The Psychological Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation
Introduction
Mindfulness will awaken your True Self. Growing up in a spiritual family in rural India, I vividly remember the evenings spent with my grandfather, listening to him recite verses from ancient scriptures. One verse from the Bhagavad Gita captivated me and has stayed with me ever since. The verse means the following:
As a lamp in a windless place does not flicker, so the disciplined mind of a yogi remains steady in meditation on the Self. — Lord Krishna
These words perplexed me for a long time because mind and steady are two words that I feel are oxymorons. Right from my young age, I have been practicing meditation taught by my elders. It neither has a pose or a specific instruction except for a very simple constraint. No matter what I do, keep the mind still by silently observing things of interest. Be it focusing on breathing, or observing a butterfly, the objective is to be in that moment, capturing every observation possible about it.
I remember how, as a teenager, I often pretended to meditate just to check the box. It wasn’t until I observed a true Yogi that I began to understand the depth of the practice. I happened to talk to him and asked him what is meditation to him . He simply said it just the art of experiencing void inside and outside. It is the…
