A lot of people go into their meditation practice with an expectation or purpose for their practice other than the practice itself.
And I would like to compare a meditation practice to having good friends.
So when you have good friends,
It's not like you hang out with them to get a certain benefit.
It's not like you made your friends so that you could be less stressed out.
I mean that's obviously the side effect of having good friends and hanging out with good friends and being able to spend time with them.
But if your good friends are only there to reduce your stress or to help you make more money or to benefit you in some way,
Then when you're spending time with them,
You're not as focused on enjoying the interactions.
You would probably just be thinking,
Okay,
When is this going to be done so that I can get the stress benefits or when is this going to be done so that I can have more money in the future or be more focused later on because I got time to spend with my friends and I was excited and I had a good time.
So now I have more focus for other things because the general enthusiasm is up.
But it wouldn't really work like that,
Right?
If you had your good friends for those reasons rather than just to have the good friends and because you enjoy spending time with them.
If you just spend time with them for the benefits that having good friends brings,
Then there probably wouldn't be any benefits to spending time with them and they probably wouldn't be good friends either because as I said before,
You just be focusing on the benefits while you're spending time with them.
So meditation is a lot like this and when we go into our meditation practice just to complete the practice without actually being fully immersed in it and doing the practice for the practice itself and not for the potential benefits,
Then we don't really get any of the benefits of the practice or we get very diminished benefits.
But when we go into a meditation practice for the sake of the meditation practice without any expectations of some future outcome,
The meditation becomes much more peaceful and we're able to actually appreciate the session because we're diving deep into the present moment instead of thinking about future outcomes as a result of the present meditation session.
And so now if we're doing our meditation practice just for the sake of the meditation practice,
The benefits are actually way greater.
We experience peace in the meditations,
We get deep and we remain focused because we're not looking forward to anything.
And when all those things happen,
Our focus in general improves because we're treating the meditation as an actual practice and something to take seriously and something to appreciate and something to get joy out of rather than looking for the rewards of it as,
Oh,
I'm going to meditate in the morning so that I can have a better day,
A more productive day.
Instead you would think,
I want to meditate in the morning just to like take in some cool breeze,
Some breeze of peace and just appreciate the meditation practice.
And then obviously the day will be better as well,
But that's not why we meditate.
And in a way it will be why we meditate as well,
But if we go into our meditation with the intention to just enjoy the practice and just be present with it and just let go of our expectations,
That's when the benefits actually occur.
So it's kind of a paradox in a sense,
But it makes sense if you think about it in comparison to having good friends.
And so that's kind of the little takeaway I wanted to give you about why the intention is so important when it comes to meditation and why some people don't really experience much from meditation because if you go into the meditation expecting something,
Then it defeats the entire point of the meditation.
The meditation is about coming to the present moment and the present moment isn't expecting anything.
The present moment is just here.
It's not dependent on the future,
The past.
And so you can't come to the present if you're desiring the future.
You can't come to the present if you're thinking about the past.
So it's really simple.
Just do the meditation practice for the meditation practice and let everything else fall away.
Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed my little talk.
May be happy.
May you have nice meditations.
