Meditation is a joke

Meditation is overrated. It is literally a joke. You will fail, fail at it again and waste your time while you are trying to sit still and focus on your breathing. Instead of freeing yourself, your mind's thinking gets even worse. 

 

Silence? What silence? The only thing I hear is the neighbors next door, the traffic, and a clock.

 

Meditation is often not the way. There, I said it. But why not then? And why are so many spiritual teachers, gurus, and entire monasteries advocating meditation as THE way?

 

Because...

 

It is your ego trying to convince you that meditation will never work.

 

However...

 

Meditation can help you. If you approach it the right way. Read carefully what is written here: how you approach it, not how you do it.

 

 

 

Let's take something that rationally thinking people probably would accept. Let's look at a definition of meditation.

 

According to Wikipedia, a widely accepted definition is as follows:

 

 

The end bit of this definition is interesting. Not judging the meditation process itself.

 

Judging is something you do with your mind. So to not judge is to not do something.

 

To not do something.

 

That is exactly what meditation should be about. Get you into a state of being not doing.

 

Most people think that you do a meditation. You plan it in your diary. This weekend, on Saturday morning early, between 8 and 9 am, I will do my meditation.

 

And when I am done trying to be, I will go back to what I was doing before: living my life, hoping that the meditation will change something.

 

In each of the last 3 sentences above, meditation is described as an activity. Like you walk, drive, do yoga, or cook a meal.

 

Let me repeat: meditation is about being. Being without attachment to the thoughts that emerge in your brain. Ideally, you have no thoughts at all. The art of the start of meditation is to let your thoughts emerge, notice and observe them without judgment, and with that and around it feel the calm this brings emerge. The moments you just let your thoughts be, you relieve your mind from the potential hopes and fears that can come with them.

 

Ironically, this sounds like an impossible task. It can cause stress and fear of failure before you have properly started the exercise.

 

Another secret to getting you into a state of being through meditation is to enjoy it and not set any goals.

 

The third secret, next to observing your thoughts and enjoying it, is to try entering a state of meditation anywhere, as long as you are not putting yourself in danger that is, and to focus first on micro-meditations, as I have explained here.

 

While you are waiting, while standing or sitting somewhere, before you go to sleep or when you wake up. There are so many occasions that are suitable for a micro-mediation.

 

Just be it.