Simple, Easy, Every Day Meditation
my attention. Beatles music brought joy back after the shock and sadness of the JFK assassination. Suddenly it was ok to have fun again. Meditation, however, was a harder sell.
A By Pat McGrath
t the time meditation burst on the scene, I was in college trying to make sense of the 60’s. I didn’t understand what meditation was, but the Beatles were doing it and that got
Now, older and wiser, I was willing to try again. From my
perspective it helped that Sarah McLean (founder of the McLean Meditation Institute) was from New England, didn’t wear any special clothes when she meditated, sat where it was comfortable, spoke English, and was a highly-functioning business owner not living as a hermit or a monk. The program set me straight. It was a modern approach.
In her Simple, Easy, Every Day Meditation Method, Sarah reas- sured us that meditation is a natural process. Her “Five Essentials of Meditation” made meditation a game-changer for me:
1. It’s ok to have thoughts. 2. Don’t try too hard. 3. Let go of expectations. 4. Be kind to yourself. 5. Stick with it.
As it turned out meditation was not what I thought it was. I learned I don’t have to be different than who I am. In fact, its just the opposite, when I meditate it feels like I’m coming home. Meditation is probably the most powerful tool we have to help us release every day stress. Specifi cally, the kind of stress which builds up and gets in the way of us actually enjoying our lives or prevents
credit: robert englehart
For most of us meditation seemed too foreign. The swamis, sa- ris, beards, bare feet, sitar and the chanting in sanskrit were cultural references we didn’t understand. Personally, I was not ready to de- fend, defi ne, or explain to my New York, Irish-Catholic family why I needed to leave the room, sit crossed-legged on the fl oor, and go silent. I was afraid meditation might turn me into a different person, make me “blissed out”, or overly reverent. I didn’t want to lose my edge, my sense of humor, or wit. Yet I was intrigued.
A few years later, however, I signed up to learn Transcendental Meditation (TM). The class was nearby and I heard that it could help with stress. Since drugs and alcohol gave me a stomach ache, I decided to give meditation a try. That lasted about 6 months. After a while I was convinced I was doing it wrong and stopped. Fast forward about 40 years. A friend asked me to join her in a modern meditation program in Arizona.
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