By Charles Steck, New Orleans, Louisiana

Subscriber at Sahaja Online and avid meditator

Monday morning, its raining, and traffic is backed up on the interstate. I am running late, and the boss is not going to be pleased.

I hated my job, yet it paid well.

I reached for the Nicotine and the Red Bull next to me. The combination induced a simultaneous release of adrenaline and dopamine, which provided some short term relief from the fearful thought of getting fired. After arriving 10 minutes late, it turned out that the boss was not in yet, and a large contract that I had been working on arrived!

Life was great, yet…..

Have you ever noticed how you react to problems and crisis situations? Do you get consumed by them? Do you panic and reach out for help? How easily do you give up? Most importantly, how much resilience do you exhibit until the problem is resolved?

Even further, are you seen as a problem-solver for others?

A distinctive feature of meditators is their ability to deal with and work on problems. Here’s how they do this.

Stay Positive – Ever-Optimistic

We are innately optimistic and hence switch to unearthing every possible positive outcome even when faced with adversity. Our negativity fighting attitude towards life gets us to focus quickly on eliminating the root cause of the problem and move towards healing and resolution.

Brooding and getting stuck is rarely in our style of living.

There’s a particular reason for this optimism. The energy that flows inside our subtle energy system and which we draw into is one of pure love and compassion. It is forever benevolent and trying to do good. And hence it’s always driving us to restore the balance to positivity and goodness in our lives.

Ability to Witness The Problem

Meditation trains us to watch ourselves always by separating our attention from the flow of constant thoughts. Once our attention is recaptured and clearly able to focus on truth and reality, this becomes a habit. This is invaluable during a crisis or a problematic situation. We have this unique ability to see and quickly understand what is wrong and what needs to happen. We avoid reacting or being consumed by the situation because our Spirit is watching everything, including the problem, we separate ourselves from the problem instantly.

Recapture The State of Peaceful Equilibrium

Meditators always gravitate towards a situation of peace and calm. We do this at any cost as this is our primary existential state of mind – a state we want to always be in every moment of our lives. We value this state so we can focus on our higher pursuits. Most of the time, we don’t care if we have to pay our way through situations to get to this state. Or find creative ways or change things dramatically in our lives for it.

What might usually scare most people is having to spend money, which in turn comes from a strong attachment to worldly possessions and wants. Change in any form also bothers most people. And then, just being fearful and lacking confidence usually affects everyone in a crisis situation. Not us meditators, though. We organize everything in our lives around our higher, peaceful state of existence.

A new Pew Research Center survey conducted in March this year found that a majority of Americans expect a weaker economy, a flawed political system and a general deterioration in the environment by 2050. The news cycles coming out are often stressful, negative and disparaging. We’re being bombarded by an ever-increasing stream of media reports, deceptive advertising and social distractions.  And all this is over and above our day-to-day responsibilities that we cannot do without. Retreating to the Himalayas or a cave isn’t an option; in fact, it never was a real one though many tried it for their spiritual development.

What are some special methods meditators need and use to survive this onslaught on our attention?

Let us find out.