Why Meditate and the Benefits of Meditation
The purpose of meditation is to “Know Thyself.” Meditation allows you to develop an inner peace and serenity – to become free of frustration and anxiety, to relate more harmoniously with other people and to help you find a clearer direction for your life.
Meditation has brought heightened awareness to many for thousands of years and when meditation is practiced each and every day for twenty minutes a day, it can bring that same heightened awareness to you. While peace and serenity come to all who meditate, many find much more. You’ll most likely discover improved physical health and sharper mental functioning. You may sense your life purposes changing the more you meditate. Some people have experienced a deep spring of compassion and love for themselves and others that they never knew before.
When you meditate you are heightening your energy vibrations and broadening the unseen energy field which exists in and around your body.
This heightened energy field from meditation not only raises the mental, physical and spiritual vibrations of you, the meditator, it also serves as a protection around you so that only higher vibrations can penetrate this field. It is for this reason that those who meditate can ride the ups and downs of life with more calm: they have more energy – they are centered with an inner reservoir of strength and well-being which protects them.
Like most great teachings and truths, the process of meditation is easy to learn. It is the daily practice of meditation that often seems to be difficult for many people. No matter what your personal religious beliefs are, your present level of awareness or your own quest for spiritual, mental or emotional growth, meditation will help to begin an unfolding within you at a level that is right for you.
Meditation does NOT, in anyway, depend on what you believe. You do not even have to believe in the value of meditation itself to have it help you! All that is required is a willingness to give it a try.
Meditation enables you to attune to the God-Self inside
As you meditate and your sensitivity grows, you may become aware that you have enhanced extra-sensory perception. This is because your intuitive abilities expand the more you meditate. Everyone has the ability to sense things before they happen. For example, you were thinking of someone and they call you that day or you had a gut feeling that you shouldn’t be doing something and, sure enough, it turns out that you made the wrong choice. This perception is latent in every human being and will naturally unfold as your awareness heightens with meditation.
You may also become aware of a spiritual presence within you as you meditate over time. This is the Universal Consciousness or the God-Self inside you, which expresses itself through you. Meditation enables you to attune this “spiritual center” or “God-Self” within you and help to balance and harmonize your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual energies inside of you. As you become more aware of the Universal Consciousness within you and in all life forms, you never again will feel alone or separated from the Source of your being.
Meditation is the way to make contact with your creative, universal force
The religious skeptic will usually acknowledge some “universal energy” or “cosmic process.” They may admit that every person, in some way, must be a result or expression of such an energy or process. That somehow, within or inherent in each of us is some energy or something universal. Meditation is the way to make contact with this creative, universal force. People have many different names for it: God, Holy Spirit, Cosmic Mind, Life Force, Kundalini, etc.
The eastern religions and much modern literature offer many methods of meditation. Any of these processes or procedures are suitable and can achieve the results; they are all are of value. The Inner Light Foundation meditation technique, received by Betty Bethards through her Channel, is the essence of simplicity. It has proven to be profoundly effective and has literally changed the lives of many who have used it.
Bear in mind that the Universal Consciousness (which you may call God, Holy Spirit, Cosmic Mind, Life Force or Kundalini), is Love, plain and simple. Love is the most powerful energy force in existence. When you meditate, you align yourself with this Love force. The insights you receive in meditation, the feelings of peace and love, should be practiced in your relationships with others throughout your day in order to actualize fully this love energy in your being.
Your daily meditation will be like an “energy recharge.” After you meditate for a number of weeks, you’ll find that a missed day of meditation makes a difference; you may feel your energy lower and that “things just don’t seem to go as well.” Meditation does take discipline. After the initial discipline of finding a regular time for this daily quiet time of twenty minutes, you’ll discover that you are eager for this meditation time to be by yourself. Meditation is truly loving yourself enough to give yourself this gift of time. It provides you with the energy and love to give to others. It is somewhat like what they tell you when you get on an airplane flight – they tell you to put on your mask first and then help put on the mask of those around you. Meditation is helping yourself first so that you can have the energy to help others throughout the rest of your day, every day.
