A question about meditation

Thursday 11 march 2010 4 11 /03 /2010 07:00

Here is a question from one of our readers, Alain, about meditation:

Hello Blue Eagle, I want to ask you a few questions about meditation : do you consider meditation to be a form of spirituality? I have tried the technique of the white meditation recently, do you know it? It consists in visualising a white wall during ten minutes or so, a stage which is supposed to help us emerge into contemplative meditation. Do you think this technique can help us experiment a state of deep meditation?

BE: Many forms of spirituality will teach meditation as a tool on the path to enlightenment. Meditation is not a spirituality, it’s a technique to assist one on the beauty way. One saying in Zen Buddhism comes to mind, although I don’t remember who originally said it but it goes this way: ‘Enlightenment is an accident and meditation is a tool to help us become accident prone’.

There are a great many meditation techniques. Some use visualization, energy exercises, concentration on a sound, an image or a spiritual being. But all have the same goal: helping us to go beyond ordinary mind to emerge into the here and now, thus enlightenment. In truth, being with the Divine source and light which is within us, is enlightenment. In the beginning, it comes and goes as we weave tight our robe of light but with time it grows and we dwell more and more in the one light until we become one with it. Then there are no more questions but many answers.