What is Meditation?

What is meditation, is one of the most basic questions we can ask about it. Whether you’re a beginner just starting out, or an experienced practitioner wondering how you’re doing.

When we try and answer this question, we first of all run into the natural limits of the English language. Let me illustrate. If I we’re to ask you if you had a good nights sleep yesterday, whatever your response is, it merely captures the essence of your experience. Similarly, if I asked you if you enjoyed the movie you went to see at the weekend, your reply would be a brief summary of your overall experience.

And, so it is with meditation. It is an experience, an experience that involves our total being. As soon as we try and capture that experience in words, and say what we think it is or isn’t, we fail to do it justice.

We are also limited by our previous life experience that we’re comparing it with. To go back to the analogy above, if you’re a keen movie fan, then you have extensive personal experience to judge a new movie by. If it’s the first time you’ve seen a movie, then your evaluation would come from a very different perspective.

Given these limitations, let’s move on and explore meditation further, without getting bogged down in any particular technique.

The Art of Letting Go

The above example is why, when it comes to meditation, we are advised to simply follow the instructions, to let go of our expectations or judgements, and to simply practice it. Realising that there are no good or bad meditation experiences, there is just the activity of meditation and our current experience of it.

As soon as we self-judge on whether we’re doing well or not, on whether our meditations are deep enough or not etc., we have left the meditation itself behind. We have pre-judged what is meditation, and compared our experience of it against our pre-conceived ideas about it, and what we think it should be.

Trusting the Meditation Process

In answer to the question: what is meditation, the best I can come up with is that it is a transformational process.

Transformational? Through regular practice, we move naturally through different experiences of being. Which is why meditation is so personal, and why it’s not helpful to compare our experience of it with other people’s. We start where we are, and without our input, a process moves us in a direction we need to go.

Examples of common transformations might be from an agitated mind to a more peaceful one, from burying our emotions to allowing us to confront them in a safe way, or supporting us in letting go of an unhealthy addiction.

A process? Yes, it isn’t an event or a destination, it is an on-going unfolding process for as long as we practice it.

If this understanding is the case, what guides this transformation and process? A deeper intelligence? An innate inner-wisdom? There is no complete answer to this question. There is a process, and our challenge is to trust in that process and keep practicing.

Charting Your Course

Without exception, we all have a reason to learn and to practice meditation. This is where we set sail from on this adventure. This is totally normal. Why would anyone do it without a pre-existing reason? This initial reason could be to develop better mental concentration, to express our devotion to a deity or to find more peace in our lives.

What happens over time, by which I mean many months and more probably several years, is that our meditation practice navigates its own course. It reveals what needs to be revealed to us. Flows in the way we need to flow. It is an action that embodies the belief that we don’t know, what we don’t know.

In Summary – What is Meditation?

From my decades of experience, I realised that we can only truly meditate when we no longer have a need for it. What do I mean by that? Well, as long as we have a reason to meditate, we are judging our meditation experience against that reason, either consciously or unconsciously. We are like someone trying to get to sleep with one eye open, to check if we’re asleep yet or not.

Examples of this problem are the common reasons that people to get frustrated with their meditation practice, or to give it up completely. Reasons such as, I can’t stop thinking, or I’ve been meditating for x years and I’m not enlightened yet, or its too hard, or I’m bored with it.

Whilst our meditation practice may need fine-tuning from time to time, and the style we practice may change over the years, it is an inherently mysterious transformational process, one which no one fully understands.

So, just practice daily and trust the process.

Go here to learn more about my online Meditation Course.