Meditation, Spirituality and How to Connect With Your True Essence | Jillian Lavender
So many of us think we can't meditate. We've tried it, lasted forty seconds before the to-do list arrived in our mind, decided we were doing it wrong and never went back. But according to today's guest, that experience doesn't mean you failed at meditation. It means nobody taught you how to actually do it.
takeaways
Gillian Lavender describes three broad categories of meditation: focused attention (concentrating on breath or a candle), open monitoring or mindfulness (staying in the present moment), and automatic self-transcending, which she says is effortless and moves beyond thinking.
She frames the common experience of 'failing' at meditation as an issue of methodology rather than the individual, noting that many app-based or effortful practices don't stick.
Vedic meditation uses a silent, meaningless mantra that becomes fainter as the mind settles, allowing the body to reach a deeply restful, low-metabolic state she describes as deeper than sleep.
She explains her view of stress 'elimination' rather than management, describing thoughts during meditation as an indicator of stress leaving the system rather than something to analyse.
Gillian recommends 20 minutes twice a day (morning and late afternoon/evening) and discusses meditation as a portable practice she does in bed or on trains.
She discusses spirituality as connection to one's essence or consciousness, using the analogy of a wave settling back into the ocean to describe self-realisation.
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