The Lazy Yogi

serenityhappens asked: Good morning lazyyogi! I had a friend ask me a question about meditation that I did not completely know how to respond. I have thought about it more and I think I have an answer for her, but I wanted to see what you would say... She asked me, "how do you know when you are meditating?" :)

When you are meditating it means that all of your attention is concentrated in the present moment. You are not trying to achieve any special state of consciousness but rather become at peace with whatever state you are in now; you are not trying to leave the body but rather become still within the space of your body now. 

Only then will the body and mind drop away, leaving you with the feeling of Endless and Immortal Existence. It’s hard and not really worth describing but it will come to you when you stop grabbing at it and become still. 

Sometimes your mind will wander off on trains of thought. When that happens, bring it back to the present. The more you lose your attention and bring it back, the less it will happen. 

I don’t like defining meditation because then people will start comparing their experiences in terms of past and present and start judging their meditation sessions as good or bad. This adds an extra level of difficulty. 

The idea of meditation is to stop adding things to your experience of the moment. Stop adding opinions, thoughts, insights, judgements, everything. Just sit. That is how the zen folk describe meditation: Just sitting. You can’t just force everything to stop by putting up a STOP sign in your brain, however. You can’t stop these things by fighting them. 

Instead you become a tunnel, letting mental phenomena come and go until their stream of appearances slows and stops on its own. 

It’s a difficult question to answer! I hope this helped. 

Namaste :)