Meditation and Mental Health
Space Within Me for Living With What Is Outside Me
The breakthroughs of inner peace in a turbulent world
A lot of us figured out in 2020 that there’s more in this world than what meets the eye. Pandemic times caused a constriction of physical spaces and an expansion of inner space — if you were doing it right.
Being forced into isolation created unavoidable opportunities to be self-aware. The space between us created more space for our own reflections.
I found that while working from home, I could easily slip into the living room to explore my own consciousness. Because of remote work, I was free to locate my heart space as often and for as long as I wanted.
The heart space is where the party’s at.
For those of you who didn’t figure this out yet, it’s not too late.
Some do it with a mantra. Others prefer to do it with music, sound bowls, and chimes. Some even like to physically shake off the karma before starting. My way wasn’t like this. All I did was close my eyes and try to let go of everything.
After dropping my daughter off at school and before my work meetings, I would sit on the sofa cross-legged and just go into the expanse within.
When I started to feel the inner space expanding, sometimes my head was way up in the clouds while my butt was still on the sofa. I am not making this up.
I wish I could do justice in words to all of the internal journeys I’ve made between then and now. But what would be the point, anyway? It isn’t useful for you to know where I’ve been. All you should know is that there are places any of us can travel to beyond the layer of the physical world.
You need only to understand that there are limitless possibilities waiting within your own mind.
Attachments Gotta Go
“Mother Earth is doing this to tell humanity that it better change its ways fast,” were my words in March 2020. No one listened to me.
Instead of receiving the communication coming in loud and clear from nature, humans largely chose to continue distancing themselves from nature and their connection with it. I was mad.
It was easy at first to give in to the anger, loneliness, and hopelessness around me. The spaces I physically occupied were infuriating. People didn’t want to be anywhere near each other and speaking to strangers felt like a crime. I was relieved to be given an excuse to stay inside my home, never interacting with another human. Going into myself was all I wanted.
I looked forward to my meditation practice every day — it connected me with the source.
Anger dissipated in me over time. Social anxieties calmed down. I could actually get on a phone call with a customer service agent after being on hold for forty minutes and not yell or cry.
I remembered how strong I am.
As the months went by, I developed an evenness in me that could withstand any external battle. I let go of feelings as they rose up. I remembered the Buddhist teaching that first put me on the path of bliss years ago: that attachment is the root cause of all suffering.
The attachment to my own thoughts and emotions had to go.
It Started Coming Together
Although some days it seemed like I wasn’t gaining anything in meditation, in fact, I would pull back into the waking world with a little more serenity every time.
I noticed myself smiling more at people. One day I met a neighbor in the courtyard of my building and had a lovely conversation, hearing words come out of my mouth in praise of her that I never knew were in me. “You seem like such a wonderful person,” I found myself saying to her. I was excited about life and meeting strangers.
I no longer saw the world as out to get me.
When the news started getting me down, I meditated. When people in work meetings said things that made it seem like they weren’t thinking beyond themselves or the current situation, I meditated. When stressed-out neighbors and friends allowed themselves to succumb to the separation they were feeling and lashed out at me, I wished them the best and I meditated.
Sometimes, in truth, I didn’t wish people the best. It was a big struggle to keep awareness within me that we are all connected and part of an all-encompassing oneness.
I still lost my temper or blamed others for my problems on occasion, but the instances grew less frequent. But I stayed on a path of becoming a better human, even if sometimes I felt like I was taking backward steps.
When I knew I was about to lose my job, I meditated even more. I countered the pain with the silence inside. I searched within my heart space for answers. Things started to make sense.
The more I explored the spiritual plane of existence, the more I understood that I am here for a reason and that the universe was guiding me. It’s guiding all of humanity toward a better place.
Real Healing Means Clearing Out the Muck
In these times of turbulent collective energy, none of us has been left intact. So much trauma and transformation have washed over every single one of us.
Self-healing is the most important survival skill that anyone can have right now. Finding space within for contemplation is all you really need to get there — to be fully healed. To be fully you.
You have to learn to surrender. You must ask for healing and let it come.
In meditation, I found surrender in my inner space, but I’d layered on perceptions and emotions that tightened it and constricted it so that it was nearly lost. My true nature had been covered in the muck of daily attachments.
I also learned that all problems and ailments I experienced in physical reality had their roots in this interference. So, duh — it needed to be excavated in order for me to be whole again!
To truly heal, I needed to re-locate my core.
Diving Deep Transforms
Healing is needed to re-enter the real world.
Going into the heart space is necessary on every journey at one time or another. I needed it to finally hear my own internal voice again. I had to understand before I could re-emerge as a force of good in this world.
I developed a way to get answers from the divine by asking questions in meditation:
“What should I be doing right now?”
“Am I on the right path?”
The answers I got were easy to hear at times and totally wacko at others. However, no matter the answer that came to me, I trusted it. Because I was able to communicate with the most important voice at my center, I could navigate the choppy waters of the world with more ease.
I could walk back into the light with stamina after all that.
I was someone that no one recognized. The space I’d been occupying within the darkness, in my depth, working in my shadows, healed me right up. Emotions were a different experience now. I was a new thing.
People didn’t seem to like it. At least, the people who had been there before. The speaking my mind part really seemed to bother them. I’d never been that girl before.
That’s the way meditation works sometimes. You come out of it as someone that has outgrown their old friends. Time to find new ones!
It’s a lonely journey going through an awakening. Diving into the inner deep transforms your outer spaces and the relationships that go with them, but it’s worth it.
Hi, I’m Emily. I write about wellness, consciousness, and existence. I have a graduate degree in philosophy, I’ve lived around the world, and I teach meditation. Visit my website or follow me on Instagram to find out more.
The divine in me recognizes the divine in you.