Today meditation has become billion dollar business.

There are different kinds of meditation throughout the world and everyone is teaching their methods to reach something.

Or the latest transcendental meditation where a Sanskrit word is given at 500 dollars and you start repeating it.

Repetition dulls the mind just like a lullaby. It puts your mind to sleep and you feel quiet for some time.

After trying every meditation nothing worked because the systems are mechanical and life is not.

So we are going to first walk into understanding what is meditation actually.

What is meditation in actuality?

The English word meditation comes from the Sanskrit word “Dhyana“.

But since there is no English word that defines dhyana profoundly that’s why it is settled for meditation.

The closest word would be “attention without attender”.I will explain this later in more detail.

Right, most people have listened to or done meditation before, so I request you to put every knowledge beside for the moment.

Because only empty cups can be filled.

So let’s start from the beginning where we actually don’t know what is meditation.

We start with understanding what meditation is not.

1 ) Meditation is not repeating words three times a day . It’s like putting your mind to sleep by singing a lullaby.

2) Sitting with crossed legs and concentrating on a picture or god is not meditation.

3) Sitting hours in zen is not meditation.

4) Mindfulness meditation is not meditation too.

So what meditation is?

In our common understanding of meditation, we have someone in us who is meditating.

There is an experiencer who says I feel good, I don’t feel good I am angry, etc. So the query to understand ourselves is the beginning of meditation.

Who is the experiencer in us?

There is something in us which we call as me but couldn’t figure out our whole life or more like we dont put effort to understand it .

Because someone has said we are soul and in our laziness we accept and nothing transforming happens.

If we carefully and logically try to understand who we are basically.

You will find every identity is put externally on you. Your name, your education, and your experiences are all about you but not you exactly.

And the face you see in the mirror today and assume is you. Is constantly changing from a cell called a zygote to an adult.

Can you imagine yourself as a zygote?

So the factual description of ourselves is 

1) We don’t have a shape

2)We don’t have a name 

3)We don’t have a face

In more simplistic terms we call awareness.

What is awareness in simple terms?

Awareness is the knowing quality that feels and experiences.

Without Awareness, we will be like robots.

So the conclusion is that there is no experiencer apart from the experience. There is only a state of experience.

For example, when you are angry , there is only state of anger at that time which you remember later and say I was angry.

The statement I was angry denotes that there are some who were angry but in actuality, there is a state of anger only not someone who is angry.

We take the subject-object principle from language to psychology that’s where duality comes and all illusions.

But the fact is that there is no physical person who is experiencing but there is a state of experience only.

That is done through awareness.

Meditation is awareness 

Awareness is the knowing quality and that is you. Not a person that you think you are right now.

There are various schools that are teaching you awareness. That is literally like teaching an eagle how to fly.

When you practice awareness there is someone who practices, so you are being unaware all the time.

Being aware of all the thinking, and feeling throughout the day is meditation.

Meditators are focused on the experiences that they experience while doing some techniques and say I have reached it.

Experiences either spiritual or pleasurable are both the same thing because the experience remains the same.

But in meditation, there is no meditator, only a state of meditation that’s where all the transformation occurs.

And if you are influenced by gurus who say they achieved some mystical powers or reached nirvana is fooling you obviously.

They promise you god and in your greed, you subscribe to their band.

Removing image-making process which is past ?

Meditation implies using the past for learning and lessons, but not letting it interfere with the actual time which is now.

We divide time into past, present, and future. But in reality, there is only  present.

There is image making mechanism in our mind that stores experiences in form of images.

We make images of someone and puts them into a frame. But every person is changing every second.

A friend that you know 5 years ago has changed significantly but you resist change and the relationship is between two images.

One that your friend or wife made of you and one that you made of him or her . That is not an actual relationship.

Be aware when you are creating images of your friend or wife . And try to actually look without all the past that is accumulated throughout the years.

The question is not how to do it because it resembles a method but if you begin to do it and be aware you will find something extraordinary in that relationship.

My life story and how I stumble into reality?

As a Hindu, from childhood, I am very interested in gods. So like everybody I worshipped statues of Indian gods like Hanuman and Shiva.

I grew up learning their stories and tried to find god by worshiping but I couldn’t so I asked my family why I couldn’t find god.

So they said it is very difficult to find god and you are just a child.

As soon as I grew up I have thousands of questions in mind. I followed every book, and every meditation technique I can find but in secret so that nobody would distract me.

Those questions are who am I, is there any such thing as a god?

I have some so-called spiritual experiences but I asked myself is that it?

Then I came across two gurus that really opens my eyes those are j Krishnamurti and u.g. Krishnamurti. 

They both discard traditional meditations and worshiping stones.

After that when I was 23, I got spinal tuberculosis . I was in bed for more than 1.5 years so I have lots of time to spend with myself and work on my career.

Only a few people know about my condition because I didn’t tell anybody about it.

One day, I think it was morning, i was lying down in my bed and one question pops up in my head which was – who is the observer in me that observes everything?

My brain started throwing answers like my image, and my body but I know that observer is something that observes so everything that my mind shows me is not me.

After around 10 min all the answers died with the question itself, and suddenly there is a separation between my awareness and object of observation.

Experiences and emotions everything is there but that image that the mind creates as me is dead.

So if someone asks me who am i. I gave him my name knowing in my heart that it should be like that because it is hard to tell someone I am not a thing (nothing ).

Bonus tips ?

1) Keeping your body healthy is as important as meditation.

Gurus and monks have a strange tendency to hurt their bodies as if that is something to be done in order to reach something that they want to reach,

But if your body is not healthy how can you live with full awareness?

So eating good food and exercising 1 hr per day is very crucial.

2) Finding your own path with intelligence

Nature has blessed you with an innate intelligent body and mind. It’s up to you how you are going to use it.

Either you follow someone blindly or create your own path with logic and intelligence.

3) Methods and systems in the psychological field do not work

Our body has two parts one is mechanical and one is alive.

Methods and systems make our mechanical side more mechanical and the end result we want is alive and filled with life.

So how can a mechanical thing reach something alive?

To go next shore we have to leave this shore in Christianity it is called a leap of faith.

Takeaway

Just understanding is not enough, it must be in your being .

Knowledge is important in the field of science and technology world but in psychology, knowledge is just a burden.

It will be hard work because you are not following anyone, you are walking your own path.