What is meditation?

Most of us have heard about meditation, and we may think it is a good idea. But the concept is vague and elusive. What is it exactly?

         Meditation is the practice of witnessing your thoughts as they arise, interrupting them, and shifting your attention to a present moment sensory experience. I learned it from Buddhist monks in the 2,500 year old monastic tradition of Southeast Asia. And it saved me from an obsession with thinking that was chronically distracting and diffusing my attention.

Focusing on present moment sensations

gives your mind a break from constant thought.

Pausing your thoughts allows your thinking mind to rest. It enables you to witness your thoughts instead of being constantly absorbed in them. And that helps you to weed out trivial or repetitive thoughts and clear out the clutter in your mind.

  The result is that you get to relax fully and are not plagued by constant worry, doubt, and self- criticism. And this helps you to think more clearly when you need to figure out a problem, remember a detail, or plan your future.

Awareness Precedes Thought

         If you have tried sitting still and simply observing your thoughts, you know how trivial and chaotic your thinking process can be. Once you witness your mind in this way, you realize it is so crowded with thoughts that it is nearly impossible to have clarity or certainty about anything.

Meditation is a time-tested and effective tool for addressing this. The technique is simple, however, once you try it you realize how difficult it is. We are often so entranced by thought that we can’t take our attention away from it, even for a moment. For this reason, it is wise to have clear instruction and support for learning to meditate.         It is essential to keep the practice of meditation simple, and the definition clear, to enable it to work. There is nothing there for your rational mind to figure out. That’s the point. You are activating and exercising a capacity for conscious awareness that is on an entirely different level than concepts or ideas.

Meditation enables us to go below the surface of rational thought

to experience a field of conscious awareness which is

infinitely more vast and powerful than our conceptual mind.

Once we experience the power of this field of awareness, our understanding of ourselves and reality itself begins to change. We realize that we are not a fixed and finite personality as it appears, but rather a process. The world is not made up of static, separate parts, but rather is an interconnected field of energy. We begin to experience ourselves as an integral part of the flow of life, and not isolated individuals.

See for yourself.

         Meditation is not a belief system, religion, or set of ideas. This is what makes it at once so powerful and so difficult. You can’t understand it with your rational mind. And you have to surrender your dependency on thinking in order to do it.         

It is simply a tool to enable you to see through the fog of thoughts that normally commands your attention. It is a way to focus your mind so you can see the truth of things for yourself.         

Thinking or believing that you are part of a vast field of energy does not change anything. You have to experience it directly. You have to feel it in order to recognize yourself as part of that field. And this is what meditation is for.         

To see and experience the energy field that is the source of conscious life, you have to suspend your thought process and focus your attention instead on sensory experiences. This brings you into the present moment where you have access to the field.

As you continue to focus on present moment sensations, such as the belly moving up and down with each breath, you access conscious awareness. You become aware of energy in constant motion. And the one steady thing that is not moving is your awareness.       

You begin to realize that your awareness is the field. You are not making it happen, but you are an integral part of it.

And then, instead of your personal awareness,

it is just the expansive field of

conscious awareness which is ever present.

This process takes time, patience, dedication, and practice. And it usually occurs slowly. If it happened suddenly, this shift in consciousness would be too much for most of us to handle.

         We are realigning our identity from a small individual me to the whole of the universe. It is a miraculous transformation that is our birthright and purpose here on earth. Nothing real is lost in this process, however, we experience it as if we were dying.         

We sometimes call this process awakening. It is as if we are waking up from a dream into our real life. We are remembering who we truly are. And this is a dramatic shift that requires care and attention.

Awakening is a process that happens by itself and cannot be forced or rushed.

Meditation is an effective way to create the conditions for this transformation to occur. We practice deep surrender by letting go of our most precious possessions – our private thoughts. As we let go of individual thoughts, we experience spacious awareness or presence.         

This presence is always there, but is usually obscured by the constant stream of thoughts crowding our mind. Opening to it enables us to experience ourselves differently. We are no longer defined by the story that we tell about ourselves in our mind.         

In presence there is no personality at the center of our experience. Instead there is a vibrant field of energy. And you are the one who iswitnessing it.