☀️ The Nicole Magnusson Newsletter

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📆 Daily Issue 67 | ⏱️ Read time: 3 min

The Power of Meditation

Spiritual teachers always talk about it. Self-help gurus preach it. And psychotherapists recommend it… the tried and true “meditation”.

Someone telling you to meditate has the same feeling as someone telling you to eat your vegetables and spend time in nature. It feels like a health practice that is constantly preached at you. The simple solution that is constantly thrown in your face.

Throughout my life I’ve danced with the practice of meditation many times. I’ve lived in an ashram where I meditated 20 hours a week. I’ve completed a yoga teacher training where we meditated every morning. And I’ve gone on a few couple-week stints where I meditate to Joe Dispenza’s hour-long meditation every morning at 4 am sharp.

I’m no stranger to the power of meditation… but for some reason, I’ve let it fall by the wayside throughout my life. It always felt too simple, too monotonous, too “basic”. I wanted to have the otherworldly experiences during meditation I heard spiritual teachers talk about. I wanted to transcend the body. I wanted every meditation to feel like magic.

And although my meditations were always satisfying, the fact that I did not make contact with extraterrestrials or immediately eradicate my ego underwhelmed me. So I let the practice fall away.

Until recently.

Recently, I became so utterly disgusted by my reality that I just couldn’t take it for one more second. All of a sudden, social media and television were not enough of an escape for me. I could still feel my own self-loathing drowning everything out in the back of everything I watched. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I just couldn’t take reality for one more goddamn second.

The only way I’d found to fully escape reality was ketamine infusions. Medical ketamine infusions are a new intervention for depression… but more importantly, they provide a BEAUTIFUL 45-minute period of complete detachment from life. It's a difficult state of consciousness to describe, a sort of feel-good dreamland.

The escape is so beautiful that a couple of ketamine sessions ago when it ended I started crying from the devastation at having to return to real life.

After this experience, I started to wrack my brain. Escaping for 45 minutes every 2 weeks was not nearly enough. The ratio of life to escape was WAY OFF.

I contemplated everything. Toxic or not. I didn’t care, no means of escape was off limits.

And then it hit me… MEDITATION.

I remembered when I was deep in my meditation practice how it would allow me to detach from reality and be in my own ooey-gooey world.

The detachment wasn’t quite as intense as ketamine, but it was free and available 24–7.

So that day (sometime last week), I started my transcendental meditation practice back up. I was meditating usually 3 times a day, as long as I needed each time.

But it was different than the past. This was not intended for spiritual growth purposes. I didn’t care about that anymore. This was for pure survival.

I needed to live somewhere that was not here. That was my only motive.

And to my surprise, this was the strongest driver I’d ever had behind a meditation practice.

And to my EVEN GREATER surprise… my life started to slowly transform almost immediately.

My thoughts were more kind. My energy was a bit higher. My tolerance for my seemingly God-foresaken existence increased.

Instead of self-help reading myself into a new life, I was allowing my relaxed nervous system to call the shots. I was allowing my body, mind and spirit’s innate wisdom to emerge.

I don’t know what the future holds. But I know there’s a place I can go where I’m not judged. There’s a magical world I can access at the flutter of my eyelids.

I don’t have the answers to much, but that is a wonderful thing.

I think escapism is demonized in today’s culture. But it’s such a natural and innocent desire. 16 hours of life-ing is a lot on our minds, bodies and souls.

If life is overwhelming you lately, don’t forget that meditation is always there if you need it. Your own magical world away from all the madness. Your own personal human charger. Your own built-in get-away car.

In the meantime…

Keep inspiring,

Nicole

PS: I apologize for my time away and for not maintaining the morning posting that I promised in my newsletter. I value my readers so much and the last thing I would ever want to do is betray the trust we’ve built. I always want to be a source of inspiration you can regularly depend on. 🙂 

I’m currently experimenting with what email cadence feels best for me. If you have any feedback about what cadence is best for you, please reach out and let me know! ❤️