Around this time last year I decided to make meditation part of my life. I started with five minutes a day for the month of January. There were a bunch of days where I made it more than five minutes, but everyday I did at least five minutes for whole month.

At first I did not know what to do with myself. I was under the impression my thoughts would eventually drift away and the serene inner peace I was hearing about would appear. In some ways it did, but only for very brief fleeting moments after several months of pillow time. For the most part I was left searching for something, over and over again, anything.

After reading many books and articles about what I should actually be doing, I realized that searching was a misleading action in my practice. It was necessary, it really opened my mind to the idea of sitting for longer periods of time, but I eventually outgrew the search. Searching first gave away to waiting. But even more quickly waiting too gave away to something else.

About half a year later, when waiting gave away, I found my mind watching itself. The watching sensation recognized for the very first time the immensity of the thinker. I will readily admit having identified with the thinker my whole life. I placed value on the thinker, as the part of the brain allowing me to do the things I love like programming and chess. The thinker has always been the part of the brain from where my success has arisen. When the thinker finally gave away to the watcher, it was astonishment at this new place or feeling which replaced it.

This was my first insight. The thinker quieted down for long enough for me to understand the dominate trains of thought from a new perspective. I found a place of existence where those thoughts we no longer there, they were no longer even necessary. The best part of this realization, was not that this is a place meditation allows me to access, but this is a place I can always access.

It is most certainly true in meditation the watcher can be much more focused and yet aware at the same time. But that does not preclude me from watching in the every day moments of life in a more accessible manner. This realization has enabled me to be more like the watcher, in a way not possible without meditation.

This present sense of watching has been one of the highlights in my practice in the past year. It has taught me there is still much to learn about my own mind, and the experience I can have. I suspect I have a couple more iterations of this cycle of searching, waiting and watching on the path to new understandings. I am much more patiently practicing at this point then when I started. I choose to sit at this point as I have learned it is very rewarding in its own right.