1. The common denominator of all meditation methods

 “The common denominator of all meditation methods is to control your attention,

to keep your attention on only the chosen object. “ ​

— Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Ph.D., neuroscientist

Technically, meditation means a way to train your attention: letting your attention rest on a chosen object; just observe the object without any comments or opinions. Even if you see the most brilliant idea at the time you are meditating, don’t follow it; keep observing your object. (If the ideas are important, you will remember them after your meditation session; so don’t worry.)

The object of your meditation can be anything: your breath, your feelings, the sky, a flower, or a content of your test. You choose one object and keep your attention just on it. If you are new to meditation, you shouldn’t change the object often. Pick one object and meditate on it, every sitting. Your monkey mind likes to jump from one thing to another all the time. You’d better not give it a chance to do so in meditation.

Experientially, meditation means the realization that your essence, your consciousness, is one with life. There is no separation between “me” and life. But I won’t discuss this issue further in the book. It’s because the purpose of the book is to apply wisdom that comes from meditation to help you achieve your goal more effortlessly.

  2. When does a meditation practice truly work?

Meditation works when you drop all goals or expectations for the outcome of meditation.

This is the hardest part to understand about meditation. It contradicts all methods of doing we have been taught. When studying for the test, for example, we must have a clear goal so that we know how to act on it.

Why do we have to drop the goal when meditating? 

First of all, meditating is not a doing.

When “doing”, we need to use our thinking mind, which constructs with thoughts and emotions. Expectation of a result is nothing but our thought about what may happen.

“Meditation begins with being totally aware sensitively, without any choice, of what is happening in the world and with yourself.” This is a perfect “definition” of meditation taught by Jiddu Krishnamurti.

It is just mere observing, mere listening, mere seeing. You are just being with the object of meditation. You don’t analyze the object nor try to change the object. As George Mumford, the author of The Mindful Athlete, Secrets to Pure Performance, said: “Let it (the object) speaks to you by its own language, by its own time.”

Time has passed and you may find your thinking calms down by itself, without your intention to quiet it. But quieting the mind is not the goal of meditation.

Secondly, potential dangers can happen if you keep thinking about your problems when meditating.

Meditation makes your mind more focused. You may unknowingly intensely concentrate on your problems because you want to find a solution for it. And what you think about is usually “something not right”, so the negative emotions going along with it such as worry and fear increase. That is the reason why you might feel so bad after “meditating”.

If your motive of meditation is to get rid of something because you don’t like or fear of seeing it, you will inevitably notice it more. Why is that so? Because you emphasize it; you make it important. 

(Try this interesting experiment: open an answer page of your test book and try to see only  the first 5 answers and NOT the 6th. What did you see? I bet you CANNOT NOT see the 6th!)

So, you may even experience more emotional disturbance when "meditating" with a purpose in mind.

 Thirdly, we can't go to the two points, A and B, at the same time. 

As you know, in the physical environment, we can’t go to point A and point B at the same time. It’s the same as in the mental state: we can’t be in both states, awareness about thinking and being identified with thinking at the same time. If we hold on to a desire tightly when meditating, this becomes a barrier for us to get access to the meta-cognitive state. It is because we can only pay attention totally to one thing at a time.

This is what often happens even when we are more skillful in meditating. It’s when we get access to the “meta” dimension, which is called the meta-cognitive state in psychology. “Meta” means beyond thoughts and emotions. It is the true “eye” that helps us understand what we observe, because we don’t distort it with our interpretations.

When we get access to “meta”, if we start checking the result, such as “oh, this state is wonderful!” or “I want to stay longer in this state”, we immediately fall back to the “plane” of thinking.

We need to drop all expectations for a certain state when meditating. Whatever comes, comes. Then we are in a state of choiceless awareness. This is true meditation.