How meditation worked for me

I walked into the Shambhala Chicago Center in October of 2007, a little over 6 years ago, ready to try a Tuesday night open house. I had no idea what to expect, and I was nervous about how long it would take me to get from the Loop to Rogers Park. I didn’t know anything about Rogers Park so I was even more nervous about not knowing where I was going. It had been a month since I ended a relationship with someone who I had been dating for two years. I was in a raw state of mind, very much sad and at the same time, stressed out with my job, working in IT at the Chicago Mercantil Exchange. Stress pervaded my life; I felt like I had run out of places to turn. I tried distracting myself with friends, the TV, or anything else that occupied my mind, but the moment I had to be with myself, I found myself sinking into a dark hole again, wondering,”Is this all there is to life? What am I doing?” Out of the blue, I had a crazy thought to try meditation. I didn’t really know what I hoped to gain with meditation but I did recall that my grandfather in India used to do it and often spoke highly about it. That’s all the information I had to go on, but I thought it was worth a try.

I googled meditation, and out came the Shambhala Center. A month later, on a Tuesday in July, I boarded a bus after work from the loop, and found myself in front of the center’s doors at 6:30pm, a half an hour early, having no idea what to expect at all. Alice Dan, the center director at that time, came to the door and offered me a tour of the place. She then took my upstairs and taught me to how to meditate. I then joined the larger group of meditators who came in at 7 and tried it out.

I really don’t know what made me come back week after week, but every Tuesday from then on, without fail, I came back.

Now here I am, 6 years later, after having taken what feels like hundreds of classes and countless long retreats, thinking “Has this helped me?” In fact, people ask me that all the time… Has it helped? Why do you do it? I won’t lie to you by saying that all my stress is now magically gone. . I still feel stress, and I still feel sad from time to time. And anger… and anxiety.. and well, everything that every other human being feels!

What I can tell you, from my own experience, is that, during my difficult times, or stressful times, I now have the strength to just sit, and be with myself, no matter what I’m feeling. Why has that been beneficial? Because stress and life’s craziness have a way of making us look for escape. Nobody wants to feel all those difficult feelings, so we look for ways in which we might be able to get rid of all that, either by acting out or by reverting to some action that might not be beneficial to us or anyone else around us. I know that’s my tendency. But through meditation, I feel as though somehow I’ve been able to train myself to accept that feelings that seem “bad” are just a part of my experience, and that I no longer have to push those thoughts and feelings away, and nor do I have to act them out. I can just be with them, and work with them through meditation practice. I can just accept myself and know that I’m perfectly good, and perfectly normal.

Meditation has taught me how to be more mindful, or more aware of what is going on in my own inner world. We all have our own inner world that we live in. (my boyfriend Matt really like to use that term – inner world) But how well do we really know ourselves? Meditation offers us the chance to get to know that inner world in which we live in; It creates a new awareness about oneself, and it also makes you realize that you’re ok, just as you are – something I am still learning all about! By no means can I say it was a cure-all solution for me. It wasn’t a magic pill that I could take overnight and all my stress simply disappeared. It hasn’t worked that way for me. But I can say that it did change my world quite a bit. I was quite unaware of some of the things that weren’t making me happy. Through meditation, I learned more about those things, and it gave me the space I needed to make some much needed changes in my own life. It gave me the space to be able to see my own negative thought patterns, and it gave me the strength to change some of those things.

And the center introduced me to a whole community of people who were all on this same path. A community that I now call “home” in which I have many many friends, brothers and sisters. People who I am thankful to and grateful to have met.

Aarti Tejuja is a member of the Chicago Shambhala Center. She currently works for the center as the Manager of Communications, is a Shambhala Guide, teaches Miksang Contemplative Photography, and is actively involved in the center’s Imagining Peace project.