Written by Mathew Naismith
This is difficult to determine because each spiritual practice has it's own definition in what is meditation, this is in accordance with the implementation of meditation. I am not going to look at the various implementations of meditation here, but what I will look at is what all meditations are governed by.
Meditation is of quietening the mind to one degree or another, the quieter the mind becomes, the more of enlightened kind of meditation the consciousness of the mind becomes. Keep in mind that not all meditation techniques lead to enlightenment, many meditation techniques are of simply quietening the mind. It is not the mind that becomes enlightened, it is the consciousness of the mind that becomes enlightened.
So firstly what is quietening the mind?
Quietening the mind is of the absence of participation, the less your mind therefore body participates within an environment, the quieter the mind becomes. Now we may think that praying or chanting is not a form of meditation because we are still mentally and/or physically active, therefore of participating in the environment. Praying and chanting can be like focusing on your breath which is still of participation be it of limited participation, however, we are far less of partition of the environment. In this case we are only participating in praying or chanting, just like focusing on your breath. You could imagine the benefits of quietening your mind with meditative techniques like this.
This may sound strange to some people, but every kind of participation is due to observation, participation cannot exist without being observed. Look at it like this. The universe itself simply exists because it is being observed, without the observation from a consciousness the universe could not exist. It is like the double slit science experiment, where the act of a determining observation changes the outcome. It is how we observe to what is going to be created from this observation.
This brings us to observation itself which leads to enlightenment through meditation. We are all observing our own participation, the reason we are unaware of this because we become involved in what we are observing. Meditation that leads to enlightenment is of observation in the absence of participation. The further your consciousness becomes conditioned to participation, the more likely you are going to become of participation in the absence of observation. This is where meditation comes into it, where you condition your consciousness to become less of participation but further from this, more of observation of participation.
Meditation is simply the reconditioning of consciousness to become more of observation than participation. Yes, this can take time but this time is shortened if you are aware that you are in observation of your own participation, you are never not. Observe more without participating.
Meditation that leads to enlightenment is not of a consciousness that is conditioned to inhumanities, so if your observer self is conditioned to inhumanities, what you will create in observation will create an environment in accordance with the way a consciousness observes. Inhumanities is of a great deal of participation, mainly due to the extent of abuse of energy involved. The less abusive an observing consciousness becomes, the less of participation a consciousness becomes conditioned to. Yes, after a human life cycle has ended, what our observer self is conditioned to makes a different to what we will experience in the after life. Meditation in a really big way just doesn't help us to cope better in life's participation's, meditation also helps in what we will experience in the after life.
I hope this helps some people because what is and is not meditation can be confusing. Also, what I have stated here are of my own words that can be similar or dissimilar to other views in relation to meditation.
