What’s meditation? Here is a short guide.
I am impressed lately with what seems to be a ramping up of meditation practice in mainstream Western culture. So many apps and community meditations. But I keep wondering what all those people are doing during these meditations. What’s meditation anyway?
I know if they were really awake, I would hear about it, from friends and coworkers who are ‘into meditation,’ as they put it. If they were unleashing their full potential in meditation as I am, it would be obvious. I suppose they are just sitting quietly and trying not to be stressed, which certainly can’t hurt anyone. I just hope to nudge some of these people that are ‘into meditation’ to go beyond the limits that they think their minds hold.
There’s no way to clearly explain the feeling. But it’s like total calm and bliss, and the feeling of limitless potential. If you felt this, you’d want to be meditating every minute of every day. And it is unmistakable. You will not have any doubt that you’ve ‘transcended’ reality or whatever way you will want to describe it. While not easy, it’s nothing that you can’t do with a little trying. I truly believe that anyone can get there, and it doesn’t need to take years of practice. All of our minds are capable of it.
You can’t get there by following guided meditations. At least, I can’t imagine that working. That’s because it requires you to completely detach yourself from thoughts and feelings. (A guided meditation keeps you attached to an external voice.) Anything about you that is specific to this life has to be ‘let go’. There are countless metaphors that can help you imagine how to get there, but no one can tell you exactly how. Imagine taking all of your thoughts out of a box and you stay in the box. Or imagine tuning your mind into a frequency that is at the same level as the universe. Or imagine letting go of thoughts like balloons into the air. Or imagine inhabiting the space between the stars.
I am very interested in all the ways people achieve this state. No two are the same. It’s very personal. When you get there, your world will be forever changed.
