Why Should We Meditate?

Explore one spiritual teacher’s thoughts on the ways in which we unconsciously meditate on unhappiness, and how to reverse that pattern.

Everything that you do amounts to meditation. Whatever you focus on, whatever you concentrate on, whatever you give your energy to, whatever you think about—you are meditating upon it. This is not the everyday understanding of meditation, but it is true.

Most people are meditating on their problems. Most people are meditating on what they like or do not like. Most people are meditating on how to be happy, how to have a better life, how to make more money, how to get sex—so do not be confused. What you give your attention to is your meditation.

Formal meditation, the “practice” of meditation, is an antidote for these involuntary meditations that people are always engaging in without realizing it. You get to focus on something different, something of your choosing.

Everybody is searching for happiness, but most people are meditating on unhappiness. Most people’s thoughts are concentrated throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout their lives, on what they do not like, on what is unsatisfactory in their lives, or on what makes them unhappy.

And then they wonder why things are the way they are, when they have been spending a lifetime meditating on unhappiness—promoting thoughts, feelings, and sensations of unhappiness, simply by dwelling on them, anticipating, and imagining—in the attempt to prevent or eradicate that same unhappiness. But nevertheless, that is not the result.

The result is: You experience what you meditate on, more and more. The more you meditate on it, the more you experience it, and the more it comes to you. Because meditation, deep down, is an attraction mechanism. It operates like a magnet. Where your attention goes, operates magnetically.

Most people’s attention is on themselves, 24 hours a day: “What can I get?” “How should I feel?” “What do I want?” The attention is all “I.” It is all self-focused. So, everyone, in that sense, becomes their own meditation. They are meditating on themselves.

This is why, in all spiritual traditions without any exception, there is at least some kind of emphasis on the thinking process, on how one handles one’s thoughts (whether that is the primary focus or not). Every tradition has something to say about thoughts. Well, your thoughts are your meditation. It is for good reason that every tradition has something to say on that subject. And what most religions and most spiritual traditions say is: Nothing exists without a thought first. And there is no question that that is true.