by Diana Lang
Can you imagine feeling good and natural and full of life? Imagine what it would feel like to feel calm and centered no matter what your circumstances might be. Imagine having more energy while engaging in everything you do, and feeling ever more connected in your life, day-by-day, breath-by-breath.
Having taught meditation for over thirty years to thousands of people, I can really say that it is the single most important thing you can ever learn in order to expedite and enrich your spiritual life. Everything you learn in school, by analysis or by study, will be exponentially deepened because you meditate. Meditation will influence the way you organize your thoughts and the way you develop your personal philosophy. It will affect the way you appreciate art or a poem or a good conversation. This is because everything is energy and vibration, and since everything is energy, every part of your life will be affected. Meditation gives you access to an inner world of knowing. It’s like having a magic carpet, and you can go anywhere, in any time, in any space.
Scientific studies have shown what has long been known — meditation works. It is a quick stress releaser. It speeds recovery and healing and lessens pain. It lowers your blood pressure and gives you more energy, more stamina, and quicker reflexes. It improves memory and increases your ability to concentrate. In general, you become more balanced mentally and emotionally. Anxiety and depression subside, and creativity blossoms. It also helps in all forms of addiction recovery.
Meditation will teach you to reconnect with yourself and tap into the limitless potentials within you. You’ll feel revitalized and renewed. Through this process, relationships become enriched and enlivened, work becomes inspired, and you’ll begin to discover the potentials of your own positive growth. The list goes on and on. It’s a whole new way of being.
Meditation keeps you emotionally current in your life. It’s like a living journal: you always know where you are. Your heart opens. You learn acceptance, appreciation, and compassion without even trying. By staying connected with yourself and your inner knowing, you reduce your stress level and you generally relax, improving your overall health. It affects every area of your life, from your work to your relationships.
It’s like getting plugged into a greater source of energy: you begin to sense and discover your direction in life and even your life’s purposes (there are many, you know). You will see, feel, and know yourself in a way that will change and delight you — effortlessly. Best of all, time begins to change, and you begin to see that you have all the time you need and want in order to take your next step in your life. You relax.
And the great thing about it is that it’s easy. It’s a simple practice of awareness that takes just a few minutes a day. It’s a quick little tune-up, after which you can see how you are, check in with yourself, appreciate the moment, and live a little bigger, all because you simply stopped for a moment, and breathed, and let yourself be.
Meditation is as old as the hills and has been used for eons to center and align the self for a happier, more meaningful life. My aim in this book is to show you the practical application of meditation. It’s like a hammer and a nail: something you can use every day for a known result, which works when you use it.
Meditation is an ancient discipline designed to help you learn to be more present in your life. It is an art that is practiced, something that we keep growing into, discovering, unraveling, and expanding in order to learn even more deeply the gorgeous difference between thinking and mindfulness.
Imagine feeling grounded and certain and creative and free, and more and more so every day. These are just a few of the things you will learn and experience when you begin your meditation practice.
Diana Lang is the author of Opening to Meditation and the owner and director of the LifeWorks Center for Growth in Los Angeles, where she lives. She is also active in a variety of nonprofit international efforts to teach meditation and yoga. Visit her online at www.dianalang.com
Excerpted from the book Opening to Meditation: A Gentle, Guided Approach ©2015 by Diana Lang.   Printed with permission of New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com