What does meditation do?

Updated

“Meditation is everybody’s birthright.

   In meditation
We establish our oneness
   With the entire world,
And our whole being is inundated
   With peace.”

                                         Sri Chinmoy

It is said that meditation opens the door to our soul’s infinite peace and potentialities, that inside each of us lies something of our very own that is greater and calmer than we can ever imagine.  Since ancient eras, there have been individuals who have discovered this rich inner treasure and sought to show others the way to enlightenment, or, ultimately, “God-realization”.

For us, meditation is a journey of self-discovery.  By making the mind calm and quiet, which turns out to be the master key of any real inner progress, we can, given due time for practice, using our sincerity, patience, and determination to move forward, go deep within and discover who we really are.  By doing so, we find lasting peace and happiness and learn how to effectively solve our life-problems and realize our highest aspirations.

As beginners, we are often, understandably, satisfied with taking baby steps.  However that is quite ok, because meditation is effective practically from the first day, bringing and increasing higher and inspiring qualities into our life (such as light, love, sweetness, purity, joy, strength, beauty, sincerity, intensity, clarity) and relaxing the all-too-common grip of worries, anxieties, and daily stress.  And so, gradually, we begin to realize just how meaningful and truly necessary the practice of meditation really is to us personally.

In the words of Sri Chinmoy: “It is only through meditation that we can get lasting peace, divine peace. If we meditate soulfully in the morning and receive peace for only one minute, that one minute of peace will permeate our whole day.  And when we have a meditation of the highest order, then we can get really abiding peace, light and delight.  We need meditation because we want to grow in light and fulfil ourselves in light.  If this is our aspiration, if this is our thirst, then meditation is the only way.

If we feel that we are satisfied with what we have and what we are, then there is no need for us to enter into the field of meditation.  The reason we enter into meditation is because we have an inner hunger.  We feel that within us there is something luminous, something vast, something divine. We feel that we need this thing very badly; only right now we do not have access to it.  Our inner hunger comes from our spiritual need.”

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