Author: Mike Colagrossi / Source: Big Think
- Alan Watts cuts to the root of what meditation really is all about.
- Meditative practice has no motive, except to experience the present moment.
- Practice a guided meditation by focusing on the now.
Meditation has left the ashrams and become a fixture in the boardroom and livings rooms everywhere.
The corporate analysts and Silicon Valley-types scramble for their next hit of improvement. Spiritual posturing and enlightened one-uppers fill our social feeds and make it seem like meditative bliss is just a hashtag away. Unfortunately as spiritual practices enter into the wide marketplace of ideas, there is a tendency for them to be degraded and repackaged into self-improvement drivel and self-serving nonsense.It’s best to avoid the commercialization of contemplation if you want an authentic experience of meditation. It’s a really simple thing to do.
The increased cultural awareness of meditation is still cause for joy, but more importantly a cause for education. So let’s clap one hand together and see what the sage Alan Watts has to say on how to meditate.
“Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. And therefore, if you meditate for an ulterior motive — that is to say, to improve your mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life — you’ve got your eye on the future and you are not meditating!”
What is the purpose of meditation?
The goal of meditation is quite simple. To be within the here and now. To divorce yourself from symbolic language, hangups of time and experience the immediacy of the present moment. Meditation practiced for this reason transcends everything else. Once this fundamental point is grasped, you can meditate in anyway you see fit. Twisted criss cross in a yoga pose or sitting on a park bench in a busy city street.
The problem is, this straightforward idea is complicated by our categorical mind that won’t stop chattering. Always in the process of labeling an experience or forcing logic and reason when there is no need for it. It’s almost comical, but a lot of people get stressed by the idea of just sitting still and doing nothing. Emptying the mind becomes…
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