what is mediation?

Question

how do you do it?

Answer 1

It is different for each person, I get that for me (and I call it grounding), it is my conncection with my higher power, and connecting with the earth...

How I ground is...I usually use music, something that is calming and I feel peace when I hear it...I imagine a tube at my feet or at the bottom of my spine if I am sitting, the I can flush all of my energy and judgments out of, then open the top of my head and fill my body with a bring light...

when I am feeling peacful I think of affirmations that I wish to have in my life, and I declaire them, sometimes I do an exercise to balance my chakras....

Answer 2

Mediation is using a neutral third party in order to bring resolution between two opposing parties.

Check out the American Association of Christian Mediators: http://www.christianmediation.com/faq

Answer 3

Mediation in a bible sense is a deep thought process in order to fully understand what you read from the bible this also takes much research and time. But is very helpful in finding the truth.

Answer 4

nonbinding intervention between parties esp. in a labor dispute to promote resolution of a grievance, reconciliation, settlement, or compromise


**Source: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.

the act or process of mediating something (as a physical process)


**Source: Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.


negotiation to resolve differences conducted by some impartial party 2: the act of mediating

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

Answer 5

You mean meditation?
Take it from the expert, Adi Da Samraj--www.adidam.org-
good luck, have fun, remember to breath!
THE MEDITATION OF UNDERSTANDING

Real meditation doesn't do anything for you. It has no purpose. When a person begins some form of seeking, he immediately turns to an effective, remedial technique that will get him quickly to his goal. Thus, when a man adapts to various kinds of religious and spiritual effort, he begins almost immediately to meditate in some way. The Christian and the devotee begin to pray and adapt to religious forms. The spiritual seeker begins to concentrate and internalize the mind. Others use drugs, study, critical thought, relaxation and poetry, pleasure, etc.

But real life, the way of understanding, is not another form of seeking. For the man of understanding, meditation is not adopted for the sake of something else. He does not pursue understanding or reality or any kind of experience through meditation. Real meditation is already a radical activity. It is understanding.

In the logic of Narcissus, the separative mentality, all things are seeking. But the man of understanding perceives the logic of reality and lives as it. Therefore, he is not concerned about meditation. His business is understanding, not ascent, vision, transformation, liberation, or any other goal. The way of understanding belongs to those who recognize the fruitlessness of seeking.

I do not recommend that you meditate. There is only understanding. Therefore, understand. And when understanding has become observation, reflection, insight and radical cognition, then the state of consciousness itself is meditation. When understanding has become a radical process, and the avoidance of relationship has become an inclusive and sufficient recognition, when you have understood that seeking is all a function of dilemma, and when you no longer are voluntarily motivated by the physical, mental or spiritual problem, then you are already meditating.

Meditation is simply understanding as a radical process in consciousness. It is what understanding is when it has become necessary and profound. There is no right motive for adopting it. There is only the discovery that you are already doing it.

Thus when understanding has become founded in you by observation of your life, and you have truly realized the radical process of avoidance on every level of your being, then you have ceased to approach life without intelligence, simply reacting, becoming motivated, and seeking various ends. Instead, you have begun to approach all experience with a simplicity in consciousness, a presence you bring to all things, which is understanding.

When you have begun to approach life with understanding, knowing the radical truth of understanding, then you have begun to meditate. Then understanding, the logic of reality, can be extended as itself to conscious or real meditation.

Real meditation is not purposive. It has no effect that it seeks to produce. It has no dilemma to solve. It has already become understanding, and understanding is conscious knowing. Understanding is in fact the knowledge that is consciousness, non separation, reality. Therefore, it is that to understand is already to meditate, to contemplate consciousness itself. And it does this not by an act of concentration on consciousness, or any form or center of consciousness, but by understanding experience, the action of consciousness.

Where there is understanding in life, what is actually being known is consciousness, unqualified reality. Thus, the understanding of experience by observation leads to the recognition of the avoidance of relationship as a radical activity. And even where this recognition arises it will also cease to be the fundamental object or activity of conscious life. It will simply give way to the fundamental perception prior to avoidance, which is reality, unqualified relationship, consciousness.

Thus, understanding first becomes actual in the mind, and then it is extended as enquiry. Enquiry is the approach of understanding to experience. And enquiry is meditation. It is in the form: "Avoiding relationship?"

As enquiry continues as the radical activity of life, even enquiry becomes occasional. Even in the beginning it is not repetitive, like a mantra. That which is identified and enjoyed in consciousness through enquiry does not need constant enquiry to reduce the tendencies of the mind and life to prior understanding. That reality which is the source and realization of enquiry eventually becomes the ready object of the mind and life, and one tends to return to it easily and naturally. Thus, when understanding becomes radical knowledge, there is no constant enquiry, no special meditation. Knowledge becomes consciousness itself, which is unqualified, which is "no-seeking" in the heart and "no-dilemma" in the mind.

The first form of meditation enjoyed in my life was the "bright." It is also the ultimate one. But the "bright" of my childhood was not fitted to understanding. It was not supported by real consciousness. I perceived it, but I could not control it. And at last it disappeared against my wishes. Thus, I became devoted to a path of seeking, but it was aided by my earliest intuition of reality, the "bright." I was required to pursue the faculty of my own consciousness. And I needed to understand before I could finally create, sustain and control the "bright," the Form of Reality.

The history of my experience as a seeker is a course of experimentation in relation to the forces of life conceived as the problem of existence on various levels of experience. In college I dealt with truth as an intellectual problem. In my period of writing and self-exploitation I dealt with it as a vital and emotional problem. With Rudi I dealt with it as a moral and psychic problem. In Scientology I dealt with it as the problem of the mind. With Baba I dealt with it as a spiritual problem, the problem of super-consciousness. And when I experimented with such things as diet, fasting and self regulation, I was dealing with it as a physical problem.

Of course, these various researches often over lapped and tended to become inclusive, but for the most part each was a highly specialized, exclusive endeavor. And each period was marked by a peculiar method. The area pursued also determined the nature of the work. The object created the subject, and the subject reinforced the object. And in every case the end phenomenon was the same. It was understanding. It was concentration and observation. Then insight. Then enjoyment or freedom on the basis of that insight. Finally, the recognition of understanding itself as primary and prior to the search.

Until I had exhaustively investigated every unique area of the "problem," there was no conclusive understanding. Thus, each moment of primary understanding, such as the crisis in college or the one in seminary, was only a temporary state. It formed only a moment of transition prior to the next phase, the next level of the problem. But when every aspect of life as a problem and a search was exhausted, there was only understanding. Then I recognized the similarity between each moment of attainment. And I began to notice in detail the aspects of the way of understanding itself as a radical path, prior to every kind of seeking.

Recently there has been a tendency among spiritual teachers to speak of a path of ''synthesis." Sri Aurobindo is one of the leading exponents of this inclusive mentality. But it is also visible in lesser teachers of yoga, as well as in the various synthetic paths of modern Western occultism and religiously motivated spirituality. Sri Ramakrishna, the great Indian teacher of the 19th century, perhaps initiated this trend in the East. And H. P. Blavatsky may be the sign of its origin in the West, also in the late 19th century.

But the trend to "synthesis" is only a synthesis of the kinds of seeking. It adapts the various separate activities of the great search to an inclusive philosophy and technique. But it remains a form of seeking.

In my own case, there was never any tendency to make a synthesis out of the various activities of my seeking. Indeed, as I passed through each form of my experiment, I only came to realize the fruitlessness of seeking in that way. And at last I saw the entire fruitlessness of seeking in any form. Thus, the way of understanding, as it developed in my case, is not a synthesis of the ways of seeking. It is a single, direct and radical approach to life. And that approach is itself, from the beginning, entirely free of dilemma and search. It has nothing to do with the various motivations of the great search. From the beginning, it rests in the primary enjoyment and truth that all seeking pursues. Thus, the way of understanding is founded in the radical truth that is fundamental to existence at any moment, in any condition. And it is also the genuine basis for creative life, prior to all the magical efforts toward healing, evolution and the victorious appearance of "spiritual" life.

The more I continued to indulge the yogic process the more I realized that it only and continually drew me into the forms of seeking, either for the Shakti, the Self, or understanding. Thus, at last I saw that understanding was itself the only radical process, and enquiry was its activity. Then I abandoned the meditation on the chakras and the entire yogic process for enquiry. And enquiry was always epitomized as contemplation in the Heart, and the meditation of bliss in the Amrita Nadi.

I saw there was only a simple activity and concept manifesting under the form of every kind of remedial activity. It was always Narcissus, the logic and activity of separation. I examined all of this yoga, all of this seeking and performing, and all of its results, and I asked myself: Why? Why should such activities be engaged at all? What are the motives for meditating? And the more radical my understanding became, the more absurd, unnecessary and impossible it became to justify any of these exploits.

All ways showed themselves to be founded in some problem, some aspect of life as dilemma. There was the physical problem, the vital problem, the problem of the mind, the problem of spirituality and super-consciousness. There was the problem of morality, love, communication, sex, the problem of sin, suffering, the problem of powers, reality, truth, and the universe itself. Even the way of Ramana Maharshi was concerned with the problem of identity. But I saw that the problem, in any form, always had the same structure, and the same fundamental assumptions. Thus, I became concerned with motivation, the principle of these various kinds of action, belief, knowledge, etc. I saw that, since all ways were founded in a problem, real life must be founded in the understanding of the primary problem that is the source of all ordinary activity. Only thus do we know and enjoy reality, even in spite of moment to moment problem creation.

I saw that understanding was itself motiveless. But everything else was in fact the avoidance of relationship, and this was their very motivation! Thus, the longer a man lives, the more complicated, contradictory and suffering life appears.

I saw that understanding was not some unusual, miraculous condition or perception. It is the simplest activity, utilized by everyone in his dally experience. It was only that men abandoned understanding in order to exploit the kinds of seeking. But when attention is drawn to understanding, the whole movement of seeking comes to an end. The man only understands where he would otherwise seek. Understanding was simply a matter of observing oneself in relationship, in action, in life. And if a man could be drawn to understanding and always firmly returned to it, he would begin only to understand. Understanding would replace his ordinary habit of seeking, and his consciousness and activity would become simplified, free of prior dilemma. And this very state, when it became the radical premise of anyone's existence, was not in any way different from the primary realization of yoga or traditional meditation. It was the same knowledge and capacity of fundamental reality, but radically free of any limitation to certain kinds of action, mentality or experience.

I saw that men could easily be turned to self observation. And the process of observation could easily be maintained by proper guidance or "hearing." And that process of observing gradually saw the emergence of fundamental insight. Men could understand the radical nature of seeking, the adventure of Narcissus, the whole complex life of the avoidance of relationship. And when understanding arouse, men could easily apply understanding to moment to moment experience. The understanding became the approach to life, rather than all the automatic, confused activities of seeking, the drama of Narcissus. In that case, understanding became enquiry in the form of understanding itself: "Avoiding relationship?" And the abiding in relationship with the use of enquiry became the fundamental activity of conscious life moment to moment or in special periods of enquiry which might be called "meditation."

Such a way might automatically produce the unusual phenomena of "kriya yoga," or the whole expanse of intuitive knowledge. Or it might simply realize the natural existence of no seeking, no dilemma, primary creativity and freedom. I describe these results as follows:

But the truth of real life is simply what is when there is a removal of contradictions, no dilemma, no search. It cannot be described, nor is any name appropriate for it. There is no motive to name it. It is not an object, nor a supreme and other subject. It is not separate from the one who understands, nor can he separate himself from it. It is simply no problem, no search, unqualified reality without implications. It is also the form of reality, which is the most subtle structure of the world and everything, even the form of consciousness. All of this is obvious to one who understands and continually enquires.

Thus, as I became firmly grounded in understanding as a radical approach to life, making no use of any other exercise or remedial method, I saw that it corresponded exactly to the ultimate truth and reality I had enjoyed at times in the past. And it was exactly the way indicated by the highest, most subtle forms of conscious perceptions that were recently realized in me. Then I set about to describe the way of understanding as meditation as I had known and done it all my life.