Why Meditate?

​We Westerners tend to live completely within our thoughts. Our cerebral activity is ceaseless - ideas, plans, plotting, problems, fears and obstacles.

Essentially we work towards a series of goals and outcomes to which we become strongly attached and to which we become strongly identified- careers, houses and possessions, money and relationships

Problem- rarely do our schemes go according to the script. Society subtly sells us the idea our lives should follow a rising arc of attainment and satisfaction, but how often is this actually the case?

The deeper issue at play here is our ever strengthening sense of identification with the ´´self``and the anxiety experienced when our expectations fail to materialize.

By contrast Eastern Spiritual Tradition teaches the importance of simply ´´being ``. The art of stepping back from frenzied  activity and being able to access the simplicity and joy of the moment with a still and peaceful mind

If we continue to live within our thoughts this stepping back and separation can never be achieved. Meditation, in it´s many forms, allows the process to begin - allows us to briefly experience a state of being beyond frenetic thought. The space and peace created can allow our grossly inflated sense of self importance to begin to break down. The door to perceptions and intuitions which lie deep within ourselves has been opened - the enticing possibility of a very different way has revealed itself.

(Images, courtesy of google, "dog meditating")