Hmm, ok, lets decide not to breathe today then.

That may not be a choice, as we all know.

But yes, avoiding eating food, or brushing your teeth, or exercising, or for that matter not doing the few other things that you usually do everyday, are all possible.

However, when you do avoid any of those, the experience isn’t that nice. Even if you can’t smell your bad breath not brushing on a given day, you will still get that yuck taste in your mouth in a few hours. Or then, the hunger or thirst or the stiff body, will certainly start nagging you.

Similarly, yes, it is quite easy and possible to deny yourself having to sit for a 20–30 minute meditation session every day. Most of us probably don’t. Then, you can’t deny that you must have this oft feeling of being a tad bit anxious, unhappy, possibly a bit lost about what this life really means.

Sometimes its our relationships and friendships that leave us wondering; at other times, its our jobs, peers or managers who make us reflect on what’s the purpose of this everyday madness that we seem to be living.

Allowing yourself 20 minutes to sit in silence, and arriving at your natural home through meditation, will certainly help you ‘find’ your place of calm and centered-ness. A consistent commitment over time, will make it one of the most important practices of your daily life. It will allow you to derive clarity, an ability to go within in the most challenging times and derive a certain confidence that is quite unshakeable!

My meditations allowed me to finally understand and experience my true identity. Beyond the conditioning of society, through the years of professional work after extensive international education, working amongst the smartest intellectuals at executive levels in top corporations, the daily practice of meditation was what allowed me to survive and helped me arrive at a place which never fails to deliver what I need — the deepest and most joyful experience of bliss and love.

And FINALLY, it delivered to me the most amazing outcome that I could have never thought.

It took just 33 years. Yes, ‘just’. What is 33 years of a 20–30 minute session that allows you to ‘KNOW’ truly undoubtedly who you are and what’s on the other side? We work all our lives and then lose everything through unexpected life events. Wealth seems to disappear, loved ones leave; in fact even our most precious possessions and experiences which gave us the most joy, seem to elude our memory over time and lose their value and importance.

I have had my fair share of challenges. While I am blessed with loved ones too, it is this practice that always brings me back home! It gives me hope, again! Despite whatever may happen, it is meditation that has allowed me to engage with myself to rise up, to try yet again, to not give up!

Besides just the mental tenacity, I experience now with the decades of practice, the convincing experience whether sitting or not, of not being just this body and mind. Meditation has graced me with its undoubted everlasting blissful presence. My identification has now shifted to that who I truly am, rather than what I ‘seemed’ to be. It has allowed to finally start seeing everyone and everything as a part of me, rather than being separate to me. Everything is now a collaboration, rather than a competition.

Make meditation your life long friend. It will never deceive you. It will give you exponential returns consistently. A time will come when you will always be in a meditative state. You will see that ALL that’s important for you, starts happening almost as if on its own, in a certain mysterious way that you could have never imagined!

Welcome. Welcome to your true home. A home, where you will always find peace, love, belonging-ness and happiness. I guarantee you!

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In gratitude,

Gaurav