Note on Meditation from Sharon

For me, I would say that meditation alone has done more for me (with regard to depression) in the past couple of years than anything anyone else has ever offered bar none--and by immense measure. It is completely free and completely freeing. I remember thinking that the "monster" was always near by and would ALWAYS be near by and that to fall back into that deep dark hole was ALWAYS only a step away. It stopped me from doing all kinds of things because I never knew if I could trust that I wouldn't go there under pressure.

I don't anymore. I am not afraid of that anymore. I take no medication but I try very hard to meditate as often as possible. I strongly believe that your thoughts are the key to everything and that meditation is the key to your thoughts.

You can't always keep track of your thoughts. There are too many and they come too fast. But you can keep track of your feelings. I know now that when you concentrate on what you don't want, what you are worried about, what you are afraid of (which are really all pretty much the same thing), you feel bad and that when you think about what you DO want, what you want to happen, what makes you happy, what you love, what you are grateful for, you FEEL good. It's really that simple but not so simple to do.

I remember the very first time that I actually STOPPED my thinking. I was running through another countless broken record of thoughts, endless, horrible, ranting, thoughts and, all of a sudden, I STOPPED. I stopped that voice in my head for the very first time in my life and suddenly I knew that I was separate from the voice and that I was in charge--that I had the choice to either keep thinking that way or I could think about something else. Sounds simple now but I never knew I had the choice before that. It was always there but I never knew it before and, once I knew it was possible, and especialy that it was possible for ME, everything began to change--so much so that people around me even began to notice it which surprised me. And, of course, it isn't simple--well it is but it is very difficult to remember that it is simple--or something like that.

I also used to think that I was very emotional and that was just part of my personality. That there was nothing I could do about it. Sometimes I felt ruled by my emotions and sometimes I did a lot of damage to myself and to others because of it. And then I learned that an emotion is nothing more than a really STRONG thought and that you can stop them too if you want. You can still feel them if you want--they are still there and you try to learn what they are saying--but they no longer have to overpower you.

Anyway, most of the time I'm not afraid anymore. It doesn't have to be fancy and you don't have to be really good at it for it to make a difference. Just a few minutes of silence every day changes everything--at least it has for me.

If you meditate, over time, you will eventually feel all of the colors--all of the colors that make us human. Some of the colors are not very friendly but, over time, more and more of them are. It's like it cleans a tiny tiny bit of the grime off the window each time you sit and then you can see better and sometimes, for only a speck of time, you get to see a rainbow through the glass.