What is Meditation?
Meditation is the soil bed for the fundamental seed question ‘why?’
‘Why’ is the central question to a conscious life at large; a search for steadfast truth in a paradox toned, spinning duality of endless change.
It’s the very search for meaning in an infinite process of ‘life’ and ‘death’.
Existence vs non-existence.
So what is meditation - really?
Meditation is the space in which true ‘being’ arises.
To understand meditation, you have to let go of the notion that there is any goal.
There are no directives, no rules, no protocols.
It’s not something you do.
It’s not something you touch.
It’s not something you see, think or feel.
Although these sensations are a propellant of sorts, none of them have any relevance to meditation itself.
You see, what we conceive of as space is simply a process.
There is no emptiness.
Nothing in truth begins or ends, it merely changes or transforms.
Space as such can be viewed as relative, qualitative difference or contrast.
The recognition of this frames an essential threshold through which conscious attention can fall into meditation.
Meditation in this respect is in actuality a state of finely tuned attention where ‘you’, as ‘you’ conceive of, do not exist.
Meditation is absorption in ‘self’ or ‘space’.
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To begin to understand this it’s important to realise the following:
In truth ‘you’ as an individualised entity, are a concept.
A construction.
A story.
A set of remembrances.
A stream of incidence.
A journey of snapshots.
A perfect diary of desire.
A mind…
So what is a concept?
It’s the framing of a question to give an answer.
How do we create concepts?
We use our mind.
What is a mind?
It’s a computation of relative perception.
What is perception?
It’s an analysis of stimuli.
What is stimuli?
A set of data interpreted through our senses.
What are senses?
Organs of perception.
So what you know of as yourself can be seen as a process of data collection and subjective/objective analysis.
A conscious feedback loop.
Data in, actions out. Adjust. Repeat.
Your mind ring binds these processes together, in analysis, to give you a snapshot of data on continual request.
It acts as a fluid flowing focal point. An autofocus if you will.
The snapshot of this focal point, the file offered in the moment, is the very thing you call ‘you’ or ‘I’.
It’s a concept.
A data set framed through a question.
You see, the mind only operates in relativity.
It logs, categorises and distills thoughts and emotions, born from stimuli, in contrast to give a fundamental binary answer to a question, a yes or no.
‘I like this’, ‘I don’t like that’.
It’s a kaleidoscope of positive and negative.
A fractal of duality founded in memory.
As you go deeper into this you find that every action, every snapshot, as you observe it, has a question at root. Yes or No?
And what is ‘yes’ or ‘no’?
Well, it’s a question.
And its root?
It can only be ‘Why?’
Think about it.
What is ‘why’ founded in?
Is there really an answer?
That is the question…
The mind is a loop.
The mind is concept.
Meditation is the space, the state, the active / passive undulation of attention moving through observation, through question, to the fundamental or essential abandonment of the conceptual as relevant to the search for yourself in truth.
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When concepts are abandoned who or what exists?
When concepts are abandoned who or what is relevant?
Where are ‘you’, the concept, when you have set aside yourself as you conceive of?
That is the great question that the process of meditation clarifies - endlessly.
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You see, It’s not a one stop shop. There is no ah-ha moment as it were. There is nothing to get.
The more you practice the process of meditation you will find that there is no end point.
There is no destination. It does not exist.
You realise that in fact ‘you’ do not exist.
‘You’ as something tangible.
‘You’ as an action of memory.
‘You’ as something ‘alive’ or indeed ‘dead’.
You are both life and death as concept.
Existence and non existence.
What becomes clarified is ‘process’.
What becomes clarified is ‘observation’.
What becomes clarified is ‘being’.
There is nothing to know.
There is nothing to find.
There is nothing to gain.
There is only ‘being’ as something to point too. Something to discover.
Enlightenment, the perceived outcome of intense meditation, is not a goal.
It’s not some great moment of unfolding, some fabulous thunderbolt that you get up from and everything has changed.
Yes energetic transactions occur.
Bliss happens.
Kundalini arises.
But these transactions are fleeting.
These sensations are something that happen along the way, like enjoying a playlist on an endless road trip.
They make the journey more pleasurable, they enable shifts of attention, they celebrate process.
They have little relevance to the actuality of the process.
What actually happens when you are truly absorbed into ‘meditation’ is that you disappear.
When you move past sensation, when you move past concept, there is no memory of it.
In the endless moment of absorption all of it goes.
It’s featureless.
There is nothing to hold on to.
There is no relativity.
The mind has ceased to operate.
There is no collection of useable data.
There is no snapshot.
There is no memory to bring back.
Yet, you’re there.
Yet, you return.
Or perhaps better put, you refocus…
You refocus with a knowing that you are limitless in unknowing.
You refocus with a knowing that there is really nothing to know.
You refocus with a knowing that you are the whole thing.
Practice meditation enough and you realise the following:
You realise that you are a concept.
You realise that you are an endless process of discovery from a standpoint of being-ness.
You realise that in fact there is nothing to realise.
You discover that you are the question itself.
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As the Sufi’s say, ‘I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known’.
As the Rishi’s say, ‘Tat Tvam Assi’ - you’re it.
To paraphrase Rumi, when you knock on the door of the unkown, you find yourself opening it from the inside to let you in.
Thats why meditation is truly the space for ‘being’.
Om.
