Why Introverts Must Meditate

A deep dive into mental clarity, high energy, and an ocean of creativity.

Introverts have a loud mind. One thought triggering another. And to be honest, sometimes, it’s quite disturbing.

Like one day I saw a podcast about some conspiracy theory that we’re living in a simulation. And I just couldn’t take my mind off it. Are we in game? Am I even real? Is anything real? My mind felt like a tennis ball machine firing one thought after another at me.

Now here’s the thing, it’s completely okay if you’re thinking and obsessing about something useful. Like learning a skill, or researching for a project, or writing a book. It makes sense then. But going on a spree for just about anything that catches your attention, I feel is not good for anybody.

I used to go through this almost every week. But then one day, I discovered a special type of meditation and my life was never the same.

Now let’s first be clear on one thing: Meditation is not a magic potion. It’s not something that will make you enlightened overnight. It may do that over the years, I’ve only read stories, so I can’t tell you for sure. But the thing I’m 100% sure of is that it can bring a certain clarity and focus in your life.

I’m not going to go into methods of meditation. There are hundreds of them out there. You can try a bunch of them and see what works best for you. For me it was Transcendental Meditation also known simply as TM.

Now before I share with you my honest experience with TM and how it has been a source of energy, clarity and focus in my life., I have one more thing to share.

I’ve tried maybe more than fifty types of meditation. But TM was the one that really worked for me. And it further strengthened my believe when I read that some of most creative and successful artists on this planet are practitioners of TM. And they’ve been doing it for decades. Yes, decades.

Here are a few of them: Clint Eastwood, Paul McCartney, Jerry Seinfeld, David Lynch, Jim Carrey, Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Aniston, Ellen DeGeneres, Mick Jagger.

I went down various rabbit holes for weeks and I found something even more interesting. I noticed 3 things that were common to all of the above people:

1. They all looked younger than their age

2. They all had energy like they were still in their 20s or 30s.

3. They all stayed creative and active way into their 70s, 80s and even 90s.

And 90% of them were introverts.

All of this can’t just be a coincidence.

Let me now share with you my personal experience with it.

I got introduced to TM through a video of David Lynch explaining TM. (I’ll leave the link to the video at the end). And I said to myself “This looks interesting, let’s try this”.

Another reason that got me interested in it was how simple it was. You could do it anywhere, anytime. Airports, your study, school, office, literally anywhere. And the effects were instant.

The process is simple: you have to choose a ‘Mantra’, a simple word, and just repeat it in your mind for 20 minutes. People argue that the mantra has to be given to you by a “certified” guide of TM. But to be honest, it feels like it’s just a marketing strategy to keep the TM business profitable.

Here’s the proof: I tried TM with different mantras. Like “OM”, “Hari Om”, even a random word “Kleeeen”. Did I feel any difference? Absolutely none. Each one of those mantras was equally capable to transcend me into a peaceful state.

The only thing you have to keep in mind is to choose a word that is meaningless. In other words, a simple word that doesn’t create any kind of picture in your mind. Because if you choose a word like “Pencil” as your mantra, you know what a pencil is and it may interfere with your meditation.

Now let me get to the deeper part, how it feels like:

It was early morning. It’s best to do TM right after waking up. I washed my face, and sat on my desk chair. I turned off all the lights and just left the table lamp on. It created a very cosy atmosphere.

I set a 20 min timer on my phone, put it on airplane mode, and closed my eyes. I started repeating the mantra. A few times my mind went to other places. I started thinking about how I was feeling. Like had it started yet? Am I feeling any different? Those kind of thoughts popped up now and then. But the moment I became aware that I was drifting, I brought my attention back to the mantra and kept repeating it.

I’m not sure how long it took when things started shifting. If I had to take a guess, it was somewhere between 9 and 12 minutes that I first felt it.

It felt like I was in a very narrow elevator and I was going down in my mind. Just like that scene from the movie “Inception” where Cobb travels down into his unconscious in an elevator.

At this point, the mantra I was repeating become more of like a sound. I didn’t feel like I was repeating it anymore, it pulsated in my mind like a heart beat. And after maybe a couple of more minutes, I hit the bottom.

The elevator stopped.

I had never, ever, in my life felt that kind of calm. It was like I was suspended in space with nothingness in all directions. I was still conscious of my body, but felt like I was definitely not my body. I was something else. An awareness. I was the observer. The unchanged part of me who’s been with me since the day I was born.

And after a few more minutes, I guess I reached the final stage: absolute stillness. No thoughts. No feelings. No sensations of any kind. No nothing. I felt nothing. Literally nothing.

The timer went off, and it sounded like a 10,000 watt speaker in a small empty room. I turned it off immediately. And just sat there. It was like I had taken some kind of ‘out of the body experience’ drug. The subtle feeling of separation still lingered.

For the next two to three hours, I could feel the calm was still with me. My focus was razor sharp. Not even for a second I felt distracted by thoughts or anything in my environment.

And my energy stayed high all through the day. Usually after spending about four hours at my desk, I start feeling a little tired and my focus goes down, but that day I felt like I could work for another four hours.

That was just DAY 1.

I thought, how would I feel if I continued doing it every single day for the next 6 months. I believe it changes the conditioned part of our brain that is responsible for reacting to every little distraction in our environment.

For example, when I received a text message, I used to check my phone right away. Even if I was at my desk engaged in something deep. But after practicing TM, the instant overwhelming click you feel in your brain to check the message is not as strong as it used to be. Now I can manage finishing whatever I’m doing first without feeling anxious to read the text.

And this, for super sensitive introverts, is nothing less than a superpower.

I feel it has changed me on a deeper level, both physically and mentally. I believe the default human mental state is that of calm. But we're living in a world that's hungry for your attention. And as the wise saying goes "Energy flows where attention goes". And that's the reason even when you were in your bed the whole day, you may still feel mentally tired.

Meditation gives your mind that deep rest that's essential for focus and clarity in life. And also helps you with self-control as you're not distracted and react to everything you see in your environment.

Try it and see it for yourself. That's all I can say.

If you’re interested in going deeper, you can check out my course “Awakening”.

Stay blessed,
Karun

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Here’s the David Lynch video explaining TM:

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