Thoughts on Meditation

I have been meditating for a long time. My first experience with meditation was learning how to hold a visualization in my mind for longer than a few seconds. I needed something to hold my focus. So I read about meditation not as a spiritual practice but more as a tool. That was one of the tools that helped me heal my body.

So, my first experience with healing my body was not about finding myself or finding a guru or savior; it was more about going past the beliefs of people who were sharing their knowledge about meditation and what they experienced during their periods of meditation.

I read ferociously about all types of beliefs and practices to push the narrative, often encountering misconceptions about meditation being purely spiritual or mystical and understanding that meditation can be a practical tool for healing and self-discovery, regardless of spiritual beliefs.

I concluded that mantras, prayer, breathing, and sitting in silence were the work that let you say you can open the door to the universe because you did the heavy lifting, so here is your reward, which bounced back to your ego and the safe, made-up space you created.  

Over time, I understood that my ego was a huge part of it. For the ego to control it, it needed to put up with the nuisance of meditation. I realized that, with time, I would develop a very strong ego that could focus and create a false separation that would mimic what I believed a meditative mind should look, feel, and act like. I even created the observer mind so I could watch over and choose with my mind what I should use at any moment in my life. Recognizing these parts of myself helped me feel less alone in my journey of understanding the ego and the observer within.

My core belief was that the mind was nothing more than a tool, like a computer program that comes on to do what is needed to survive and live in what we call this world.

I furthered my studies into things like mushrooms, drugs that affect the Pineal gland to release DMT, and how you can activate it naturally through yoga like Kundalini, breathing, and certain meditation.

Is this as simple as realizing that, instead of looking out from where you are at this moment? To looking in, seeing where you are, and seeing the path to where you need to go? Being the knowing that you're looking in with?