Meditation can be understood as a safe and quiet place in a noisy, often unsafe world. Not because the world itself becomes less chaotic, but because our relationship to it changes. In meditation, we begin to step out of the constant mental drama and into a more stable inner ground.
This inner stability matters not just spiritually but also psychologically. When the mind has no refuge, it defaults to fear, negativity, and repetition. Meditation offers an alternative, a place where consciousness can rest.
FROM EGO CONSCIOUSNESS TO SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS
Much of human suffering arises from mistaking the ego for the Self. The ego is the thinking mind, the part of us that wants, fears, compares, and constantly narrates experience. It is not inherently bad. In fact, it is useful and necessary.
Problems arise when the ego runs amok, unchecked. Most of us believe we are the mind. Yet a simple question begins to unravel that assumption: Who is it that notices the mind thinking? Who observes our thoughts and feelings? Who is aware of the fear, the stories, the emotional reactions?
Meditation gently shifts consciousness from ego identification toward what might be called soul consciousness or the quiet observer behind thought.
EGO AND INTUITION: LEARNING TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE
Ego and intuition have very different qualities.
The ego is restless, demanding, and often dissatisfied. It always wants something, usually certainty, validation, or control. It is frequently distracted and just as frequently distracting.
Intuition, by contrast, is calm, quiet, and assured. It doesn’t argue. It doesn’t shout. It speaks softly, often as a subtle inner knowing rather than a fully articulated thought.
The difficulty is that intuition remains hidden when the mind is constantly working overtime. This is why the ego must be quieted, not eliminated, but brought under conscious control.
MANTRA AS A TOOL FOR QUIETING THE MIND
One effective way to quiet the ego, especially in moments when analytical thinking is unnecessary, is to use a mantra. Repeating a phrase gives the mind something simple and steady to rest on.
Mantras can come from spiritual traditions or be of one’s own making. In the past, I have used:
“I am the master of my mind and my body.”
During times when healing is needed, I’ve used:
“In all my body cells, healing light is shining.”
The ego doesn’t particularly like this practice. It wants its way. It prefers habitual thinking, and it will resist. But with practice and perseverance, calmness and control of the mind begin to emerge.
Many people, including myself, believe that this control of the ego and the emergence of the authentic REAL SELF is a life’s work. It is the Great Work. And it is a small price to pay for emotional regulation, grounding, and inner peace.
THOUGHT, MANIFESTATION, AND RESPONSIBILITY
I work with people who are under tremendous stress. Their minds are often caught in repetitive negative thinking, and over time, those thoughts begin to manifest in real and tangible ways.
What is the understanding and misunderstanding of thought? Everything must first be thought of before it happens. A thought is a thing. But also, we are not our thoughts. We are the ones having the thoughts. This is true for creative and positive thoughts, and equally true for negative ones. Recalibrating the mind away from negativity is not easy. It takes awareness, discipline, and compassion. But it is necessary.
A CASE IN POINT
I have a client who feels completely ruined by his divorce from a narcissistic partner. His constant, albeit unintentional, mantra is “Shes ruined me, shes ruined me.” Over the six months I’ve worked with him, this belief has continued to shape his experience. His unconscious mantra reinforces his experience. His thoughts have become self-fulfilling.
I asked him a simple question: What might happen if your thought shifted to something like: “I can handle what life is presenting me with now, and something good will come of it?” Even if circumstances don’t immediately change, the internal landscape does, and that change matters.
CHALLENGE, MEANING, AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH
An easy life often makes us indolent and forgetful of the deeper purpose of existence. Difficulty, while painful, can be a catalyst for awakening.
Do not adopt a victim mindset. You are a victim only if you believe you are. During times of testing, cling to whatever you understand as the Divine, like a baby monkey clinging to its mother. Challenges are not punishments; they are invitations to awaken dormant potential. Welcome tests. Within every test lies the opportunity to understand, strengthen, and overcome. As Michael Jordan famously said, “ I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
THE GATEKEEPERS OF THE MIND
We are the gatekeepers of our minds. We may not control every thought that arises, but we can choose which ones we feed, repeat, and believe. At the root of much neurosis lies what could be called soul sickness, a forgetting of who we truly are beneath the mind’s noise.
Meditation is not about becoming someone new. It is about remembering who you have always been.
MY PERSONAL PATH INTO PRACTICE
I began meditating as an undergraduate, drawn in by a course in Comparative Religion. I was searching, even then, for something that could help me make sense of the human condition beyond doctrine or theory. Around that time, I encountered the philosophy of yoga as taught by Paramahansa Yogananda. His Autobiography of a Yogi had a profound influence on me.
Like many, I dabbled and struggled. My meditation practice was inconsistent for nearly a decade before I finally settled into something daily and disciplined. But over time, something unmistakable happened. I’m not the same person I was all those years ago. Or perhaps more accurately, I am the same person, but toned down, less anxious, less depressed, less emotionally hijacked by the craziness of the world.
I could not advocate this path of meditation toward psychological stability and spiritual satisfaction if I had not traveled it myself.
SEARCHING, EGO, AND PANIC
Like most people, I was searching. I wanted to know who I authentically was. But the ego kept telling me stories about myself; stories that were not necessarily true. At times, I believed them. At times, I acted on them. And over time, I built a narrative of self that was false.
The result was anxiety. Severe anxiety. Panic attacks.
I turned to therapy. I took medication. Both were helpful, and I remain grateful for them. But for me, they were not sufficient on their own.
EXISTENTIAL PANIC AND THE HUMAN CONDITION
As I began practicing as a psychotherapist, I noticed something striking: beneath most forms of panic lies a deep, existential fear, an unspoken fear rooted in not knowing who we really are. We are desperate for identity and meaning, yet unsure where to find them. So we flounder. We experiment. We make poor decisions. We numb ourselves, overconsume, chase love in the wrong places, or lose ourselves in distraction.
This, in many ways, is the human condition.
From my experience, both personal and professional, meditation, combined with self-analysis through psychotherapy and sustained determination, offered a way out of that morass.
PRACTICE, AND THE LONG VIEW
I am still practicing meditation because meditation is not a destination. It is a discipline. A returning. A remembering.
It is all practice, really, until we finally unite with what some traditions call the Higher Self, that deeper consciousness beneath ego, fear, and narrative.
Meditation does not remove us from life. It helps us meet life more honestly, more steadily, and with greater compassion, for ourselves and others.
