Jackson - Meditation: Living a Successful and Peaceful Life: Personal Health, Relationship, Self-Esteem, and Happiness

My journey into the world of meditation began on a hill in Tibet. There was something spiritual that I was seeking when my voyage began and I was not sure what it was. With life taking me on all kinds of twists and turns, I found that I was questioning the value of western philosophy and wanting to embrace something more meaningful in my life. We are taught from a very young age to achieve. We go through the process of graduating throughout our educational life and then go on into the workplace to discover that the strife for success is still very much alive and kicking. In fact, we have to work even harder. What was wrong with my life was that it was taking twists and turns without me. How can that happen?

Well, its actually quite easy and it happens to a lot of people. Doors open and because of western philosophy, we are considered successful if we take the opportunity and go through that door on the next stage of our careers. However, what people are finding more and more confusing is how to balance personal and work life and to make sense of it all. Youre too tired after work to give your best to your loved ones. You are too exhausted by all of the demands placed on you and if you dont keep up with them, you fail. Thats the process and we are all apt to go along with it because we are also taught that we must strive to succeed. However, my trip to Tibet was to get away as far as possible from this competitive rat race and find out what I wanted from my life. In the same way, people with self-esteem issues have the same kind of problems. People expect those people to act in a certain way and if they dont, they are criticized and made to feel less of a person. After a lifetime of criticism, a human being can feel that they are worthless and question the validity of the judgment passed upon them. Getting away from the material world was my way to escape what I saw as a very unsatisfactory life, though your escape could be more local than that. The hill that overlooks your town could give you equal inspiration just as the shoreline first thing in the morning can.

In a very similar way to others and with a broken relationship behind me, I wanted to fix me. Success and peace do not frequently go hand in hand but I had heard that they could. This trip was my effort to see how this was at all possible. This was the ace up my sleeve and perhaps my escape from the competitive world and I believed that being among people whose philosophy was so different from that of our society might enrich me, but I had no idea how much. In a retreat in a distant country, I was about to find out that my failures were indeed my own failures and that no one else could be blamed for them. I also learned how to face my demons and get rid of those hang-ups because not only is the blame mine and mine alone, so is the remedy.

I had chosen my path in life but I was unaware of other doors which could have been opened and which could have made the course of my life much more successful and happy. What I sought was peace but I didnt expect to find it. How can you find peace when your mind is always in turmoil? Being on the foothills of Tibet and standing in front of a temple, I felt this overwhelming need to find out how monks with seemingly very little to eat were among the happiest people I had ever met and I wanted to find out why. Its easy to be positive in an environment which encourages it, though when I went home to my bed at night, I could not escape my thoughts and that was where my life was going wrong. Its also the place where most peoples lives go astray which is why this book was written. I feel strongly that those with self-esteem issues or troubles carried from the past can find solace within the words of this book because my experience pointed me in the right direction.

My discovery came as a little bit of a shock to the system, but what I found was a discovery that I cant wait to share with readers because the voyage into the world of meditation was a difficult one for me, as it will be to people who are accustomed to deep thought processes. What I had never imagined for one moment was that through meditation, I was actually able to dig deeper, to achieve more, to be happier and to find answers that my mind on its own was never able to find. The problems that befall people from the western world are universal and it is hoped that my experience will help someone, even one person, in seeking answers. When you find them, as I did, life really does show all of its glory and you dont need to go to Tibet to find those answers because I have included them within the pages of this book to help you along your journey. I took the hard work out of it, although if you ever do get the opportunity to go to a retreat in Tibet, the experience was eye opening.

The book also highlights how you can incorporate meditation into your life as a gradual process and gain a lot of peace of mind from it. You will also see from my own experience and of course, yours, that meditation helps you to achieve more, rather than less. This process is explained. I just wanted to include that in the introduction because your energy levels increase, your mind power increases and you find yourself not panicking about tight deadlines any more when you start to put yourself first and find that nice place where meditation takes you. You also gain a sense of who you are and are not really that put out if that does not conform to other peoples expectations, since your own expectations of self are far more important in the order of things. I used to think what people thought of me was a reflection of who I was. However, it wasnt. Its the way that I accept those messages from other people that made me see myself in a less than positive light. Thats where most of us make our mistakes.