you in the beginning, the biggest gift of meditation is this self discovery, like finding your unique inclinations and unique likes or your uniqueness. But there are also so many other ways meditation benefits your life. Actually meditation is life, but we have forgotten what life is.
I am very inspired by the technique of meditation. I was trained also as a meditation instructor by my teacher Susan Piver.
(In the recording, you can listen to the guided meditation at minute 13:00)
What I find fascinating about this technique is that it starts from moment one. When I say give your weight, It's being here now and taking your seat in the world. I found myself many times escaping, just because I didn't know how to deal with the world or running around because I needed to escape from something or I needed to run towards something this mindless running... That doesn't let anything unique about yourself to reveal itself because it's, you know, fight flight freeze. It's a pattern. It's an animal instinct, but we are human and we have insight in addition to instinct, which comes in the moment of stillness and it starts with us taking our seat. It starts in any point also in moment of storm and problems, we don't have to escape, we take our seats and there is this wonderful world that carries our weight as well. We have already our secure space where we can sit.
Then this mention of the strong back. This is your backbone. This is your uniqueness. My aunt recently told me that she had observed me closing myself, making myself little in certain situations. This is also a habit that I probably learned to fit in. But I am good as I am. You are good as you are.
You have a certain space that you take. Your height, your spine is the space you are taking. So hold yourself gracefully as you are a graceful being. That strong back tells you that you are here, you are powerful, you take your seat, your crown, and you are here to reign your life to lead your life.
And then the open front body, we talked about how the belly is open, how the chest and heart is soft and open. This trains us to be relaxed, but also be open to the influence of others and life. We don't have to brace ourselves. Again this brings us back to a place of habit or place of instinct where we escape or we fight. And this is when the front body gets tense because it adapts itself to act quickly. Whereas this softness already lets us be open to the influence and to see more what is going on and be relaxed. And this relaxness allows us to have a bigger thinking, perceiving, seeing ability where we can have lots of choices when we stay calm. We don't have to fight anything in this moment. We can let everything be as they are, because we can be as we are. We have this strong body, strong back, so let things emerge, Let's see.
The hands don't have to do anything, they rest and the mouth doesn't have to do anything. So it's closed. It's this practicing the ability of not making yourself busy. Because what happens in any situation? We want to solve it. We want to find a new idea. We want to escape, again escape or fight and or show ourselves, "they made us feel this way, we have to make them feel the same". These again, habitual reactions or instinctive ways of being, the animal side of us, it comes as a way of action. And also it comes as a way of uneasiness that shows itself as hands moving, speaking too much, actually feet moving as well . Always this tension that you need to do something in any moment, which if you do from a place of escaping, from a place of fear, from a place of feeling not enough is not probably the way you would want to experience the consequences of, because it's not your wiser self. The wiser self shows itself in a moment of calmness in a moment of inner silence. So that's what we are practicing in the meditation.
Then we talked about breathing. Well, there's nothing I can say about it. It's again, not fixing yourself or fitting into certain ways, just being naturally ourselves. It's practicing being yourself. You don't have to do anything.
The eyes merged with the moment with the space. Again, you don't have to focus or grip into something tightly. You don't have to grip into who you are, who you were, the titles, what people think about you, what you think about yourself. Everything can stay as it is, and you can receive everything as it is through your eyes, through your body, through your being and you don't die, or it doesn't influence you because you have the strong body. You can stay with that and host that while being yourself.
Then comes the practice of thoughts versus being, I told you that your attention stays with your body sensations, which is basically practicing being. And then the thoughts ... We are also letting them be as they are not doing anything about it, because if we start analyzing our thoughts, then we stay in the thought cycle, which brings other thoughts on top, which brings other uneasiness and the stillness of our own being disappear.
So we practice this stillness and the thoughts we see that, when we let them be, they don't change anything. They don't take us away from who we are. We can continue being who we are. Actually we recognize who we are, who we have been through our reactions to these thoughts. And then we see that, oh, okay, the reaction is also there, but I can come back to my breath and we can always practice the being. Meditation is practicing this technique in a limited time. And you can start by doing five minutes. I don't know, maybe our practice was already five minutes and important thing is you come back and do it again again and again.
Once you have a stable practice, you can expand the time to 10 minutes, then 15 and 20, then 30. Or you can keep it as little as possible. But the important thing is that you have consistency because it is like the training of a muscle. It gets bigger as your practice.
How it's related to your unique career and unique life is once you start this practice, you train your muscle, then you are able to take your seat in all the situations. When you are unfulfilled at work, in your life, you don't immediately act with what you have been acting before. Now you are able to view the situation or just be in that moment and let things as they are and stay with it. You might experience all these emotions, about the feelings , about your work and life,
And as you practice recognizing thoughts, and if you focus on your thoughts and completely forget your being, your breath, come back to your breath. You can recognize all your thoughts and emotions, but also come back to your being and this space expands because you don't have to act with it. Your ability to see things as they are, to see different ways of being with what is expands. And in this expansion, you can recognize that there were other ways that you could be with, there were maybe no direct feelings or preferences regarding what you are doing, but it was what you have developed, which you continued. So you might drop certain things, certain reactions to what you were doing before. When you stop doing something, in this silence, you might recognize some other sparks, some other energies. You might free your attention and see things that are giving joy to you. The maybe normal or even boring experiences that you have could start becoming very interesting. You can discover what interests you, your curiosity or natural playfulness can come into play.
Your playfulness is so related to your creative self. And usually the creative self is what gets buried down with this cement because it's the one that is able to be surprised and surprise others and people don't want to be surprised. You might find it back and you might find the original inclinations of yours because you stopped doing, you stopped reacting, you stopped continuing your previous patterns, you are able to be in places without acting. And you are able to see between all these thought patterns your deeper life power. Because you don't have to follow your thoughts, you are who you are.
You practice being yourself without the influence of anything, but just you even if in a limited time, but this practice continues in your life because you now have a sense of a complete body experience, the unified body and mind through the attention on the breath, this experience of knowing who you are comes into life, and you recognize different things. You gain awareness of different things that you haven't been aware before. You notice new things, interesting things about yourself, about your life and life becomes so much fresh and interesting and curious, and playful. And bad things lose its badness, good things lose their brand "good". Everything becomes a huge experience that you are part of. And that's basically, I believe, what life is. Practicing meditation is practicing being fully yourself and being fully in this life. So I highly invite you to start practicing meditation.
I hope this little practice that I shared with you is useful. If you want to learn more about meditation, let me know. I, from now on will include it in all my programs, because I see such an essential knowledge about yourself, about understanding yourself. As I mentioned, you can also reach out to my teacher, Susan Piver. Her project is called open-heart project.
I am grateful for your presence. I am looking forward to talking to you in the next episode. Take care.
