It has been an Indian woman living in Switzerland, who introduced me to Deepak Chopra’s meditation circle, half a year ago.
Since then, I’m doing my 20 minutes of guided meditation every day – a thing, which I dreamt at least 20 years of, but which I never succeeded in.
Why? I got so much distracted every time, distracted by my own thoughts. Whenever I tried to sit still and concentrate on my breath, it took me less than a minute and my ‘radio’ in my head started its show.
I call it ‘radio’ – these tons of thoughts running one after the other, starting with my daily program, what I have to do, what I should not do, what I missed to do the day before, then thinking of my challenges with my sons or people around me, and ending by the thought that I feel ashamed that I wasn’t able once more to concentrate on my breath without thinking a lot of other things.
How many times did I try to stop this ‘radio’ in my head and pushed the reset button to re-start meditating?
Until half a year, I was convinced that meditation is something for other people but not for me.
Deepak Chopra, an Indian-born American author and inspirational speaker, helped me to get silent inside.
For sure, it isn’t working all the time. Some days are still hard for me to be concentrated on Deepak’s words. But the soft music at the background and his mantra for every day helps me as well to breathe slowly and deeply and relax.
My first 21-day-meditation experience with him was centered on abundance, abundance in every sense of life, love, health, wealth, etc. There, I discovered GRATITUDE.
For sure, I knew what gratitude was and I had often felt it in my life before. But, concentrating on gratitude for every day I’m living, breathing, thinking… this was something totally new for me.
I don’t know when I had the idea to create a gratitude post on Instagram every day. But I don’t regret it a single moment. I’m even looking forward to posting a gratitude picture and a small sentence every single day. It belongs now to my daily ritual right after the meditation or, if I don’t have the time then, during the day.
Some of my friends started telling me that they love and enjoy seeing my gratitude posts every day, which fills me even with more gratitude.
Since I started meditating, my mindset shifted.
I grew up in a religious family. My parents, my younger brother and I went to church every Sunday, and we followed totally this big church community. I started going to the children Sunday school, when I was six or seven years old and I participated in all the church activities until I left Switzerland at the age of 20. The year in Paris gave me the courage to leave this community and to forget about religion and God and to go my way with Freudian psychology.
37 years after this, Deepak’s meditation brought me back to my spiritual side, but not anymore as rigid as it has been when I was a teenager.
I don’t believe in God. No, I don’t want to be dependent again.
I didn’t start to become religious again and reading the bible every day as I tried in my puberty years. But I started believing in something, which is bigger than me and which has a bigger plan than just mankind. You may call it ‘universe’ or something else. It doesn’t matter, which name one puts on it.
My mindset shifted though. I feel relieved. This relieve comes from the thought that I don’t have to feel responsible for all my actions and my being. I can let it go, and by ‘it’ I mean this huge package of responsibility.
I have replaced it by trust; trusting in myself, that I will be doing the right things, that I’m perfect as I am, that everything will be okay; and trusting in something bigger than me, which will be guiding me.
What a change after letting gratitude and trust coming into my life.
I’m extremely grateful for this. You cannot believe, what this means if you didn’t experience the same.
Have a look at my Instagram account (esther_buerki) and send me a message, if you feel like it. I’m looking forward meeting you.