What Exactly Is Meditation Anyway?

[in meditation] consciousness shifts increasingly into awareness of that which is not form and into the realm of that which is transcendent or into the world of the abstract,i.e., into that which is abstracted from form and focused in itself.
Alice Bailey Esoteric Astrology

It is easier to say what meditation is not.

Meditation is not relaxing in your recliner to watch Sunday football games. Meditation is not becoming hypnotized by the dotted lines on the pavement while driving. Meditation is not sitting and staring out the window instead of doing your work.

The process of meditation as discussed in this book is about focusing attention, not thoughts. In some systems, it is not even about focusing attention, but about relaxing the mind and body instead. Because there are many ways to meditate and many potential goals for meditation, there is no one definition that suits all the possibilities.

Definitions from the dictionary tell us about the properties associated with meditation.
The first definition in the tenth edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary is not about meditating at all, but has to do with the result of meditation ot reflecting. It states that "meditation is a discourse intended to express its author's reflections or to guide others in contemplation." It is a work written after one has considered the subject deeply, and for the use of others.

The second definition is not much more helpful. It tells us that meditation is the "act or process of meditating."

Hmm, we already knew that. So what does "meditate" mean?

• "Meditate" comes from the Latin word medium, and means "to engage in contemplation or reflection." 
• It also means "to focus one's thoughts" on something, or "to reflect on or ponder" over something. 
• A third definition is "to plan or project in the mind," to intend, or to develop one's purpose. 

So far the most helpful is the bit about focusing one's thoughts, but that is not the true intention of meditation either.

The definition for the word "meditate" in the ninth edition of Webster's New College Dictionary mentions the Latin word mete, which means "boundary." The tenth edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary mentions the Latin word tnederi, which means "to remedy, heal" (it is the root of the word medical), and the Greek word medesthai, which means "to be mindful of."

At first blush, these definitions don't do much to help explain how to meditate. In fact, the definitions are very misleading. Let's take a look, though, at the words intend and purpose from above. For most of us, everything we do has some intention. We don't spend much time acting without purpose. If I am to convince you that meditation is a good thing, I need to be very clear about its purpose. I need to convince you that you can achieve some worthwhile goals through meditation.

Now let's consider the phrase "to be mindful of," or simply "to be mindful." This is more like it.  

Meditation is sometimes called mindfulness training or training the mind.
Instead of letting it go wherever it chooses, we can train our minds to focus.

Meditation is about :~

•  relaxing the mind, 

• focusing attention, 

• and fulfilling a purpose or goal. 

So what's this business about boundaries? 

How does that fit into the meditation picture?
When we think about ourselves, we tend to think that each of us is separate. "I live inside my body/mind, and the rest of the world is outside. I prescribe a boundary around myself." Such a boundary is not entirely logical. Each time I breathe, I inhale air that has, for the most part, been through someone else's lungs. I eat food that has been cycled and recycled. In my daily interactions with others, I seek to make connections so that I feel less separate. Yet I have this self-made boundary between myself and others.

We set boundaries for everything. My house is a boundary between me and the cold. My yard has a boundary that was legally set when the land around me was subdivided. Nations have boundaries. Corporations have boundaries described in law by patent, copyright, and so on. We are all about boundaries. Or are we?

In his poem "Mending Wall," Robert Frost writes, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." Later in the same poem he suggests, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out,/And to whom I was like to give offense." Frost is asking, "Why do I need this boundary of a wall between me and my neighbor?" You could ask yourself the same question about any "wall" between you and others, or between your own conscious and unconscious experience.

One goal of meditation is to understand the boundaries we have set for ourselves.
Perhaps the greatest boundary— and certainly the toughest—is the one we set between the conscious and less conscious parts of our own minds. No single activity requires as much of us as the assault on that barrier. Each day we go about our conscious waking life, and each night the unconscious speaks to us in the form of dreams, enticing us to deeper self-understanding. Then each day we rebuild the boundary. We all need a way to gain a deeper understanding of what goes on inside our minds when we are awake, asleep, or just not paying attention, and meditation is one way to pay attention long enough to find out.

Let's explore how boundaries work through some of the systems in our lives. We tend to think of our lives as consisting of separate units that interact with each other, yet remain independent. An example is the family. I grew up in a household that included my parents and siblings. Eventually my grandmother came to live with us. Before she lived in our house, she was like a separate unit. Once she lived in our house, she came to be defined as a member of our nuclear family. She took an active role in household management, and she read to us, talked with us, and scolded us just like our parents. She went to concerts with us, shared the crossword puzzles in the newspaper with my father, and took vacations with my mother. When she later moved out of our house, she ceased to be part of the nuclear group and returned to her former status of "close relative."

Does the distinction feel artificial? How could we just move Grandma in and out of the nuclear family system? The door of our house was the defining boundary. All persons who lived on the other side of our door were not part of the nuclear family.