A Thought on Meditation
What comes to mind when you think of the word meditation? In my mind I see this person sitting cross legged on the floor, eyes closed, humming and trying desperately not to think of anything. The idea I guess is to empty one’s mind in order to find peace. I suppose that’s good in theory, but difficult to do in reality. In my reality anyway.
For one thing, I’ve never been very good at not thinking, and that bothers me because I see so many around me who don’t think, and they seem to get along quite well without it. Now, I will admit to having stumbled into the “not thinking” zone on occasion, but what frustrates me is I can’t seem to stay there with any kind of regularity. Perhaps it’s a lack of focus or something, but “emptying the thought well” for me is a lot like bailing water out of a boat with a hole in it.
Fortunately, for me, mediation isn’t so much an emptying of my mind, as it is a filling. It’s not a random filling of just anything that makes an impression on me throughout the day. Rather, it’s an intentional filling in which I fill my mind with only one thing, and then pour all my concentration into it, until it becomes the only thing I think about. Now there are many people who meditate, and are highly successful, but their success didn’t come solely from their ability to meditate, but rather from what they meditated on.
You’ve heard the saying that goes, “you are what you eat?”
Well, truth is, you are what you think about. Now I don’t imagine that’s a very comforting thought for a lot of people, but I wonder how we would view people if we could see their inner thought life as if they were captions floating above their heads. Maybe a better question would be how would we really view ourselves if we could see our own thought life in the same way.
I don’t know about you, but knowing my thoughts would be open to others would certainly make me pause and consider them more carefully.
This may come as a surprise, but we’re all a product of our thought life. We like to think we can hide our thoughts from others, but the truth is we hide very little. Our speech, our actions, our possessions, are all a reflection of our thoughts, and chart the direction our lives will take, and that leads me back to where I began with: meditation.
Meditation in and of itself is no guarantor of success or happiness, but it’s what we meditate on that gives our lives meaning.. The Bible says that, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Now that’s something to meditate on.
wayneaugden 