Meditation Is Life Itself, If You Perceive It

AVAlexander Volchek

People very often want to be shown how to meditate correctly. They say, “Show me the technique, show me the posture, show me how to breathe, show me what I should feel.” But there is a profound mistake in that. If someone can show you how, then most often you are talking about an exercise, not meditation: like push-ups, ten thousand steps, a body scan, or focusing on the breath. It may be useful in some respects and may even work. It may bring your system into balance and give you some pleasant sensations. But it is not meditation. You cannot understand meditation through a single exercise. That is the crucial point. Meditation is not sitting down, closing your eyes, turning on music, and feeling calmer twenty minutes later.

That may be a state of recovery, and it may be a good thing to do, but meditation in the true sense means expanding your own perception of life. You can be in a meditative state while talking to a child, walking around town here, drinking coffee, working, or looking at another person and suddenly beginning to sense what is really happening. Then the question becomes entirely different. It is no longer “Which technique is best?” but “What am I perceiving right now? What am I not perceiving? Where am I caught in an illusion? Where do I simply want to calm down so I can go on living in the same way?”

And where do I truly want to see the truth? Meditation is not some separate, beautiful little corner of your life. It is not a refuge, not a spot in a cave that people endlessly search for. Meditation is life itself—if, of course, you begin to truly perceive it. That is why you cannot simply buy the right technique and settle the matter. That is why you cannot simply start going to sessions with mats, particular postures, particular music, or a particular sound. You can learn to breathe, learn to sit, and even learn to relax. But meditation begins where a person starts to see: “I am alive. I perceive. I am a spiritual being.”

What truth surrounds me? What causes and effects surround me? What can I sense and perceive simultaneously in different states? A person senses that everything happening around them is inseparable from their actual life. That is where true meditation begins. What do you think about this? Would you like to learn more about meditation and genuinely expanding your perception? Subscribe to the channel.