Having understood that the source of our feelings are our thoughts, we realize that right through our journey in the physical world, in many births, we have repeatedly built up many webs of negative and harmful thoughts and feelings, creating many unnecessary difficulties for us, internally as well as externally. The habit continues in my present life too. Meditation helps me to clear this negativity, and break the habit. It helps me come to terms with what is going on in my own inner world and understand how I create thoughts and feelings, how to take responsibility for them, and how to tap into my original, positive inner resources, which helps me replace negative patterns of thoughts and feelings with positive ones. So, meditation is not merely a relaxation technique but a powerful tool for a seemingly difficult task of self-transformation or self-change.
To get the positive cycle of thoughts and feelings working in my life, the easiest place to start with is our thoughts. It's not very difficult to change our thoughts. It just requires attention. And by changing my thoughts, it becomes easy to change my feelings. In meditation, I decide that for a few minutes, each day (it could be as less as 1-2 minutes or as much as 25-30 minutes at a time, depending on what I am doing) - I am going to set aside negative thoughts which are weak or wasteful, and create pure, positive, powerful thoughts, based on the awareness of my spiritual identity. As I do this, I begin to experience the original resources or treasures of the self. As a result, positive and powerful feelings for the self and others emerge. |
