no such thing as meditation

meditation is extremely fruitful to the unfoldment of consciousness, especially when it becomes a bridge towards the transformation of our daily, "mundane" experience. if, however, we rely on meditational practice as a kind of crutch, believing that simply by virtue of "putting in the hours" we're getting closer to truth-realization, the practice can actually become an obstacle to genuine spiritual development.

in fact, the whole "spiritual game" can become just another trap, and a particularly insidious one at that -- even if we unrealistically took for granted the integrity and efficacy of every spiritual teacher out there. but then again, genuine spiritual teachings, teachers, and practices are absolutely essential to those of us who would never have figured things out without a little help.

so what's needed, then, is a balance that allows us to take productively from the existing spiritual arena and apply its lessons to the subject matter of our daily lives. we need to be able both to learn from the exterior and to trust the interior. this means not creating a rift that separates our practice and spiritual ideals from our actual approach to life at the most fundamental level.

one way to test whether we're actually maturing spiritually is to assess our precognitive response to life. what is our basic response to potentially fearful situations? how pervasively do thorny emotional states like anger and depression -- certainly not problematic in and of themselves -- take hold of us? when we see something good happening to someone else, is our instant response that of jealousy or of sympathetic joy? when we become exposed to the intense suffering of another, do we close down in self-protection and rational justification or compassionately open ourselves to the heart-piercing pain of undeniable tragedy?

if we're honest in our assessment (and that can be a big "if," since we're often so heavily invested in our self-conception as spiritually aware people), these are good ways to test for real spiritual progress as opposed to simply inquiring into our surface beliefs and attitudes. searching the mind for spiritual progress can be tricky because it's so easy to simply change the very surface arrangement of our mental furniture to take on a remodeled spiritual theme. after all, switching our life-theme in this way is nothing new: teenagers craft a rebellious identity that asserts their independence from family and become drawn towards one cultural movement or another; later in life, young adults often become obsessed with reconfiguring their identity to align with career interests. "becoming spiritual" can be just another one of these superficial realignments undertaken for entertainment's sake and, ultimately, to keep ourselves distracted from a truth too threatening to face.

to take it back to the topic addressed at the beginning of this post, meditation -- like all things "spiritual" -- can be tremendously transformative. or, it can bring about spiritual stagnation. it all depends on how we relate to it. if we can learn to both take it seriously ("this is the very purpose of my life") and approach it lightly ("what's the big deal/hurry?"), to both practice meditation and realize that there is no such thing as meditation (or, perhaps more accurately, that there is no such thing as non-meditation), then we're probably well-poised for some natural insight to leak through and actually transform our lives from the inside out.