Don’t try to understand meditation intellectually.

While there’s a place for that, it won’t really help you other than to convince you to practice.

Meditation is ultimately about freedom. We are “possessed” by our own egos — our conditioned thought patterns and ideas of who we are.

And so we relate to life through a veil of concepts instead of directly. Our thoughts become the primary reality of our life instead of the direct experience…

So, thought and ego are the possessors from which we must regain our freedom.

Meditation is the most powerful tool to do that — although there are, in my view, lesser ways that can help, such as practicing mindfulness… Continue reading “How to meditate and be free from ego” →

Meditation is the ultimate life-changing experience. The point of meditation is to set you free.

In a sense, it’s the only freedom really possible, but freedom from what? You could say “Freedom from anything that isn’t really you.”

In the ordinary human experience, what we believe as “me” or “I” is thoughts about the content of our life, our body, our mind — beliefs, ideas and concepts about ourselves. None of these things is who we really are.

It’s attachment and identification to these things that stops us seeing our true selves. So, we are actually “asleep,” in the sense that there is no higher awareness that can say “oh, that was a thought (or feeling).”

Just like when you’re dreaming there’s no higher awareness that knows you’re dreaming until you start to wake up and then you can say “oh, I’m dreaming.”

When you’re fully awake, you’d say “that was a dream.” If there is no higher awareness, then there is no choice. In the “normal” level of awareness thoughts and feelings become us, because all our attention is in them. There is nothing higher — like in the dream… Continue reading “What is the point of meditation?” →