If you're new here, check out the Best of Balanced Life Center and be sure to subscribe to receive the latest updates via email or RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Before we get the discussion underway, I thought we should define what is meant by meditation, at least around these parts. Besides, the second question up comes from Paula:

I have been ruminating about whether or not one needs to “sit on the cushion” to meditate. Can’t one just be mindful of what it is they are doing/being during the day and get the same results?

While being mindful is definitely a component of meditation, I’m not sure that it encompasses the full experience. Wikipedia says this about meditation:

Meditation is usually defined as one or more of the following:

• a state of relaxed concentration on the reality of the present moment
• a state that is experienced when the mind dissolves and is free of all thoughts
• concentration in which the attention has been liberated from restlessness and is focused on God.
• focusing the mind on a single object (such as a religious statue, or one’s breath, or a mantra)
• a mental “opening up” to the divine, invoking the guidance of a higher power
• reasoned analysis of religious teachings (such as impermanence, for Buddhists).

To me, meditation is the practice of deepening your awareness of Spirit.

It’s broad, I know, but maybe a few examples might help.

You’re sitting in silence and thoughts are whizzing around in your head. You’re aware of all of them whizzing around and you’re not caught up in it. That’s close, you’re mindful, but are you deepening your spiritual awareness. To go a step further, your thoughts begin to dissolve and you become aware that there is nothing at all. Then, you are not even aware that you are aware. You have dissolved. You are meditating.

You’re driving down the highway or walking to work. You are completely aware of everything that is happening around you. The cars and people going by, the birds chirping, the leaves rustling. You are even aware of the faint breeze that brushes the hair on your arm. You are completely present, but are you meditating? Soon, you find that it feels like soup, like the paint scene in What Dreams May Come. You begin to thin the line between the un-manifest world and the manifest world. You are more aware of the Life Energy that is coursing through everything. Now, you are meditating.

You’re typing away on your computer, journaling your thoughts. You write down your to-do list, your thoughts on your wardrobe, how your going to code your blog, what you’re going to tell your client. You are aware of all that you have going on inside and you are making conscious, mindful decisions. Suddenly, the words are pouring out of your fingers with no conscious thought. You are aware of the experience, but you know you aren’t typing those words on the screen. You have connected with Spirit and you are aware of It coursing through you and expressing as you.

The line between mindfulness and meditation is the difference in being aware of what is happening to you versus what is happening through you. In both cases you are aware, but in the case of meditation your awareness abides in a higher plane. Something the awareness disappears altogether as you realize that you are both the observer and the Observed. You melt into Consciousness.

That is meditation.

In Spirit,
Nneka

This article is part of the Meditation Question and Answer Series. For other articles in the series, you can visit the introduction post.