Linda and Marion Williamson - My Mind Wont Shut Up!: Meditation for People Who Dont Meditate

Meditation For People
Who Dont Meditate

Were sisters, sturdy-legged bacon-sandwich-munching Glaswegians. We looked for real-life stuff about meditation that would appeal to ordinary people like us, with money worries, difficult families and haemorrhoids but we couldnt find much.

So we wrote this.

Marion Williamson is an author and editor. This is her fourth book. She edited Prediction magazine for ten years and writes for oodles of different magazines and websites. See more at: www.marionwilliamson.com

Linda Williamson is an IT project manager for the NHS in London. Shes obsessed with meditation books, retreats and classes but despite this, she still regularly manages to lock herself out of her flat.

For the last 15 years Rosie Balyuzi has freelanced in graphic design and illustration. Most recently, she illustrated Simplify: How to Stay Sane in a World Going Mad (Watkins, 2020). She offers great little snippets of life advice on her Instagram: @doodlesurfer

Meditation For People
Who Dont Meditate

By Linda and Marion Williamson

Illustrations by Rosie Balyuzi

First published in Great Britain 2020 by Trigger

Trigger is a trading style of Shaw Callaghan Ltd & Shaw Callaghan 23 USA, INC.

The Foundation Centre

Navigation House, 48 Millgate, Newark

Nottinghamshire NG24 4TS UK

www.triggerpublishing.com

Text Copyright Linda and Marion Williamson 2020
Illustrations Rosie Balyuzi 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available upon request
from the British Library

ePUB ISBN: 9781789562200

Linda and Marion Williamson have asserted their right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work

Cover design by Design Marque

Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd.

Converted to eBook format my Geethik Technologies

This book is dedicated to our friend Ross. When we mentioned we were writing a book on meditation, Ross said, I vaguely feel I should be doing something about my mind, but Im not sure what. This inspired us. We thought if we could encourage Ross to meditate, we were on the right path.

Nine Inspiring Benefits
(Heres Why You Bought This Book...)

Its what you need to know about meditation, without being too earnest.

We squish myths about meditation being all pan pipes and incense.

Well show you how to manage your preposterously messy brain, making you feel a bit happier and more in control.

The book tackles all your wriggly excuses that discourage you from making meditation a habit.

This book is not a spiritual journey.

We cant show you how to control your thoughts and feelings having a chaotic mind is just an annoying part of being human.

Theres nothing religious in here.

It wont make you better at Kung Fu.

The problem with the word meditation is that it carries so much woo-woo baggage. You dont have to be interested in clean-living, mantras or attaining oneness with the Universe to find meditation helpful. Simply put, meditation is being aware of your thoughts, emotions and senses in the present moment. After meditating for a few moments, youll be astonished at the turmoil inside your mind. This is everyones experience. If you take one thing from this book it should be this: the whole point of meditating is noticing that your mind wont shut up.

Meditation shows you that most of your thinking is ludicrously unhelpful. Youll quickly discover youre giving yourself terrible advice and being viciously unpleasant to yourself. The more youre aware of your repetitive internal gibberish, the easier it will be to spot unhelpful thoughts, drop them or replace them with kinder ones. This applies to everyones minds even you, with your weird obsessions, insecurities and fantasies.

Theres impressive neuroscience evidence confirming what people have known for centuries: meditating for just a few minutes a day will make you happier, calmer and better in bed (kidding!). So youll still be you, but with your shit together.

Its one of those simple but not easy things.

Your mind talks rubbish! Have you ever really listened to whats going on in there? Its chaos. Youre anxious about a sulking partner, angry at the traffic and confused about your friend being weird at lunch. Money problems make you panic and you feel guilty about what you said to your mum four years ago. In any one minute theres endless repetition, planning and fantasies.

You make ceaseless associations and ping off on weird tangents, fragmenting your energy and getting nowhere. Your memory skips back in time and leaps into the future but youre never really here. How can you trust your mind when its like this? And who is actually in charge?

Face it, youre a chimp!

Biologically, youre a problem-solving monkey. Evolution has given you a nervous system thats constantly on edge, scanning the horizon for possible threats and rewards. The world around you has changed exponentially but your brain hasnt evolved beyond spearing antelopes on the savanna. Youre using old equipment to cope with a far weirder and more complex world than your brain was designed to handle. Your hyper-switched-on nervous system is skilled at defending against unexpected dinosaurs but its not so useful when you explode with rage because your flight has been cancelled. Evolution doesnt want you to be content. Content = complacent = eaten by wild dogs.