Perhaps you have started your meditative journey with us already. Perhaps you have even established a meditation routine, with your regular morning and evening meditation. It’s great if you have managed to establish your personal morning and evening meditation schedule. And if you have not done so we warmly encourage you to try. For these are the main building blocks of your personal and spiritual growth. Establishing and maintaining a schedule of regular meditation is what allows us to keep our inner state in check, to maintain balance and to reconnect to the source of energy every time we sit down to meditate. This is what keeps our batteries charged.

However, you may be wondering: can we remain connected, even after we have finished our “formal” morning meditation? Can we go about our day without getting “unplugged” from the source? Can we optimize our system to save energy, so that our batteries do no completely drain in-between our meditation sessions? And Can we quick-charge our batteries in the middle of the day, while we are working, studying, running errands, or taking care of any number of commitments that we have?

The answer to all these questions is “yes”, and the key is our attention. We will introduce you to several techniques of training our attention and maintaining it throughout the day, in our new Lunchtime Meditation series starting in March.

It happens to me all the time. In fact, if I’m not careful, it probably will happen in every session that I sit down to meditate. It goes something like this.

I sit down to meditate. I’m hit with a lot of thoughts from the past or the future. I’m more conscious of something else coming up right after meditation, and so my attention doesn’t go deep enough. More than this, my attitude is somewhat superficial, nonchalant and casual – as though meditation is a daily chore and I have the typical “Let’s get this over with” feeling inside me.

Result? I barely touch even the basic benefits of meditation and worse, I end up spending 15 to 20 minutes pretending that I’ve completed my daily meditation.

With experience, I learned how to do the exact opposite – get a meaningful, profound and surreal experience out of my daily meditation by focusing on a few essential things.

It’s quite an interesting question that we get asked all the time and one that’s extremely important to a meditator. 5 minute and 10-minute meditations are quite popular these days. Those who offer meditation are desperate to make money in a highly competitive market where the options and choices are endless. But quick and easy is what sells and gets views on Youtube or likes on social media, which explains a plethora of quick “recharge yourself” offerings. Then there is upselling to yoga mats and other products that enhance your meditation experience.

It goes on and on….commercial intent without any consideration for the optimal time that your personal, individual journey to self-improvement and better health requires. But how long you should meditate and how much time you spend on it is something you should control and determine, rather than allow marketing professionals to dictate this.

And the point to focus here is what realistically is the time needed for meditation to be effective and beneficial for you? Some answers we give will surprise you.

Yes, today’s times are very testing for everyone. Meditator or not, every one of us has those moments and situations when we’re close to boiling over. We’ve reached the tipping point. The proverbial straw is about to break the camel’s back very soon. We’re having what seems to be one of our worst days. And the biggest problem is that the other person seems to be blind to what is a straightforward case and the right thing to do. You can’t seem to make him or her see your point of view and simply cannot fathom how such people even exist or what drives their thinking.

Sounds familiar? We have some answers, but only because we have a little bit of experience as meditators, not because we’re free of such situations or states of mind ourselves at all times.

Many of us struggle on the periphery of the realm that gives us a deep, soothing experience when we meditate. We merely touch the surface. For some of us, that’s the way it has been for months or even years. For others, a tepid, imperceptible sensation that seems to make us mildly calmer is all we have thus far – we await the moment where the meditation experience can penetrate into us.

In fact, all this may be true of the 80% of us meditators. But some of us are fortunate to have the nectar of deep meditation at some points in time, however infrequent it may be.  The question is – how is this state achieved and why don’t we get this every day and each time we meditate?