According to Sri Swami Rama, it was stated that “meditation is a process of purifying the mind and making it one-pointed, inward, and tranquil.  Through the method of meditation, the mind will help you to fathom the deeper levels of your being and lead you to the highest state of realization.” From The Essence of Spiritual Life By Swami Rama

Meditation is A Practice

Meditation is a practice.  It is not something that happens right from the beginning unless you are very lucky. It is also not mindfulness, relaxation, listening with a headset different tones and pitches or for that matter, anything that implies an instant method.  I remember someone saying to me that they have achieved meditation with a computer program.  They indicated that their experience of 1 week with this program was equivalent to 20 years of meditation.  This is nonsense and don’t believe it.  Our culture expects the end result to happen without putting forth the effort to reach the meditative state. To learn meditation requires a commitment to learning and a lifestyle that supports the practice.  

Rules of the road:

1. Be vigilant when it comes to practice.  Choose a clean and well ventilated space free of through traffic.
2. Do not expect immediate results. Ask yourself how long did it take for you to learn how to read or play an instrument?
3. Don’t let progress get side tracked with imagining spiritual happenings.  

If you find yourself saying,  I don’t have time to meditate, then stop and be aware that it is not your priority.  If you find yourself saying that meditation is not so easy, then you are off to a good start.  We create excuses to feed what our ego wants to believe about who and what we are.  

Science is Precision

“Meditation is a technique that needs to be taught in a  scientific way systematically with precision”.  This is the way that I was taught.   If you learn how to systematically practice meditation, it will not take much time for you to reach the summit of your soul, provided you know the full technique. Many modern classes take one little aspect of an ancient practice and call that meditation.  This is not meditation.   In addition, it is imperative to have the science behind the practice, you need to have full intent that you want to learn because it is easy to get sidetracked and drop a practice especially early on.

Here are some pointers to establishing and refining your meditation practice:

1. Have a strong desire to meditate or become a meditator.  Have extraordinary  will and determination because meditation requires that you have discipline of mind, and that is not so easy.  
2. When you decide, make the commitment to sit each day and commit to yourself that you won’t let anything get in the way, not even your thoughts.
3. Finally, just sit in meditation and don’t try to see lights, images, colors or anything that you think needs to happen to be meditation.  Learn to sit still in complete darkness and let a light arise within you on its own time.  

The master, SriSwamiRama  once said “Don’t meditate if you are not inclined to meditate. If you want to meditate, you have to form a habit, because habit weaves your character and personality. If you really want to know who you are, you have to take off all the masks, one after the other. You have to be totally naked. You have to be in the fire. If you are prepared to do that, you can learn to tread the path of meditation”.

The time is here that each and everyone must learn to meditate if they are going to ride the waves of our current tumultuous society. Meditational as a therapy gives access to the highest form of the healing force leading to self-transformation.