By Laura

I your glass
Will modestly discover to yourself
That of yourself which you yet know not of
- William Shakepeare

What is Meditation?

Meditation, to me, is both a state of concentration/relaxation that's focused on the present moment and a state that is experienced when the mind's normal mental chatter is calmed.

Why Meditate?

There are many reasons to meditate. Some purposes and benefits of meditation are:

• Better self awareness (which includes realizing and releasing old thought patterns, buried emotions, old pain)
• An increase in patience and compassion
• Feelings of calm or peace and feelings of joy and happiness
• Heightened sense-perception or possibly extra-sensory perception

How to Begin?

Many people think there is some "right" way to meditate. They want to be given meditation "rules," like how they have to sit or where to put their hands. This is a bit misguided. There are helpful practices that accompany different types of meditation, but these are not uniform rules that always apply. For example, in traditional Buddhist meditation, there are four meditation postures: sitting, walking, standing and lying down. All of these postures have different rules or best practices.

Different types of meditation are right for different people. Have fun with it, try out different programs. If you need help getting started, I have written some meditation podcasts and audio series reviews. I found that as I continued meditating, my needs changed and I had to switch guided meditation programs. If this happens to you also, don't worry. Go with the flow.

Difficulties

I think the hardest parts about meditation are sticking with it and overcoming self criticism. When I first started, I couldn't even sit down for a minute or two. My mind would go in a million directions. I would immediately think of things I had to do "right away" and then get up to run insignificant errands or pay bills. It wasn't fun and I would "force" myself to sit down for several minutes a day; I felt like meditating was some sort of punishment.

A better starting point would have been to treat myself kindly. It is tough to get started and once started we find lots of unsettled or difficult aspects of ourselves. Self knowledge isn't just good news, it brings up all sorts of deeply buried issues and emotions. That's why it's imperative to be forgiving, patient and kind to oneself, especially when meditating. Eventually I took a different approach.

I constantly found myself falling into the trap of comparing my meditating abilities with others, criticizing my slow progress, clinging to an ideal of what meditation should be, and expecting insights all the time. After listening to AudioDharma, a wonderful meditation program, I learned I didn't have struggle to meditate. I needed to learn to be at ease with the way things were.

I also recommend reading AudioDharma's accompanying instruction guide.

Keep At It!

Meditation works best when you stick with it and practice every day. Diligence, patience and endurance are the keys to getting the most out of meditation.

A Final Thought

The ancient metaphor of thought as movement, a species of motion, bequeathed to us by Aristotle, is in question here, for it is the simultaneous juxtaposition of these contrary motions and their mutually neutralizing conflict that enables the whole I seek to evoke, that stillness at the center where there is neither higher nor lower, forward nor back, past nor future, when space and time cancel each other out in that familiar fantasy we all know as the everyday, commonplace world, that breach in time, that ever present, never present simultaneity of reality and fantasy that is the return to the commonsense world, floating, like the Lord Brahma, motionless in the surfaceless void, all potentiality suspended within us in perfect realization, a return that is not a climax, terminus, stable image, or homeostatic equilibrium, but a reduction of tension as the moment of transcendence simultaneously approaches, draws near, and departs without having arrived.

- A Mysterious quote from "Hamilton", 1863