Before you meditate

I've selected this image (Pixabay) again to highlight what I feel is the most common mistake when it comes to meditation. Here we see a woman seated perfectly in the lotus position, common throughout Buddhism. The legs are crossed, the hands resting on the knees, and even the fingers are in formation. What you have is a woman trying desperately to be Buddha or some other teacher and struggling to be so. The whole emphasis is on the form. As someone who has practised meditation for many years it's always painful to see something like this. Really. It makes me wince.

Meditation has no form whatsoever

There are as many different forms of meditation as there are forms of yoga but all the forms are related to the techniques and the starting point, because once you get into it, all meditation is formless and without form. This means penultimately meditation can be either samatha meditation to bring stillness and equilibrium or it can be vipassana meditation to develop perception of an environment. Here of course I'm referring to meditation as a concept. Please keep in mind that I would put myself through meditation when practising magic as a way of aligning myself with my environment or to bring myself back after a ritual or spell.

I'm pointing this out because meditation as a practice can be harmful if you don't understand what you're doing. All too often when people undertake meditation as a practice what people try to do is try and suppress or stifle brain activity. Now think about this. Would you ever try to suppress or mess around with your heartbeat or the rhythm of your heart? The brain is arguably the most important organ in your body. It's also the only organ in your body not protected by your sensory nervous system. It's incredibly sensitive, especially to forms of abuse and all too often meditation as a practice is a forceful activity which disrupts the naturally occurring brain waves.

The only time when meditation as an action or practice has any potential benefit is during an anxiety attack when you're bouncing between memory and imagination in a traumatic or destructive thought process. But what you are doing here is intervening in an anxiety attack by suppressing it. But you could easily shift the focus of your conscious attention to something else in your environment rather than sitting down and trying to suppress your mind by staring into space.

monk

Why do you need to meditate?

Meditation as a practice is a form of self-hypnosis. Many people enjoy being in a hypnotic or trance like state - why else do people take mind altering substances? One thing I could never quite figure out about Buddhism was why a belief system so much predicated upon meditation as a practice was so against the consumption of intoxicating and mind-altering substances. Life becomes much easier the more detached you are but it's important not to confuse this self-induced hypnotic state with any heightened state of environmental awareness. Detachment is separateness.

It's also important not to confuse the culture of wearing yellow, orange or plain coloured robes among Buddhist monks. For centuries Buddhism and Taoism were strict monastic orders and monks wore similar coloured robes to convicted criminals. Therefore the colour of the robes such monks wear are indicative of the penitentiary aspect of the monastic lifestyle. Very much in the same way prison is designed as a place where you serve penance to reflect on your past deeds and change your behaviour and attitudes - which is what penitentiary means - the monastic lifestyle serves the exact same purpose. In the case of Taoism this arose out of the harsh reality of the shamanistic lifestyle, because Taoism developed out of shamanism, the I-Ching and simplified Yin Yang School of the I-Ching. Buddhism arose out of the 'dhyana' movement of Hinduism and jainism. While Buddhism can be seen as a form of Hinduism stripped down for export, it also cannot be denied that Buddhism is also the surviving child of jainism.

But let's come back to my main point.. Why do you need to meditate? What do you think meditation is going to give you that say, a natural state of consciousness such as sleep is not going to give you? Please keep in mind that here I'm not referring to spontaneous meditation, where without any preparation or any desire you slip into a meditative state. I'm also not referring to meditation for medicinal purposes, for example as an intervention to an anxiety attack. What I'm referring to is meditation as a practice where you go through all the preparations and get into meditation as an activity with a desired outcome.

This defeats the whole point of meditation. If you are seeking enlightenment, what is it about you that makes you feel that you are not enlightened? Is it because you believe enlightenment is a state of mind or a state of being? Is your desire to meditate is a desire for self-improvement or a desire to be better? Better than what? How will you be able to tell if you've improved or that you're enlightened? What is the standard or yardstick you're using? Are you comparing yourself to a 'past' you? Are you seeking to create a 'future' you?

How can you be sure that your desire for meditation as a practice is nothing more than an Ego trip?