Meditation Affects the Next Moment

I’m sure most of you have been reading how well accepted meditation is becoming. A week hardly passes without my seeing another well written article on this personal practice. Most of these pieces focus on the well documented fact that medication has enormous health benefits (including decreasing blood pressure and moderating heart rate) and lowers the serious effects of having a stressful life. For most people, meditation enables a happier, healthier more fulfilling life. But there is another key benefit of meditation that is rarely if ever mentioned: Meditation affects the next moment.

Acute moment-to-moment awareness is a critical capacity for the successful leader; for the successful innovator; and for the successful entrepreneur. The hallmark of the successful leader, innovator and entrepreneur is the capacity to create new realities. They must possess the quality of moment-to-moment awareness. They can “see” that cubic centimeter of chance when it shows up – and they have the prowess to “act in an instant” – stepping into that moment and acting swiftly in flow – or else that moment will disappear forever.

The disciplined practice of meditation sharpens our ability to “see” these moments. There are well known feelings that accompany the advent of these moments – high excitement and the feeling of “rightness” to the moment. The practitioner has the intuition to see the moment just as it is about to appear – he or she can see it clearly when it manifests and act instantly from the heart and gut without thinking. He or she learns to trust that instinct – which is called “primary knowing” by the cognitive scientists. That knowing is “primary” as opposed to “secondary” which is an abstraction filtered through re-presentations in the brain as a result of combining previously acquired information.