Meditation and Sunny Summer Days!

Cast your mind back to when you were a child – maybe eight or nine years old. Remember those long, sunny, summer holiday days that seemed to go on forever? Remember how you had no idea of time – what time it was, the way time was passing – it was like everything was effortlessly enjoyed in a timeless daze. And, remember, even though you might have had lots of those long, timeless, sunny, summer holiday days, the school holidays seemed to be over almost as soon as they’d started – time flew when you were having fun. When we were children, we lived in timeless state of mind. We were open-minded, fully involved in what we were doing – building sand castles, playing football, chasing, whatever – we soaked up new knowledge and new experiences like sponges.

What has this got to do with your present adult life? What, if anything, has it got to do with meditation – after all, I’ve mentioned meditation in the article title?

It has everything to do with your adult life and your ability to be effortlessly happy and successful. You see, the difference between us now, as adults, and how we were as children is that, as children, we fully experienced each moment – as adults research suggests that we only 1% experience the here and now. As children we experienced each new moment using our five senses. Many of us who have the pleasure of being parents remember how our children, at two- or three-years old, fully experienced a new toy or present. The gift was investigated using all five senses – it was looked at from every angle, felt, torn, pulled, smelled, licked, shaken and stuck in places that the manufacturer had probably never envisaged!

In the same way, though not as obvious, we experienced our long sunny summer holiday days in a five sensory way – we were involved, engrossed, immersed in the pleasure of the moment. To put it more blandly, we were fully paying attention. Again, research suggests that, as adults, not only do we only pay 1% attention to the here and now, we cannot, in fact, pay attention at all – even to things to which we’ve decided to pay attention. More importantly, recent neuro-psychological research suggests that our ability to achieve success and happiness is directly correlated with our ability to pay attention.

In other words, we need to become, once again, like little children to achieve effortless happiness and success. We need to be childlike in our ability to fully experience the present moment – because it is only in the present moment that everything is happening. Quantum physics tells us that the universe is vibrating in and out of existence in the present moment. Similarly, it tells us that we are all one – in constant non-local communication – in the present moment. What does that mean? It means that, only in the present moment, all possibilities, all opportunities, all happiness and success is happening, before our very eyes – all we have to do is open them.

And that’s where meditation comes in. Undoubtedly, some have experienced an altered state of mind through meditation. But, I’m a very practical person – I need to put bread on my family’s table each week, and to do that I need to do practical work with my clients, mainly business people. So I look at meditation in a very here and now practical way. Meditation teaches me – and my clients – how to pay attention all over again. It teaches us how to become like a little child – noticing, perhaps even marvelling, the sound of our breathing, birdsong, an itch, a twitch. In other words, meditation re-trains us in the art of simply paying attention to the present moment – without analysing, second guessing or prejudging what’s going on, the way normal adults do.

In that way, we enter into unity with a responsive universe – one that quantum physics proves responds to our input of energy. From a mathematical perspective, the equation is simple – if I put more of my energy (more than a normal 1%) into the moment, universal energy responds – in the moment. From a psychological perspective, I activate parts of my brain that are never otherwise activated in normal adults, unless they are experiencing a “peak performance moment”. From a personal perspective, I achieve mental clarity and presence – and presence is a gift that makes my life effortlessly successful – in everyday practical ways.

My clients often ask me am I enlightened! I’m not even sure if I understand the question, never mind the answer. But I do know the answer to their question “Is there any measure of how present you are in the here and now?” The answer is simple – your mind experiences time-less-ness, where time both flies and is suspended – it’s like “Remember those long, sunny, summer holiday days that seemed to go on forever?”