I can remember it, as it happened yesterday - my first steps with meditation when I was 14 years old. While other kids where playing outside, I was studying the literature of Zen, Krishnamurti and a wide array of spiritual authors, all the while balancing and „riding“ my chakra wheels, like the others where riding their bike. Inside - Outside - same…
Very soon after, I visited my first Reiki courses and showed off my „meditation skills“, proclaiming to my Reiki teacher, that „I was already done with this Zen stuff and ready to move on!“. We can nowadays still have a good laugh about this innocent approach I had back then. It’s refreshing to think back on the good old days….
The direct experience of meditation
Nothing you will read here is philosophy or repeating something I have read or heard somewhere else. This is important to say, because people sometimes think, that they „know“ about a topic, because they have read all the books, done all the workshops and can speak Sanskrit fluently.
So this is also not a discussion or opinion on some spiritual topic, but just a report from my own experience.
There are thousands of different meditation methods out there, with new ones being born every 5 minutes as it seems and every single one claiming to be the superior one.
People get confused and when confused, they tend to overthink - even meditation. It happens all the time. People sit down for „meditation“, closing their eyes and secretly blaming themselves for not being able to meditate and thinking, about the right way not to think.
Meditation is basic stuff. Really. It isn’t about how good you can turn your body into a pretzel and are able to practice the „1000 right breaths to raise your kundalini, while hopping on one foot around the meditation hall“.
If you want to believe this, please stop reading. What follows will only disappoint you and your spiritual ego.
In reality, meditation is the most natural thing. It’s your natural state of being. It’s utterly simpel and relies on one thing alone: your direct experience.
You will be a meditation master, after reading this paragraph…
Please don’t ask me for a diploma or certificate though. (Although I should think about handing them out. There is a huge market… business wise… Hmm…Maybe… 😉)
One way to describe meditation is this:
“Just be, what you are“
„What? That’s all? What does this even mean?“, you ask…
Let me explain…
Well, to just be what you are, does not mean, to know what you are!
This is a crucial understanding. In other words: You can perfectly be what you are, without knowing anything at all about this so called „you“.
Remember, this is not therapy and you are also not lying under a spiritual microscope, to find out every missing information about this strange thing called „you“.
So while meditating, you are not trying to find out, what your qualities are.
Again: Trying to find out, what this „you“ is, is called thinking. (There are other fancy names for it, like therapy, personal development or self-inquiry).
So the first step in being what you are is, that you can have absolutely no idea about what you are.
Since you probably don’t know who you are anyway, this first step comes in handy. We could also say: Rest in your natural unknowingness!
You don’t know who you are anyway, so why bother? See?
Ahhhh! What a relief!
That’s why I said, that meditation is so natural. It’s doing, what you can do best anyway: Have no freaking idea, what this is all about!
Ok, maybe another paragraph
Sorry for another paragraph. You are already a natural born meditation master after the first step above, but it needs some further words, so that you will also realize it!
So after the first step above, what is the second step?
There is no second step!
What should be the second step, in a perfectly written exercise of „Just be, what you are“. This is already a full teaching, that needs no further practice.
Ok, maybe you ask, how you should do this be stuff?
How to just be? Is thinking also being?
No. Thinking is thinking and being is being.
Thinking, feeling, sensing, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting happen in being.
Here is the good news: It doesn’t matter what you think, while you be.
Think what you want. Let your mind be as noisy as it wants to be.
Maybe you have realized by now, that reality doesn’t care what you think anyway. What you think, will only color your experience and your feelings of reality, but has no effect on it.
If you don’t believe that, you may continue to think your bank account into the millions or create your soul mate. Good luck with that.
So in meditation it doesn’t matter how noisy your mind is, because whatever color your mind is making up, your being doesn’t care either.
No one cares what you think: No reality, no others, no being. Really. The only thing, that seems to care what you think, is just another thought you are having.
You are, doesn’t matter what color your mind is currently making up. You are like the movie screen, that couldn’t care less, what is projected on it. Simple.
By the way: Isn’t language wonderful? „It doesn’t matter what you think“ is already telling us very clearly, that what we think, doesn’t become matter.
Your thoughts don’t become matter. So no worries.
This is really a good thing - just imagine, what would happen, if all your shitty thoughts would become a reality. I don’t want to imagine this…
This is the last paragraph. Promise!
So maybe by now you say: „Ok. I get this being stuff, but that can’t be enough. I mean, being isn’t any real accomplishment, right?“
Yes, my dear mind, that’s true. Being is truly nothing you can accomplish.
It also doesn’t look good, when written down on a resumé for your next job interview. The good thing is though, that meditation therefore is also nothing you need to learn. Maybe this is also the reason, why I needed three paragraphs instead of just one, because I didn’t dare to tell you, that it’s impossible to learn meditation!
Simply for the reason, that meditation is being and you don’t need to learn, what you already are.
There you have it, my friend. You are a natural born meditator.
The only difference is, that before reading this article, you didn’t know.
Now you can relax, and can do what you can do best: Just be.