My Meditation Journey

Started in February of 2016 according to Headspace's “Your Journey”. For the first three years I assume there were benefits, cause I kept at it, but I couldn't tell you what they were. I do credit meditation with helping me with a really rough work situation that ran through the second half of 2018. I know of a few specific instances where I felt a lot of anxiety and meditating helped me set that aside for a while.

My anxiety and depression over work lifted mysteriously on Dec 30 and while I know exactly where I was and I was doing I don't know why it lifted. I was about about 20-30 minutes into conversation with my wife about the work situation and I suddenly realized I felt lighter, it was just gone. There were a few moments after that but they were easily dispersed by sitting for a bit.

Then I had the experience I described in this post (skip down to “Way too long backstory”). This experience of being present happens pretty frequently now. It's faded in some ways and sharpened in others, I imagine just because I'm getting used to it so the novelty has worn off. It's here, or maybe I'm here, a lot when I'm well rested, much less when I'm tired. It feels totally normal and absolutely fantastic to be really present.

If I ever get to be like this full time I would consider that to be “enlightenment”. I don't believe in magic spirit powers or any of the woo. But doing things, totally routine and normal things, while you're fully present and “watching” yourself do them, it's more than enough to consider the time on the cushion to be very well spent.