Meditation and Revelations

The meditation I do is primarily to create mindfulness. I don't do guided meditation. I don't meditate for relaxation or stress reduction of sleep or any of those things. I meditate to become more mindful.  As such, do just like above. I focus on the breath, count the breaths when my mind wanders, and it always does, I come back to the breath. Simple and yet so very hard. Hard because it is hard to quiet the mind. It is constantly working. But I've been working at it. In 2 days I will have meditated every day for 90 days. That is a long time. 3 months. As I was getting ready for work today, something occurred to me. Meditation has changed me in very good ways.

Looking back over my life, especially the tough times, I could probably have been diagnosed as manic - depressive. Now the episodes weren't especially high or low, but there were definitely bouts of being up and bouts of being down. I realized long ago that I do suffer from depression. But I never looked at the up times as manic. Maybe they were. I can look back on times in my life where I felt like I was on top of the world. I could do no wrong. Everything was great and I loved it. I can also remember times when I didn't want to get out of bed. When I did get up, I would mope around the house. I felt like doing things was useless because we were going to die anyway. Really sad and depressing. Many, many days I would sit and think about the pointlessness of it all. Why work hard or save money or do whatever when we were going to die. I vividly remember thinking those things. This morning when I was in the shower, it suddenly hit me, my mood this past couple of weeks has been surprisingly steady. No super highs. No down in the dumps lows. Just very even and steady. That struck me. I've been more willing to do things because I enjoy them. I have been following through on things which is something I have always struggled with. I am able to start something, put it down then pick it up some days later and pick up where I left off. You have no idea how huge that is for me. I was the queen of unfinished projects. I was a master at working my butt off to set something up, like lesson plans for school, and then completely forget they existed. I can't tell you how many times I would work for days getting lesson plans ready, making copies, and planning everything out. Then completely forget they were there and freak out to throw a lesson together only to find the planned out lesson later. I can't count how many times that happened over the course of 10 years. But that's what would happen. I would plan during my manic periods and not really remember what I had done. Also, I could never stick to one track. I would find some curriculum that I really liked and use it for a bit then get distracted by something new and/or different. I was constantly switching things up. I know that confused the kids, hell it confused me and I was supposedly in charge. I hated that but I didn't know how to break the cycle. Well, I broke the cycle with meditation. I set up some lessons over Christmas break and I am still using them. They aren't perfect, but I'm really following through with my planning. Amazing.

There are lots of other things too. I don't find myself getting angry. Ever. I get upset but not like I used to. I'm able to really look at things and see them for what they are, not what I think they should be. I just feel really even and balanced. I have a list of things to do and I just do them instead of dwelling on how I dread them. It's crazy. I would never have thought meditation could make such a huge, huge difference in my life. I'm glad I started it.