Meditation Goals

If your meditation goals go beyond relaxation, then you will want to experiment a bit to find methods that help you to achieve those goals. Don't get me wrong, relaxation is an admirable goal in our stressful modern lives. In fact, it is essential to physical and emotional health. Still, you may have other goals for your meditation.

Insight
Insight is a time-honored goal of meditation. Eastern adepts and Western monks and nuns have spent years in meditation or retreat in order to discover their connection to the universal plan. Your personal goals are just as important to you.

I will relate a story told to me by an elderly Episcopal priest. He had been a priest all his adult life. During the Lenten season he had undertaken a forty-day retreat, something most of us will never do. He had devoted his life to understanding the nature of God and to helping others. In a conversation with me concerning how we demonstrate our love of God and what we feel we owe God, he said,

"You know, I have been a priest for over sixty-five years, and in these past weeks on retreat I have only now learned something about Him. God does not put us on Earth just so that we can love Him. He puts us here so that He can love us." 

This simple statement changed my life. Since that conversation I have often remembered this, and I have occasionally shared it with people who seemed to need reassurance that we each are part of a larger spiritual plan.

Now, we are not all priests or monks and we cannot all go on extended meditation retreats. What we can do is take the moments we have to calm our minds. Then we can perceive our place in the universal plan more clearly. You may connect through the Goddess, through multiple gods, through vibrational methods, through scientific investigation, or whatever means suits you. You can devote as much time as you wish to your meditation goals.

When you have a complex problem in the work environment, you need to get away from it to get a different perspective and to let the details sort themselves out in a way that points to a solution. Meditation provides one means of this. Sometimes a walk around the block is enough to accomplish this task.

Regarding the practice of meditation, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche has written:

Many people expect the result of meditation to come in a short space of time, overnight, so to speak, but this is not possible. It is a process of development wherein consistency is the key. If we practice every day, regularly, even for a short period of time, that will add to our development.

Whatever your meditation goals, you can begin with just the simple act of sitting down and trying it. You don't need any fancy equipment or clothing and you need not revolutionize your daily schedule. Eventually you may want to find a teacher or attend workshops, but for now all you have to do is begin.