I think I'm finally beginning to understand what meditation is all about.
When I was a kid, I learned to meditate in a karate class. We were taught a very simple method, and I took it as the goal of meditation for many years. We were taught to empty our minds of all thought. That's a useful, if impossible, exercise. It can give you a bit more control of your mind as you develop some mental discipline through the effort. But as it's ultimately impossible, emptying the mind can't be the true objective.
Many years later, I found unbelievable peace through meditation. It healed me like no other practice had done before. And for a while, I thought that peace was the objective. Peace is a wonderful product of meditation - sometimes. But there's no guarantee you'll feel peace. And if we can't guarantee the result, perhaps peace isn't the real purpose of meditation either.
At other times in meditation, I have experienced intense bliss. This seems like a great outcome, but like peace, I can't make it stay around. So bliss probably isn't the real objective either.
I now believe that the objective of meditation is simply bringing our awareness to the source of our awareness. When I do that, I plug into that Source, which seems to be both me and much larger than me. And that practice of connecting with this Source is liberating and empowering.
It reminds me that I am not this limited body in which I find myself. It reminds me that I am connected to a much wider reality than what I experience every day. And it infuses me with a love, a joy, and a peace that is beyond anything I can describe. While this practice gives me the power to distance myself from my thoughts and emotions, I am also enabled to live more fully present, accepting every moment as it comes without judgment. Life becomes easier somehow. And the states of bliss and peace I described earlier start to become a more common occurrence. Though they are not the objective of meditation, they are its natural fruits.
Questions like "who am I?" can be extremely powerful in directing our attention during meditation. Such questions may seem obvious to the mind, which will spit back any number of answers without any trouble. But if we move beyond the mind's easy answers, recognizing how transient those answers are, we begin to see how impossible it is to actually answer the question. If we persevere, allowing the uncertainty and wonder of our nature and existence to work upon us, we begin to come toward the seat of consciousness itself. We begin to approach our Source.
As we get used to it, we can learn to touch the Source by simply turning our attention inward. It becomes easier to do. And we start to see how we are like branches on a tree. Most of the time, our attention is focused outward. But if we look back, we recognize how connected we are to everything else. We see that by harming our fellow branches, we're ultimately harming ourselves ... because we're all one tree. And we can more easily take in the life-giving sap that's always flowing into us, but which we're usually too distracted to notice, process, and appreciate. We soak in the love that's all around us, and we naturally become better, more patient, more kind, more compassionate. Life becomes our friend instead of our enemy. And we rest in the present moment.
This is the peace that transcends all understanding that Jesus (John 14:27) and Paul (Philipians 4:7) talked about. But it doesn't come by focusing on peace or by actively seeking it. It comes through awareness, insight, and surrender. It comes by understanding who and what we truly are as we connect with our Source.
