Meditation Myth Buster:

No Right or Wrong Way to Meditate

There is a myth out there that meditation is serious stuff: that there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. We might all feel it differently, we might do it at different times, some may even do it more often than others but no one is better or worse at feeling the wind. Similarly, no one is better or worse at meditating.  In the same way that there is no right or wrong way to feel the wind on your face, there is no right or wrong way to meditate.

Even for those of us who have a hard time sitting still and clearing our mind. We too can meditate!

When a cat sits in a window sill:

When a cat sits in a window sill it isn’t thinking about what is in the future or in the past, where it ought to be, if it is enjoying the sun enough, or if it is doing it right. When the cat leaves the window sill the cat doesn’t feel guilty because it hasn’t returned in a while. The cat doesn’t think to itself, “I really owe it to myself to enjoy the sunlight today.” A cat sits on the window sill and enjoys the sunlight simply because the sun is there. Meditation is like this: it is returning to a natural way of just being, it is for the sake of itself, it is enjoying one’s own existence in its purest form.

photo by: Jonatan Pie

This way of thinking about meditation was elegantly explained by Alan Watts when he stated that:

“you can make any human action into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just for doing it.”

Meditation is being whole: it is you and it is the universe! Meditation is complete and for the sake of nothing at all except of itself.

When you are “completely with it” you aren’t distracted, instead you are saturated in what you are doing. When you do things for the sake of doing it, it is pure enjoyment. You do it not for the sake of others even if it may benefit them, nor for the sake of yourself even if it may benefit you. You do it because, for whatever reason, you feel inclined to do so and you allow this inclination to direct you. Weather this is feeling the wind on your face or sitting, legs crossed, repeating “om,”: both are meditation, neither are good not bad, better nor worse; they are simply ways of being at peace.

Meditation is the here and now. We all experience here and now all of the time and everywhere because this is all that ever exists. Sometimes we may need to remind ourselves of this point. Meditation is the reminder, both when we meditation with intention and when we meditation by feeling the wind on our face.

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