Why Meditate? – A Simple Analogy

Sunday, April 19, 2015

 

We are the combination of Spirit, Intellectual Mind (wisdom), Everyday Mind (to-do lists and goals) and Body. Every day, all the time and in every moment all of these elements are influencing every decision you make.

Of these four elements, it is the Everyday Mind that has the most control for so many of us. Our self-worth is determined by how many things we’ve crossed off of our to-do list. The Everyday Mind also is the part of ourselves that is most vulnerable to what the media, marketing and advertisers tell us what we should be and how we should be. In turn, our to-do lists become more complicated and longer.

To achieve a peaceful center of being, there needs to be a reshuffling of the elements with the Everyday Mind reassigned to a lower shelf. The Everyday Mind should serve you, not be served by you.

If we imagine ourselves as an airplane, these parts would be labeled as follows:

1) the Spirit would be the pilot, 2) the Intellectual mind would be the co-pilot, 3) the Everyday mind would be the passengers on the plane and 4) the plane itself would be the Body.

No one wants the passengers flying the plane.  It is through meditation that we turn over control of the plane over to the Pilots.