Are You Meditating Properly?

Knowing how to properly meditate is the difference between a life of constant struggle and one where prosperous opportunities flow into your life easily and with minimal effort exerted on your part. 

This is one of the main reasons why the practice has been growing increasingly in popularity over the past several decades. However, after all these years of practicing and studying meditation, the general public still has no clue what the hell they are doing when they attempt to meditate, much less how to do it properly. 

Most people turn their meditation sessions into a spirituality cosplay performance. They are fixated on adhering strictly to a set of rituals, ceremonies, and superstitions, turning the practice into more of an exercise in self-indulgence than a means of reinforcing their connection with divinity. 

This article serves to once and for all establish exactly what meditation is and how to engage in it properly, so that we can bring it back out of the realm of rituals, ceremonies and superstitions, and re-establish it as a spiritual practice. 

• What is meditation?
• What people get wrong about meditating
• How to meditate effectively

What is meditation?

Very simply put, (or maybe not so simply, we will find out in just a moment) meditation is the art of bringing your mind into alignment with your heart. 

Our heart always knows what is best for us. It always knows the correct path we should take. Unfortunately, our mind is often in conflict with our heart. The way we have learned to think, the way we have learned to logic and reason, gets in the way because our logic and reason is caught up on needing to have evidence. Yet, what we need to realize is that sometimes that evidence can potentially be harmful to us. Our heart knows when this is the case and it tries to protect us from ourselves, but we have to listen to it. We have to disregard what our logic and reason is telling us that we need in favor of putting our faith in what our heart is telling us is in our best interest. 

The reason this is so important is because you are the person who gives you the things that you want in life. Or, I should say the opportunities to get the things that you want in life. After all, you still have to actively accept those things by taking decisive action when the opportunities appear. Opportunities do not capitalize on themselves. 

Those opportunities are a product of your beliefs. You don’t get what you want in life, you get what you believe is possible for you, and this is where meditation comes in. 

For many of us, what we want in life is not the same as what we believe is possible for us. Through years of social conditioning, we have been trained to be in constant mental conflict with what we actually want. The function of meditation is to resolve that conflict. Meditation serves the purpose of neutralizing any conflicting thoughts and emotions that you have regarding your ability to receive exactly what you want in life. Establishing neutrality purifies your energy so that there is no conflict in it. Once there is no conflict in your energy, it will cease to attract conflict. It will cease to attract resistance. In the absence of conflict and resistance, constructive ideas for how to achieve the things that you want in life can then begin to flow into your mind. When you were in conflict, ideas were still flowing in, but they were of a destructive nature. Acting on them would have, and has, taken you down the path of most resistance. When you purify your energy, the ideas that come to you take you down the path of least resistance. 

To recap, social conditioning has trained our logic and reason to be in conflict with our heart. Consequently, the ideas that we come up with have often lead us down the path of most resistance. However, when we purify our mind of all that conditioning, we give it the clarity required in order for our ideas to come flowing from the heart. Ideas that, if acted upon, will take us down the path of least resistance. 

Therefore, all meditation is, is aligning how you choose to think and believe with the direction that your heart is telling you is best for you. Think of it as answering your own prayers, because that is what you are doing. Your thoughts create an energy field around you. That energy field determines what is attracted to you, and what is repelled by you. What most of us do not realize is that the reason we do not have what we want despite our best efforts to achieve it is because the way we believe and think has created an energy field around us that is constantly repelling it. You can meditate for two hours a day, everyday, but if the rest of the day you are predominantly in a mindstate of fear, disbelief, apprehension or worry, then you negate all the good that you accomplished in that two hours of meditation. That is why most of us continually find ourselves on the path of most resistance towards the things that we want. The path of least resistance is always there for us, but because of the way our belief is set up, we cannot see it. 

What people get wrong about meditation

...mostly everything. But I will focus on two things in particular. 

The first is the idea that meditation is for clearing your mind. 

Yes and no. 

You are not clearing your mind so much as you are purifying it. You cannot clear your mind because the mind is constantly thinking. We cannot stop this no matter how hard we try because we are extensions of the cosmic intelligence that created the entire universe. That intelligence is always thinking. Therefore, in order for us to stop thinking we would have to disconnect ourselves from that intelligence, and this is impossible. 

Consequently, the point of meditation is not to clear your mind, but to take conscious ownership of it so you can begin to filter that continuous stream of intelligence and mold, shape and guide your thoughts into the forms that you want them to manifest as. Recognize that your thoughts are the first stage of creation. Scripture tells us that, “In the beginning there was the word”. Our thoughts are our word because in order to articulate them we need to construct words into coherent sentences. These sentences communicate concepts and ideas. As a result, it is very important that we discipline ourselves to be deliberate and intentional about the concepts and ideas that we infuse with our belief. To reiterate a point made earlier, we don’t get what we want out of life, we get what we believe is possible for us. 

The second thing that people get wrong about meditation is they turn it into a ritual. 

Now, if you enjoy setting a mood for yourself by putting on a certain kind of music, spreading sage all over your house, lighting candles and dimming the lights, then that’s cool. But don’t tell yourself that it clears evil energies out of the house and all this other nonsense. You are the energy. If you think that there is evil energy in your house then you should put yourself out. Open the door, and get on out. 

The entire point of putting a greater emphasis on spirituality is so that we stop telling ourselves that we need a middleman between ourselves and God. You have a direct line to God. Every thought you think is a thought in the mind of God because there is only one mind in the entire universe. We are individual representations of that mind, yet and still there is only one mind. We do not have to deify the sage. We do not have to deify the candles or the music. All of that stuff gets its power from us. 

We have to stop treating meditation as if it is more special than regular thought. It is not. If thoughts are the beginning of creation and you are always thinking, then you are always meditating. Which means that you do not need to make it a morning ritual; you do not need to set aside a specific amount of time a day; you do not need to sit Indian style with your eyes closed and your fingers pinched together while you make weird noises with your mouth. Remember, you are always thinking. If you need to perform some special ceremony every time that you need to get your mind right, then you are an addict. A functioning addict, but an addict nonetheless. 

Life is constantly throwing different challenges at us. We need to be able to get our mind focused and pointed in the direction that we want it heading towards, on the fly! 

If you are at work and your boss gives you a poor performance review which causes you to go on a mental rant of self-doubt and unworthiness, are you going to wait until you get home so that you can go through your full ritual in order to get yourself right?! That’s madness! You have got to be able to get yourself right right there on the spot without needing to be dependent upon rituals or ceremonies. 

How to meditate effectively

Let us establish this one more time: all you are doing when you meditate is aligning your mind with your heart.  

If your mind starts going off on a negative rant and starts telling you that you are not good enough, guide it back on track by affirming to yourself that you are good enough. Reinforce this statement by visualizing another person confirming this for you. I will explain this technique further in just a moment. 

Your mind is creative because everything you think is a thought in the mind of God. Therefore, if you think something then you should put your faith in the belief that what you thought is going to externalize itself as an actual experience for you. Meaning that it is not sufficient to only THINK that you are good enough, you also have to ACT as though you are good enough. You can’t just sit back and think something then expect for it to magically happen. Like attracts like. You have to become it in order to attract it. If what you truly desire is for your boss to compliment you on your work, then affirm this desire by visualizing your boss doing what you want them to do, then conducting yourself as if it has already happened. 

Put yourself in position to receive that compliment by doing the kind of work that makes you worthy of such a compliment. What you may come to realize once you stop sulking and doubting yourself is that your work ethic was not on par with the type of recognition that you desired. That is why so many of us are complainers and not doers. It is easier for us to complain than to admit to ourselves that we do not do nearly enough to be deserving of the things that we want in life, and that we need to start holding ourselves more accountable. Do not just sit around wishing for things and then complain over not getting something that you did not put in the work to receive. If you want it, visualize yourself having it, then close the distance between you and that thing by doing exactly what you would do if you had it. This is a matter of discipline and responsibility. Life will not give you anything that you are not disciplined and responsible enough to handle. 

For example, if you were to want a new car, what are some of the things that you need to do in order to be disciplined and responsible enough to handle having that car? What paperwork do you need to take care of? Do you have a license? What are your monthly and yearly expenses for the car that you want? In other words, how much is gas, car note, insurance and maintenance going to cost you on a monthly and yearly basis. How does this impact your other fixed monthly and yearly expenses? Figure those numbers out, throw an extra $200-$300 on top of it just to be on the safe side, then every monthly begin putting that money aside. Don’t just WANT the new car! PREPARE for the new car. 

If you want a larger role at work, or you want to start your own business, what are some of the things that you need to do in order to be disciplined and responsible enough to handle those situations? Once again, life is not giving you anything that you are not disciplined and responsible enough to handle, therefore ask yourself what are the things that you would have to be able to do in order to excel in those roles, and start doing them! We have to outgrow our present circumstances in order for life to give us more, and we accomplish this by doing the work. 

Soon after you will notice that you will begin attracting opportunities. As you act on those opportunities, you will bring yourself closer and closer to what you want. 

Also, remember to be patient throughout this process. Take each step as it comes, and complete them with integrity. The steps cannot be skipped and they cannot be cheated, making the only realistic option that you have to take each step as it comes and with integrity. Otherwise, you will find yourself eventually having to start over from scratch. Think of it like building a house on a faulty structure. You will be able to live in it for a while, but eventually it will start to fall apart. You can try to do small, quick, cosmetic fixes, the way most people do whenever they want to fool themselves into thinking that they can get away with not doing things the right way, but problems will just keep popping up until finally the entire damn house falls apart. 

Take each step as it comes, and complete it with integrity. 

Questions and answers

Q: It’s really difficult for me to keep myself from thinking thoughts that I don’t want to think when I meditate. I try to ignore them, hoping that they’ll go away, but they just keep popping up. What do I do about this?

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