To Meditate or Not

It’s true. Whether you meditate or not things still happen. Births, joy, depression, celebration, anxiety, happiness, misery, health, illness, accidents, dying, death, all manner of human experience and existence still occur. Meditation simply, although not simple, allows a front row view of human experience and with a turning inward a realization that we are that human experience. 

Seated meditation is a controlled experiment of the investigation of self. Sitting still unimpeded by tasks or duties, shoulds or shouldn’ts, we have the opportunity to become familiar with and make friends with the skeletons in our closets and discover our true nature. 

Meditation cannot guarantee happiness. There are absolutely no absolutes, no guarantees of anything except that birth is a death sentence. What happens in life, happens. How we view, experience and respond to what happens in life, well that is a matter of choice. The only truth of meditation is that the moment we stop, sit, look and listen with open minds and open hearts we experience that truth is right before our eyes. This is it.  The whole kit and caboodle; the meaning of life is life itself. 

Meditation changes our perception of the experience of living.  We cultivate an awareness that the comings and goings of this existence are what life is.  They are not separate. They are as inevitable as the seasons. 

With the acknowledgement of change as a constant we can accept the gift of equanimity and that we are life it self. All experiences, whether we call them good or bad, negative or positive will and do happen. “This too will pass.” simply says that nothing is permanent that all things in this vast universe are subject to change. When we embrace and face change we begin to respond to life with an open hearted acknowledgement of the preciousness of each moment. 

Meditation helps to settle this knowledge deep into the bones, tissues and muscles of our human experience. Indeed, only when we become present with what is do we stop making an enemy of this moment. When all is said and done this moment is where life happens all ways, always.