Nice post! However, I believe you're slightly incorrect about meditation here:

Commonly, practitioners of meditation will sit with their eyes closed and clear their mind of thoughts for set periods of time or until a particular state of presence is achieved.

There is no such thing as clearing your mind of thoughts. Your brain produces thoughts constantly, whether you meditate or not. Generally, practicioners of meditation observe those thought (along with input from all other senses) and after observing gently move their awareness back to their preferred anchor (the breath, a mantra, etc).

Hope you don't mind me clearing that up, it's a common misconception that I think keeps a lot of people from meditating. Clearing your mind sounds hard (it is in fact impossible), just observing is much easier.