Meditation is controlling your mind like Neo from the Matrix controls bullets

First of all, you would be surprised how little footage of this scene one finds on the web.

Andy Puddicombe, CEO & founder of Headspace, once described meditation as the exercise of acknowledging when you got distracted and getting back to what you were originally doing. That’s it. Just noting that you got distracted and getting back to — in that moment — meditation.

Sounds simply, but is so profound. If you generally doubt how meditation helps you, this post’s aim is not to convince you, there is plenty of studies out there to help you figure it out.

Didn’t you want to talk about Neo?

Right. So, I recently attended a talk on mindfulness and the analogy of the speaker for what meditation does to your brain and way of living stuck with me ever since. (Unfortunately, don’t know the person’s name, ping me for getting credit for this!)

As a quick recall, the picture is from the scene in the first Matrix movie, when Neo gets in touch with his superpower and is able to stop a fair amount of bullets coming his way. Now, let’s imagine the bullets being thoughts.
Just like Neo you will be able to stop thoughts from far away and make yourself immune against (internal) distraction & worries. However, when you purposely decide to focus on a specific theme, you can pick and chose, because you can — without getting distracted over and over again not accomplishing anything. Or, you actually decide to get triggered away which can also be fun.

I found this analogy again, so simply, yet even more powerful (I mean, who doesn’t want to be Neo?) Guess the one thing that still differentiates us from Neo in that analogy, is the fact that he won’t unlearn his unique skill. However, meditation takes continuous practice.

You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour. – Zen saying

Namaste.