What Is Meditation?

Many people wonder if they have to be interested in Eastern religions in order to practice meditation. The answer is no. Meditation is a universal method that is not owned by any religion or spiritual tradition. While it is true that training in meditative techniques has historically been a special focus of the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, we can also find meditative techniques in the Christian Contemplative tradition (in the form of Centering Prayer and the practice of Lectio Divina, the reading of sacred texts), in the Kabbalistic tradition (in the form of precise visualizations, e.g. The Tree of Life), and in the Sufi tradition (in the form of the dhikr, the repetition of the names of Allah), to name just a few examples.

More recently, meditative techniques have been taught outside of any spiritual tradition whatsoever as a practice that is useful for stress reduction; pain relief; and increasing overall health, happiness, and vitality.

In order to explore the benefits of meditation, you do not need to have an interest in following a particular spiritual path. All you need is an open mind and the willingness to experiment with meditative techniques. You can evaluate the results for yourself, based on your own experience.

Let's return to our beginning meditation practice of synchronizing mind and body by paying attention to the feeling of our belly rising and falling with our in-breath and out-breath. You will notice as you do this that your thinking process begins to slow down and your body starts to relax. In fact, there is a direct correlation between discursive thinking and tension in the body. When we calm our mind, our body relaxes, and when we relax our body our mind becomes calm.

In order to calm the mind and relax the body, meditation practice often begins with focusing on an object, literally "tethering your mind" to an object of meditation. This is the aspect of meditation known as mindfulness, paying close attention to an object of meditation, returning again and again to attending to the object in a nonjudgmental way.

There are many possible objects of mindfulness that you can use during meditation, including sensations in the body, a sacred word, a candle flame, or even the vastness of space itself. It is often suggested that beginning meditators start by focusing on the breath because it is so readily available as a felt experience. You can focus on the movement of the breath as it comes in and out of the nostrils at the tip of the nose—slightly cool on the in-breath and slightly warm on the out-breath—or, as we have discussed here, on the feeling of the belly rising on the in-breath and falling with the out-breath.

If you focus on an object of mindfulness for a period of time, you will notice that your mind and body begin to settle. You start to feel more grounded, more present—relaxed and alert at the same time. At this point, you can begin to open to a second aspect of meditation: awareness. When we are aware, we are not concentrating on any particular object; instead we are open to experiencing whatever arises in the moment. Resting in awareness, we neither grasp onto experience nor push anything away; we simply allow experience to unfold in a natural and unobstructed way. This is sometimes called “resting in the natural state” or "resting in the presence of God." When we rest in awareness, we are completely open, available, boundless. In this receptive state, insight spontaneously emerges, and we begin know ourselves in the depth and fullness of our being.

When we rest in awareness, we invite all experience—including repressed memories and other unconscious, disowned, or "shadow" material—to surface and present itself to us. Anything in us that has been experienced, but not consciously felt, is invited to come forward and be known and released. No matter what experience knocks on our door, we open the door, welcome the experience, and feel it fully.

When we push away experiences that we don't like (which is what we usually do), our lives become partial and incomplete. Alternatively, when we welcome all experience into the light of awareness, we begin to become whole and fearless.

Resting in awareness accelerates the transformative process and the unfolding of our genuine personhood. Stuck energy from our past keeps us contained in a partial, compromised identity. When we hold on to pockets of stuck energy, we feel we need to defend ourselves against anything that might undermine our protective self-structure. When we rest in awareness in an unconditional and receptive way, this blocked energy is unlocked and invited to flow freely. This enables our lives to unfold and flower, for all identity structures to be released, and for us to boldly express who we are and the love that we feel in a natural and spontaneous way. Meditation becomes a path to wholeness, a way of synchronizing body and mind in service to the expression of the fullness and depth of our being.