Some of my best ideas come to me when I’m meditating. Not just decent thoughts or helpful reminders, but fully formed insights: creative solutions, moments of clarity, ideas that feel like gifts. They often show up unannounced, and they’re so good I really want to write them down.
Sometimes I do. Other times, I resist the impulse and let the idea pass, trusting that if it’s truly important, it will come back.
That’s part of what I love about meditation: it creates space. In the middle of a day filled with noise and movement, meditation offers a rare chance to pause. When I’m still, I’m no longer piling on new impressions or adding to the mental backlog that builds up throughout the day. Instead, I get a moment to catch up—sometimes consciously, often not.
Of course, great ideas don’t only show up when your sitting by the ocean at a meditation center in Ireland (the picture above shows me in 2009). They can sneak in during a walk, on a bike ride, in the shower, sitting on a bench, or while folding laundry. These moments share something in common: a kind of openness, a pause in the usual rush.
Still practices like meditation and yoga nidra invite spaciousness on purpose. Because they are still, they offer a fertile ground for insight. You’re not pushing or searching. You’re just being. And in that space, things can emerge.
I think of meditation as a natural process with three stages. First, be still. Then, allow for stuff to come up. Finally, move through it. Stillness doesn’t mean nothing is happening. It just means I’m not chasing the next thing. And in that stillness, whatever’s been waiting under the surface has a chance to rise.
Sometimes that “stuff” is light and creative. Other times, it’s heavier. On retreat, I have experienced this in a more intense way. After a few days of silence, once the initial layers of distraction begin to fall away, deeper insights start to surface. Sometimes they have been beautiful and other times quite painful. I have come to expect that, once my mind settles, the truth tends to show up.
This is not just a personal pattern. It maps onto traditional teachings. In yoga, turning inward through sense withdrawal (pratyāhāra) can reveal deep-seated patterns (samskāras) which we often don’t see in the flow of everyday life. In Buddhist practice, there is the calming of the mind (samatha) and the arising of insight (vipassana). The common thread is this: stillness leads to awareness, and awareness leads to understanding.
That’s why I try to sit every day. Not to have profound experiences or brilliant insights, but to make space for whatever wants to move. Sometimes, yes, a great idea arrives. More often, I just feel a little clearer. A little less entangled. And even that small shift can change the way I move through the rest of the day.
So if a brilliant idea comes to you in meditation, wonderful. If not, that’s fine too. Either way, the space you create is working for you. You’re giving yourself a moment to breathe, to listen, and to let things settle.
And that, more than any single idea, is what keeps me coming back.
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