Whether you're interested in starting meditation or doing it for quite some time now, meditation has various benefits in your mental, emotional, and physical health. Meditation encourages you to have a more relaxed and peaceful lifestyle, and it's more than just a routine. People meditate for different reasons, but most of them have to do with mental and emotional strength. Meditation allows you to sit down with your emotions while learning to let them go accordingly. With the distractions of our everyday lives, distractions are everywhere, so you continuously have a form of escape from your emotions. Meditation does the opposite of this while letting you gain more profound clarity and understanding of how your mind works. So, what is the purpose of meditation, anyway? In this article, we'll be diving into what the purposes of meditation are.
The purpose of meditation: 6 functions of meditation
Inner peace
There's no denying that meditation causes inner peace in your life and helps you deal with overwhelming negative emotions such as anxiety or stress. By integrating meditation in your everyday life, you gain more elegance and grace in dealing with the sources of stress in your life. Without meditation, you feel the pressure and worry piling on top of each other as each day passes. There may be a time when all these repressed emotions will burst out of you- which is not a good look. Meditation as a routine and a lifestyle lets you have inner peace and calmness in your life, while gracefully letting your negative emotions go. Meditation teaches you things you can never control, and the only choice you have after feeling them is letting them go. Meditation enables you to have a certain sense of peace as not letting such insignificant and irrational things frustrate you, especially when you're not something you can control.
Living in the moment
We tend to dwell on the things that have happened in the past or obsess on what our future holds- and a lot of our problems are because of these mindsets. Meditation teaches you to live in the present, instead of on the past or the future. It's one of the best ways to practice mindfulness.
Living in the present makes you actually live your life even more, instead of always fearing that you're going to repeat the same mistakes as you did, or fearing that you don't make the right decisions for your future. Meditation teaches you to let go of all these worries, and actually live in the present. By appreciating what the present has in store for you, you become a happier and calmer version. The past holds so much unnecessary fear and the future holds so much anxiety, it ruins how you truly live your life every day.
With meditation, you're living what's happening right now. Meditation makes it also possible for you to have these thoughts on the past and the future, without responding to them. This is a crucial purpose of meditation. You may not always control which views you have, but you have a say in how you react, and that's a skill that you get with meditation. In other words, this is also a skill known as mental strength. Meditation completely rewires your brain and mind into having healthier and more positive thoughts. Did you know that our minds are wired to focus on the negative rather than the positive? This is why negative thoughts are much easier to have. Meditation rewires your brain to encourage you to go for positive thinking rather than negative ones.
Unlocking creativity
Due to the fast-paced world that we live in, it can be frustrating to be creative. For some, having little creativity is not a problem. However, what if your career is highly dependent on being creative such as being a writer, an artist, a photographer? This is where meditation becomes useful, even in jobs or in your personal life. Creativity is what makes life fulfilling and full of life. Without creativity, there are no ideas and no concepts of what makes businesses successful and no creative outlets such as movies and music.
Meditation unlocks the creativity and inspiration within your subconscious mind. It trains your brain not to be caught up with daily distractions as much. Instead, meditation helps you become more creative and generate new ideas and concepts. Your mind could be having trouble coming up with new innovative concepts because your mind is too full. As we've mentioned, meditation restarts and rewires your brain so that it processes and functions in a much healthier manner.
Happiness and fulfillment
One of the answers to the purpose of meditation has something to do with living a happy and fulfilling life. Life isn't exactly known for comprised of moments that are perfect and happy. Life also consists of pain and suffering. However, meditation allows you to find happiness and fulfillment amidst those circumstances. Even when things are far from convenient, meditation changes your perspective and helps you deal with your problems better. Since meditation gives you peace and understanding of how your mind works, this gives you a change of attitude and point of view.
Sometimes, the way things are isn't the way they actually are and meditation shifts your perspective towards a more positive and optimistic light, meditation also gives you a higher sense of purpose bigger than yourself. As life gets by, it can be hard to find things fulfilling when everything seems like a routine. By practicing meditation in your life, you gain a more significant purpose, which gives you more motivation and happiness. Furthermore, we tend to dwell on external validation and distractions for our joy, whether it be relationships, career, or anxiety relief games. Once you integrate meditation in your life, you no longer need seeking external validation. Still, you'd be content finding happiness within yourself. It helps you find peace within your own chaos and find joy in yourself, rather than from somewhere else.
Goodwill
Specific religious practices believe that meditation enhances your mind, body, and soul- and they couldn't be any more right. It's been proven that meditation lifts your spirit up and enlightens your soul. The same religious practices have also believed that meditation is interconnected with compassion and that meditation helps you to become a genuinely right person entirely. Meditation has been said to improve your empathy towards others, encouraging you to feel compassionate and selfless towards those who are suffering or in need. Of course, who doesn't want to become a good person? This doesn't mean you're a bad person before meditation, but it makes your soul even purer than it once was.
Meditation was also said to increase your spiritual health and have a soul that feels more calm, peaceful, and fulfilled overall. Since meditation clears out the unnecessary chaos in your mind and in your heart, you have more room to care for others and become more empathetic. In gaining empathy, this doesn't mean you carry out the burden of others as your own. Instead, you learn to be compassionate towards them while still keeping your own serenity and peace.
Dealing with problems
The purpose of meditation is not an escape to your problems and suffering, but it helps you understand them better. We have a variety of thoughts daily, and it's so frustrating to keep up with these thoughts while interpreting them. Meditation lets you sit still for even just a few minutes of your day to capture these thoughts and understand how your mind works. In understanding your mind, you deal with your problems with less anger and hostility. When something in life doesn't go the way you want them to, you learn to accept and adjust to the situation rather than getting frustrated in something you can never change. It's the simple things that meditation has an impact on, but these simple things are life changers.
When meditation changes the way you view and deal with problems, there's a certain elegance and grace in how you hold yourself to the rest of the world. You become confident that you can surpass everything. You have knowledge that life is comprised of the perfect balance between good days and bad days. In other words, you gain both the mental and emotional strength to deal with certain situations without making it into an even worse situation. Learn to how to practice meditation daily to deal with life's daily challenges.
Start meditating
In conclusion, I hope this article gave you a better understanding of the purpose of meditation. If you give it a chance, meditation will completely turn your life around. Even amidst chaos and struggle, meditation makes you capable of dealing with things you can never control. Instead of letting your emotions and thoughts control you like they always do, meditation enables you to turn this around and gain control of them. Integrating meditation as a way of life and not just a routine could be the key to having that inner peace you've always aspired for. At the end of the day, all we want is genuine peace and happiness in our lives- and meditation is just the way to do that.
