Yes, I’ve been meditating for a long time now—20 minutes a day for the better part of three years.

And even though meditation has gotten me nowhere, I’m still at it.

I’m not enlightened and I don’t know God any more than I did when I first started. If anything, I now question the existence of God and life after death even more. And I’m not at peace with myself or the world—I’m still capable of hating people and loving them in one heartbeat.

Meditation hasn’t made me better, kinder or solved my problems. And it hasn’t done anything for my levitating, nothing-else-matters kind of feelings either. In fact, it’s made me more aware of my selfish tendencies, because it’s made me look more closely at the problems I do have. It’s also compelled me to learn about the person I am and sit with that person. Do I like that person yet? No, not all the time.

But meditation has allowed me to tolerate myself, stand with myself and own my feelings. And meditation has encouraged me to look at the person I am and live with it—to become conscious of who I actually am, rather than what life experience told me I was. As a result, I’m now aware that life experiences have the potential to become problematic for me. My whole life, experiences outside of myself have told me continuously who they thought I was. These experiences are not me; they have no idea of who I really am.

So, even though mediation has gotten me nowhere, I’m still compelled daily to sit and get to know who I am. And now I stand stronger when life experiences try to tell me who they think I should be.

Author: Sarah McCallum

Editor: Evan Yerburgh

Image: Flickr