David’s First Meditation Experience: Meditation School

Hey Meditator,

Welcome back to another episode of the Meditation School Podcast.

I'm sitting here having my yogi digestive tea.

There's this beautiful bright light coming in through the window this morning here in gorgeous Boulder,

Colorado.

And I am super blessed.

And I hope that you are too and that you are living the life that you want to be living.

That you're present in this moment and that you're really absorbing what life is here to offer you.

Whether that's just the wind bristling through the leaves on the trees next to you outside your window.

Or taking a moment to focus on what you're drinking or eating.

Or having gratitude for people in your life.

Making sure that you really take a moment here in this present moment to observe,

Absorb,

And have gratitude.

And then ultimately respond to life as it's presenting itself.

And I think that's what meditation is really about.

Helping us get into the space to be able to do that.

So welcome and welcome back if you've listened before.

And in this episode of the Meditation School Podcast,

I want to share my first ever meditation experience.

How it came about.

How it changed my life.

And how it led to me being here with you today.

And it all starts when I was 16 years old.

I was an ice hockey player.

Probably spent most of my childhood,

All the way,

Even through college,

Playing ice hockey and roller hockey.

It absorbed my life.

But there was this moment when I was 16.

My brother came home from college.

I grew up in New Jersey.

And he had been partying,

Probably experimenting with drugs.

And he said,

You never read.

You never read any books,

David.

And he was right.

So Alan,

If you're listening,

Thank you for calling me out on that one.

And he dragged me to Barnes and Nobles.

And he said,

Just pick any book.

It was the year 2000.

I saw a stack of books,

All of the same book,

Had a nice looking cover.

I grabbed it.

It was called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle,

Which you most likely have heard of.

But at that time,

He wasn't really that popular yet.

There was no Oprah and Eckhart thing going.

It was way,

Way before that.

And I opened the book when I got home a few pages in.

Just it was like lightning struck or maybe a better analogy was like somebody flipped a light switch on inside me.

And I was never the same again.

One of the things Eckhart said that stuck with me and still does to this day is life is now.

There was never a time when your life was not now and there never will be.

And as simple as a statement as that is,

I had never really thought about that before.

I was always,

Always projecting into the future,

Constantly thinking about the next moment or the next day or the next year,

What I was going to do when I went to college or with my career when I grew up.

I was never in the moment,

Except maybe when I was playing a sport and I didn't even quite realize I was in the moment.

But when I read that,

I realized I was constantly projecting into the future,

Constantly being pulled back into the past.

And this moment was a it was like a transit station to the next moment.

And that never ends.

That will never end unless you shift your consciousness,

Unless you decide to be present.

And I know a lot of people,

What they'll do is force themselves into the moment.

And so maybe bungee jumping or skydiving,

Right?

Sex,

Sports,

Drugs.

There are a lot of ways we can kind of,

You know,

Intensely get into the moment.

And those are not bad.

They enrich life.

I think they're great.

But if those are the only times that you're in the moment and being in the past and future causes misery for you,

Then what's going to happen over time is you're you're going to need more and more extreme moments like that and experiences to pull you into the present versus just being in a peaceful,

Calm state,

Not being excited necessarily or bored,

Just being accepting and here and allowing the miracle of life to unfold right before your eyes.

So if you know anybody in your life who's always going to more extremes to find pleasure,

It might be because they don't realize that they can just be here in this moment without having to do that.

And some people go to those extremes because even though it does bring them into the moment,

It's also kind of an escape.

So if we have no external stimulus or not a lot of it and we step into the moment and we're full of pain or resistance or discomfort,

All of that energy starts to rise to the surface.

And so then we try to escape.

So part of being present may have to do with dealing with whatever comes up inside you that doesn't feel great and being present with that energy.

And I think this is where a lot of people kind of dislike meditation or almost like bounce off of it when they try because they close their eyes and there's noise in their head and there's emotions in their body and they go,

Oh,

It's not fun being in here.

Let me focus on out there again.

So they find external issues,

External problems to always focus their attention on constantly being busy,

Constantly being on the phone or on the computer or talking to people so they can avoid the one thing that's closest to them because there might be some pain underneath it.

And that one thing is this present moment.

And I know you might be thinking,

Well,

If I'm in the present,

Then why is why would the past be haunting me?

It's because the past has almost a momentum to it.

It's needing to be resolved.

It's wanting to be resolved.

And so it keeps kind of poking into the present going,

Hey,

Look at me.

I think long term,

If you really want to be present in the moment successfully and often,

You have to deal with your past and the energy that it brings.

But you deal with it by being in this moment,

Not by losing yourself to the past.

You allow the energy and the emotion,

The memories,

The thoughts to come up and you stay present with them.

When we're able to do that,

That's when we really transform from the inside out.

And that's how I started to transform when I was a teenager,

When I started meditating.

So I opened that book.

I read a few pages of Eckhart Tolle where he said,

We're rarely in this moment.

A light switch flipped on inside me and then everything changed the way I saw the world changed,

The way I saw myself changed.

And I started sitting in meditation often.

And I went really,

Really deep as a teenager.

And I think part of the reason was I didn't know any better.

I didn't have anyone telling me I couldn't be in the moment or I was not doing it right or there's a certain technique.

I just kind of read to be in the moment.

And then I closed my eyes and was later.

Meditation actually got harder for me when I went to college because I started intellectualizing everything.

My professors taught me that the highest form of intelligence is the intellect and everything had to be filtered through the intellect.

But when we're in this moment meditating,

That's not necessarily true.

We can be the awareness behind the thoughts,

Beyond the thoughts and in between the thoughts.

And sometimes those thoughts fall away and our deepest selves just start to reveal,

Start to come up into the moment.

My authentic nature and energy is here.

My first meditation experience was reading a book.

It was like in that moment I just became present and that was my meditation.

And we all come to it through a different doorway.

In the first episode of this podcast,

I talked about the four doorways that people usually come through meditation through.

But if you haven't meditated before and you're listening to this,

Maybe this can be your first meditation just by being present with me here.

And if you have,

If you're a pro,

I remember I was teaching some guy once and he said,

I have David,

You love my nerd voice,

David,

I've had over 5000 hours of meditation experience.

And I was like,

OK,

How many hours does it take to be in the moment?

It was like his ego is saying,

Look how present I am.

It doesn't matter what your race,

Your gender,

Your history,

The pain you've been through,

Who your parents are,

How much money you have.

None of that has any relevance to you being in the moment.

The moment does not discriminate in any way.

It is the most accepting thing there is.

The moment will always accept you.

The question is,

Can you accept yourself and allow yourself to let go and to be in this moment?

I wanted to share that story.

I hope it inspires you to draw your energy and attention into the moment again and again.

Oh,

One last thing before we go.

One of my very first experiences was I looked out at a tree outside my window in the suburbs in New Jersey.

And that tree was just present in this moment.

And I started to go,

Oh,

If that tree can be present in this moment,

So can I.

I can be present with that tree.

And that was also a really big awakening for me,

Noticing how nature draws us into the moment.

So if you're having trouble being in the moment,

Go out into nature and allow it to teach you.

Thank you so much for listening.

And I wish you the best.

Enjoy yourself.

Meditate.

And I'll see you in the next one.