Alan Watts cuts straight to the core of what meditation is all about. Meditative practice is to experience the present moment by focusing on the now.
Meditation has recently become more popular. So much, that spiritual posturing and enlightened one-uppers fill up in our social feeds and make it seem like meditative bliss is just around the corner. Unfortunately, the more popular that spiritual practices enter the wide marketplace, the more likely their true essence will be degraded and turned into nonsense. If you want an authentic experience of meditation, it’s best to avoid the commercialization version of contemplation. It is a very simple thing to do.
Alan Watts Educates Us On How To Meditate:
“Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. And therefore, if you meditate for an ulterior motive — that is to say, to improve your mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life — you’ve got your eye on the future and you are not meditating!”
What Is The Purpose Of Meditation?
The goal of meditation is to be within the here and now. To rid yourself from symbolic language, hangups of time and fully experience the present moment. Once this fundamental point is grasped, you can meditate in any way or anywhere you want. Sitting on the beach, under a tree, twisted in a yoga position, or out in the sea, the possibilities are endless.
The problem is that our minds are constantly chattering, always forcing logic and reason when there is no need for it and constantly labeling experiences. A lot of people get stressed out by the thought of just sitting still and doing nothing at all. Emptying the mind just becomes another thing to think about.
Watts said:
“The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality. And the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think about it, and talk about it, and describe it. For — on the one hand — there is the real world and — on the other — a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds.”
He understood that by being part of civilization we are tied to symbolic thinking and language. He also understood to the level of how much we actually think in our heads all the time.
“Meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up. That is to say, that we become interiorally silent and cease from the interminable chatter that goes on inside our skulls. Because you see, most of us think compulsively all the time.”
Tomorrow will never come. The future is, and always will be, just a concept that can change at any moment in time. Meditation puts us back into our present place of the now.
How To Meditate
There is not one way to meditate, there are countless of ways. There are Eastern texts regarding the many practices – a variety of different methods and techniques. However, there are some specific central tenants that serve as a foundation for meditation. Alan Watts describes how he meditates:
“You can sit any way you want. You can sit in a chair, or you can sit like I’m sitting — which is the Japanese way of sitting — or you can sit in the lotus posture… the easier you’ll find it to do — or you can just sit cross-legged on a raised cushion above the floor. Now, the point of this is that if you keep your back erect… you are centered and easily balanced, and you have a feeling of being thoroughly rooted to the ground.”
Once this is figured out, you can make it fun and throw in some mantras or breathing techniques. So join Alan watts today and meditate for a brighter future.
