Meditation is a Practice of Dying

Meditation is a practice of dying.

When we close our eyes to meditate, we drop our lives. We drop our names, our wants, our goals, our to do lists. We drop relationships, work, play; we drop it all. We drop.

When we sit down on a cushion to meditate, we chart a bold new path—into the unknown.

Meditation is not simply a way to relax or de-stress (although these reasons may have initially driven us to the practice); rather, meditation is a way to meet and experience Divinity.

Whether we were raised in a religious family or not, the path to Divinity, to Source, to God, to All That Is (whatever term you want to call it is fine; the label does not matter), is a path that comes when we have grown weary of the material world’s false promises. Maybe we have tasted fame, fortune, success, or even deep love in a marriage. And yet…and yet…there is this thing inside, this craving that is never fully satisfied.

What is this thing? This thing is the longing for God.

When we sit down to meditate, we say goodbye to our lives as they have been, and we invite the unknown. We invite Divinity to enter us.

When we sit down to meditate, we drop it all, for a few minutes, and we enter into a state where the mind is allowed to dissolve.

People fear death, because it is the conclusion of the mind’s accumulation of facts and figures of one particular lifetime. People tend to believe that what the mind has stored, all the facts and figures and stories and moods and memories is what makes up a “life.” Thus, when the mind ends at the time of death, people are often terrified. What happens when we lose the mind and the body that has defined our very existence? Is there life after life? Do we just cease to be? Indeed, the death process is terrifying to most people.

Ultimately, people fear meditation and are reluctant to try it because they fear death.

Death is an unravelling of the mind.

Meditation is also an unravelling of the mind.

Even though meditation is not yet mainstream on our planet, more and more people are waking up to the need for meditation in their daily lives. They are starting small: with five minutes every day, and then gradually devoting more and more time to the practice. They are beginning to taste grand moments of peace, and even happiness or bliss.

Meditation is the practice of dying. We die to all that we have known and all that we thought was real. We put down our identities, and we allow ourselves to be swept into the unknown.

Through this brave act of dying, day after day, we move into the light. We move towards the purest kind of freedom. It is the freedom of pure Consciousness—the knowing, the experience, the absolute certainty that all is One. That there is, in fact, no death at all.