“In silence, the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.” ~Gandhi
In our prior article titled Sleep to Awaken, we discussed the importance of good sleep on your physical and mental well-being. But what to do once you start waking up early to completely own your day with peak performance?
Don’t start working. Don’t communicate with others. Don’t look at that phone!! Don’t even start working out (yet). Meditate first.
Connect with yourself and your higher power!!
For so many reasons meditation as soon as you wake up is extraordinary to get your mind and your soul aligned with your intention for the day.
Once you are well rested, one of the most beneficial practices to live as your true self, be more connected and realize the vision for your life is meditation. While seeing love in the mirror is as easy as looking yourself in the mirror and saying I love you, meditating is as easy as closing your eyes and being still for a few minutes.
Call it what you wish, prayer, meditation or mindfulness. Some people draw distinctions between prayer and meditation, but they both bring us to a state where we are a part of the world that is greater than ourselves. When we dive inward, the universe becomes much more expansive and we are with the divine.
Meditation is the highest form of prayer.
In it you are so close to God that you don’t need to say a thing
It’s just great to be together.”
– Swami Chetananda
Meditation is the highest form of prayer. Meditation is prayer without asking for anything. Meditation is finding complete bliss in just being with yourself and your higher power.
Beyond simply thinking about something, deliberate meditation or prayer daily brings us close to our higher power and our true selves.
Kathleen Norris wrote, “prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine.”
You don’t have to have to be religious to meditate. We will use the word mediate here to include all types of prayer, devotion and meditation, as there are many different practices and it is up to you, but the benefit remains the same regardless of how you do it.
Making meditation a daily practice particularly right after you wake up sets your intention for the day and allows you to be the person you see at the center of your soul when you close your eyes. Would you rather start your day by opening your eyes to read an email or by closing your eyes to see who you are meant to be and figure out how to live well.
At first it may feel awkward, sitting in a comfortable position with your eyes closed. For me it was not that the cross legged position was awkward it was that it took a few minutes to slow down, focus on my breath and quiet my mind. I was also worried someone might walk in.
I remember when I first started meditating how nervous I was that my wife or boys may walk in and see me sitting in the lotus position in the office and think I was nuts. Why would this be embarrassing? I don’t know. Perhaps it is that we are doing something quiet and personal and worried that someone may disturb us. That they walk in and shockingly say “oh, sorry” and then rush out. I still felt that way at times until a year or two ago. Whether it was for me or them, I am not sure. Over the years, as my kids have walked in to me meditating in the morning and seen me meditate, I ask them to join me. It is a rare occurrence, as I get up before everyone else to have this time, but when they do join me it is wonderful. They usually can’t sit still for very long.
When one of my kids walks into the office while I am meditating, I keep my eyese closed and say “join me.” They sit and I say, “take 3 deep clearing breathes, breathe deeply in and then sigh it out.” Then breath normally but intentionally. Just focus on your breath as much as possible. Smooth breath in, smooth breath out.
You can do one of 2 methods to focus on your breath:
- Focus on the inside of the tip of your nose, concentrate on the feeling of the air coming in and feeling the air going out. You can even say to yourself, “air coming in, air going out” on each inhale and exhale.
- The other method is to focus on your diaphragm rising and falling, while saying “air is rising” while you breath in and “air is falling” while breathing out.
The purpose of meditation is, as Ram Dass says, to “quiet your mind and open your heart.”
Particularly as you expand your love for yourself and others, it helps to consider that you are not simply quieting your mind or realizing exquisite visions of your future self or how to address a certain challenge, we are also creating more space in our heart.
By meditating, we are expanding both our mind and our heart.
Through purposeful meditation, you can clear your mind, but you can also listen to your higher power, your inner voice or ancestors directing you where to go. The point of prayer or meditation is not to ask for stuff or situations you don’t have and hope that it materializes, rather it is to quiet your mind and listen.
Years ago, I learned that “silent” and “listen” are the same letters arranged in a different order.
When we sit in silence, we can listen. You can listen to that still small voice from within that you start to hear when you meditate and see when you look in the mirror with love. Once you start to listen in prayer and meditation, that voice is not so small or so silent, rather it can be the guiding force in your life. A higher power or your higher self can be the guide that sets you on the right course each day. Listen to that guide by meditating each morning, awake with intention and direction.
I used to look for or hope for some eureka moment while meditating, or think that through meditation, I would arrive at some profound breakthrough in business, personal or spiritual knowledge that I did not have before. I was in search of a eureka moment or sudden enlightenment. Sometimes I have received incredibly profound visions or insight that I had not had before. Some of this clarity was life defining and I used for substantial transformation. Alas, however, I was often thinking too hard and expecting a specific result.
The point is just to focus on your breath and “coax your mind from its wandering” (Tao the Ching, Ch. 10). If you simply focus on your breath and let thoughts come and let them passs, the clarity and visions will come.
In preparation for writing the book Light in the Mirror, I went back and read my journals from when I first started meditating. In an upcoming article, we will get to journaling and its importance after meditation. What I see from years ago when I reread these journals is that I had beautiful visions of things I had not seen before. I could see things in the future that I had never seen or considered while in a state of busy and distracted life.
I also had a lot of specific thoughts about daily project work or business contacts I needed to call to advance a project. I was listening to myself and our higher power, but I was not fully quieting my mind or letting the thoughts come and go without attachment to them.
Only recently, after years of meditation, am I getting to a place of being fully present and just quieting my mind and opening my heart. The brain is so active, and it takes deliberate practice to reconstruct the mental models that are on repeat.
Just as we repeat negative self-judgement or thoughts about how others see us, we have on an endless loop thoughts about work or personal life that aren’t necessarily negative. These thoughts may be very positive or neutral, just about stuff we have to get done, but they are on a continuous loop. Focusing on the breath, allows us to just observe these thoughts and let them pass.
I usually wake up and think about 2–3 project related stressors, people or situations that are happening right now. Or I think about kids schedules for the day or about money and bills coming due. These same thoughts come up and repeat while meditating. Even random thoughts enter our minds. The key while meditating is not to be annoyed or unsettled by regularly repeating or random thoughts but just to observe them. Observe the thoughts coming in but wish them well and send them on their way.
Just as you observe your breath coming in and going out, observe the thoughts coming in and going out. Do not stay on them. Quiet the mind and open the heart.
Instead of thinking about it or ruminating as we usually do, we can actually observe the thought pattern. Say, “hey there’s that thought again. I see that I regularly think about these projects” or kids, work or money or that person. Recognize the thought pattern and call it out. I am thinking about this again while I am working on quieting my mind to listen to my inner voice.
So I am going to see that thing I always think about, recognize it is just a thought pattern and it does not define me. I am going to observe it and clear my mind. Then after that thought is gone just focus on being present, breathing in and breathing out. When the thoughts come back, just say to yourself, “Begin Again” and return to focus on the breath.
Once you have quieted your mind and are in a place of calm, POP!! another thought comes up. Same thing, observe it, send it on its way and focus on the breath. Just like a cloud passing by, let the thought pass. Be the observer of your thoughts, not the thinker. That will break the thought patterns. The thought patterns are your ego trying to disconnect your from your true self.
The thoughts do not magically stop. The more you practice though, the more you find longer periods of time of pure calm, deep connection and blissful peace.
As you get into this state of peaceful calm, you do start to have lucid visions and see that which you had not seen before. You become more connected to yourself, to your higher power and to all that you are aware of. You are able to more easily see yourself and others with love because you have calmed your mind and opened your heart.
Sometimes you have to close your eyes to see.
Visit benparvey.com to download our Habitually Inspired HabiTracker, get inspired and learn more ways to Thrive in 2025.
P.S. Be sure you add meditation to your daily habits for 2025.
