Ironically, meditation for beginners can be more harmful than beneficial if undertaken the wrong way. Most of us seek inner peace, beauty, happiness. And for most of us this desire is the root cause of discontent. Many religious leaders and teachers pass on traditional forms of meditation that does little but put the students mind into a new box. Because true meditation has no form, and it has no structure, when people ‘learn to meditate’ they typically wind up chasing a new desire, rather than find the peace they were searching for.That is not to say that there are not beneficial techniques or suggestions, like observing ones posture, not meditating while hungry, and doing so in a healthy and quiet environment. But it is to say that meditation is not a ‘thing’ with which to become good at, as if it is any other skill. Often times, beginners are at an advantage because they are not weighed down by worthless dogma or structured practice.
Meditation for beginners ought to look no different than anything else you do during the day. It ought however to feel different. Rather than eat your breakfast, you should taste your breakfast. You should smell the fragrance, listen to the sounds of rumination, and watch yourself as you are. And you should do all this without judgment. There is no right or wrong. There is only the truth of your experience. When you can taste your breakfast, I mean taste it as if it’s the first time you’ve eaten that thing, the first time you’ve eaten anything, than you are beginning to meditate.
Notice here I didn’t say anything about sitting under a tree with legs crossed and tuning out all external distractions. These are images at cross purposes with true self discovery and happiness. There is indeed a place in life for solitude and sitting quietly with oneself, but forced ‘meditative’ practice is not meditation. If you are forcing the thing, it winds up being a selfish action, an action emanating from your ego’s perception of good and bad, right and wrong. It comes from judgment.
True meditation is not judgment; it is the experience of life before the mind judges it. Before the mind ‘knows’ it. Many people misconceive this as detachment from reality. In actuality it is non-attachment, not to be confused with detachment. We leave behind the conscious and unconscious associations we’ve developed over a lifetime, we leave behind the ‘me’, and we experience the now. We don’t experience it as US Experiencing; there is only the experience, the smell, the taste, the sight, the thought. And there is beauty, and peace, and happiness.
Mindfulness, awareness of life in its fleetingness gives birth to selflessness and love. It opens avenues in the soul that we haven’t known since childhood. An innocence and an energy we all have and suppress is finally allowed to manifest itself again. And so today, for those of you out there looking for information on meditation for beginners, do yourself a favor, stop looking, and listen, look, taste, and feel. Start with breakfast.
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