Meditation: Experiencing the Rhythm

            I recently experienced meditation in a new way that has helped make me feel more connected with the universe. This helps because living alone across the country from my family and friends can get lonely at times. It’s nice to find ways to feel connected with something larger than myself. The new theme that has emerged in my meditation sessions recently is rhythm.

            I often listen to meditative music when I meditate be it chanting, shamanic drumming, or patterned white noise. I notice that I focus on the rhythm of the music while meditating and I allow it to sort of take over my body. I observe my thoughts as my attention floats between different elements of rhythm. I will listen to the rhythm of the song and then I will pay attention to the rhythm of my breath. As I pay more and more attention to my body, I begin to feel the rhythm of my beating heart. After that, I start perceiving it everywhere.

            Eventually I get to a point where my whole body has a heightened awareness about it. I can feel the energy surging through my body, almost pulsating. My body can’t help but move and shake and swing back and forth in those moments. It’s like I am manifesting into pure energy and its rhythmic and pulsating in nature. I open my eyes and look around. The light that I am seeing is coming at me in waves, in rhythms. All of the sound around me is vibrations in the air, rhythmic waves of energy. Then I start to think about the rhythmic patterns of everything from the day/night cycle, the repeating seasons, the rise and fall of mountains, land turning into ocean turning into land again, sex, orgasm, birth/death, the cyclical rotations of the earth, of the sun, of the galaxy.

            I perceive everything in that moment as a giant symphony of rhythmic energy. It’s all on different frequencies and timescales but it is all harmonious and synchronized. In that way I feel myself as part of a universal grand symphony, playing my part in this interwoven musical fabric beyond space and time. It no longer makes me feel isolated, meager, and alone. I feel like I am connected with everything and everyone else around me. I feel in tangent with life and people and it makes me overwhelmed with love and gratitude.

I think part of the issues with mental health today is losing that connection with the world, with people, shutting yourself off, and feeling separate and distant from everything else around you. So many mental health issues are based on lies we tell ourselves, this illusion of separateness. True happiness can be achieved simply by perceiving the truth, seeing yourself as part of the whole, as the whole itself. Meditation can be hard for many people but in reality, it is trying to do the simplest thing imaginable, simply observing, being awareness without preconception or judgment. It’s hard at first because it’s the opposite of what technology and our culture encourages us to do, but with practice it will become easy and natural and will change the world around you.

Meditation has been the gift that keeps on giving for me. I am finding more and more ways to heal myself and feel connected through simply observing my breath and becoming pure awareness itself. No one should feel alone because no one is ever truly alone. It’s a trick of the mind. It’s true, I was miserable and shut off for years. Now I am slowly gaining awareness of reality and I find it beautiful and nourishing. All of the love and acceptance in the world is at your fingertips. Just listen, observe your world, bask in the rhythms around you and the cosmic song will follow, and you will know that you are not alone and in fact surrounded by love.