Meditation

Category: Personal Development for Adults

Meditation is both a state and a practice, depending on the context in which we use the word.

Meditation has been discussed for thousands of years. You can find descriptions in sacred scriptures as well as in countless blogs, books, websites, forums, and many other sources.

And so you may read volume after volume and talk about meditation for days, yet never once sit down to meditate or taste the state itself.

There are many "meditation techniques". Meditation is both a state and a process, depending on how we use the word. If you sit in lotus with your hands together, that does not mean you are automatically in a meditative state. It may simply mean you are in a posture for meditation while your hips feel tight and a thousand thoughts race through your mind, nowhere near the stillness of true meditation.

That is meditation understood as a process that leads into the meditative state. A space without thoughts and with the felt sense of being one with everything.

There is also another way to feel your connection with all that surrounds you.

Long ago, when I was about ten, I had the chance to waterski in summer. I learned to ride on a single ski and savored the sunset while my friend’s father towed me with a speedboat.

The scent of the sea, the great golden sphere sinking into the water, a gentle breeze, a breathtaking sunset, enough to make your heart skip a beat. All at once a powerful and profound sense of safety arose. I felt as if the universe were literally holding me, and that whatever I tried, there was no chance I could fall. I could spring over the waves, play with any flourish, simply play, as if I had wings. As if something carried me in its palm.

Suddenly there was a feeling of complete fulfillment, calm, the perfection of being, unconditional love, support, safety, beauty, and the sense of being one with everything. So much beauty that tears of joy welled up. You cry from happiness and marvel at yourself and at what is unfolding.

You realize you are safe, because there is nothing outside of you. You are one with all that surrounds you. Your very atoms dissolved into the whole with the atoms of the sea, the sun, the waves, the scents, the colors of the sky, the people on the shore, the speedboat, the clouds. Peace, freedom, and love.

Was that meditation? At the time I did not even know what meditation meant, let alone practiced it. In the end, does the name matter?

Names and words are merely a way to share with others what we experience. Whether we truly lived it and how, only we can know. Or perhaps we only think we know.

My point is this. Explore through personal experience. Feel what is happening to you in the present moment. Be vividly alive. Trust your own experience. Be aware. Stay awake, otherwise life will remain an empty theory.