Santa Clara Meditation Self Help – How can I change my life and my bad habits?
My life has changed so much that it can be divided into before and after meditation. Before meditation, no matter how hard I tried to break my sleeping habit of oversleeping, but I couldn’t change it. After I broke my lazy habit with meditation, I wake up early in the morning and face a new morning every day. It’s fun and exciting to live. Now I’m going to tell you my secret.
My family is a devout Christian family. Every morning at 6 am, grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, younger brother, and I gathered in the living room to worship. Before I became an elementary school student, I woke up early in the morning, prayed, and read the Bible. As a child, I was sleeping sweetly in the morning, and I disliked the sound of my parents waking me up. Every morning when the sun was barely up, I resented the ritual with my family. So I gradually became obsessed with sleep. I tried to sleep whenever I had time, and I woke up in the morning, I was annoyed. This habit gradually hardened, and I solved it by sleeping when I was stressed. In adolescence, I slept around the clock after fighting with my mom. As I was forced to lead a religious life by my parents, my resentment towards my parents also grew. Rather than looking back and blaming myself, I always blamed the people around me.
This habit hadn’t changed even after I got married. No matter how much you start a family with the person you love, you usually have many fights when you are newlyweds. So did my husband and I. Of course, we fought, but I resented my husband in my mind. Whenever I had a hard time, I threw everything away and didn’t get out of bed. Even when my husband went to work, I slept soundly, and on weekends I slept longer than my husband. My husband did not understand me. He couldn’t understand why his wife, who was just a housekeeper, was more tired than her husband, who has a job.
The problem had gotten worse. The children were born one by one, so it was hard for me to take care of them: infants, toddlers, kindergarten, elementary school. As the children grew up little by little, my late-sleep habits did not change, and my family adjusted to my lifestyle. For example, my sons started their day on an empty stomach or a light breakfast when they went to kindergarten.
I was suffering from guilt when I saw my family adjusting to me without saying anything. So I tried to wake up with multiple alarms set to change but failed every time. When I made breakfast for my family that day, I couldn’t get out of bed all day. When my family saw me like this, they were disappointed and thought I was a lazy person. I also considered myself lazy and weak-willed. However, in my heart, I had a strong desire to wake up early in the morning, prepare breakfast for my family, and drink morning coffee to start a refreshing day. But I still couldn’t change my habit, and only desperation was in my heart.
However, my frustrating situation has completely changed. The beginning was meditation as a hobby. The meditation I started by chance made me abandon the negative mind stored in me, and little by little, my latent positive mind was revealed inside me. What’s interesting about my meditation is that I discarded my negative thoughts, and my mind and behaviors started to change little by little. In the past, no matter how hard I tried to think about good thoughts or positive thoughts, I went back to being a negative person after a few days, but when I threw away my trashy thoughts, pure clean emptiness in my mind was revealed.
I meditated for at least an hour every day and looked back on my life. I was able to let go of my resentment against my parents, an obsession with my body and mind to blame others, and cowardice in not admitting my faults. After letting go of all these kinds of mind, miraculously, my body became healthy and energized. I was also liberated from the stressful memories of the past.
For four years of meditation practice, I was entirely able to free from my past self, and I became a middle school teacher who teaches meditation. Once, I had to give a special lecture at a middle school an hour away from where I live. It was the first class in the morning, so I left my house at 6:30 am. It took lots of courage for a lazy person like me. As I entered the highway, the sun was rising beyond the long line of cars. It was so beautiful. I was grateful. I was grateful that I could do something somewhere in the world, and I was grateful to have such a beautiful morning. In the classroom I visited with a grateful heart, the children welcomed me with love and respect. I was happy the whole time I taught my students how to meditate to get rid of stress. From this day on, I could regularly get up at 6 am, make coffee, and serve my husband’s hot meals. I pat the children’s heads who are not yet awake, and I calmly think about what I have to do today. I am happy to have a new morning by looking at the green leaves fluttering in the wind by the window.
Now, I am pretty sure that I’m not going back to who I was. Because my laziness and negative mind completely disappeared from me. Now, I am fully able to control my mind. Isn’t this absolute freedom?
by Donna Seo
