Staying focused with meditation as a writer

I was fortunate to have been raised partially by my aunt, like a second mother, and she taught me about meditation at a young age. We were living in Egypt at the time, and I would attend meditation classes and workshops with her at people’s homes. This was in the 90’s when meditation had not yet become a global trend.

Eventually, I traveled to India with her, stayed at ashrams, and learned more sophisticated meditation techniques (Sathya Sai Baba’s Jyoti Meditation is my favorite). However, the more I learned, the more I became fascinated by the idea that one can achieve heightened states of consciousness and awareness through careful practice. It became an obsession.

In college, I did break through to a place in meditation that I’ll never forget, but suddenly, I found myself conflicted. Like anything else, meditation is work. It takes discipline to sit still everyday and quiet the mind. It's not always easy, and it tends to work better the “cleaner” we are. Therefore, to have better meditation practices, I knew it was best that I didn’t smoke, drink, party, or live generally like a college student in the US—a hard ask at the time.

What happened is that I eventually gave up the practice. I found the goal of enlightenment was just too far away to ever achieve. So, I quit without thinking about any of the short-term benefits I was enjoying.

Fast-forward to today. Through a series of events I won’t go into here, I’ve been brought back to meditation. It became painfully clear to me that my mind had grown accustomed to wandering aimlessly, perpetually engaged in worries, fancies, and general nonsense thinking. To center my mind, I’ve been meditating every morning, and it's the short-term benefits I’m after now.

As a writer, wasting less mental energy on nonsense I find that I’m able to write more each day, that the thoughts are clearer, inspiration comes faster, and I can remember where certain details are in a manuscript more instinctively. I love writing, and now that I can correlate a direct link between my meditation and a better experience as an author, I think this practice will stick. Enlightenment still interests me, but until I get there, I’ll be writing books.