Why Meditate?

We have some basic needs: food, water, shelter, good sanitation, love...

But even though we may have the privilege of satisfying these basic necessities, a good education, a good job and more... we still feel unsatisfied, unfulfilled, depressed, anxious, suffer ill health etc..

Why is there so much suffering?

According to yoga this is due to a lack of self knowledge. We have lost contact with our essential nature, our true being or identity...

Through not knowing ourselves in any true depth we falsely come to identify with our bodies, our minds, histories, professions, social media profiles, etc..

This has shifted our experience away from a wholesome and natural embodiment towards unhealthy lifestyles, unwholesome pleasures, toxic relationships, stressful ambition etc..

According to yoga you are not your body or your mind. These are just tools, a means or media through which we can have experience. You are also not your profession, sexual orientation, style, political persuasion etc. that you have become identified with.

Because all of these go through continuous changes, our sense of identity which is projected onto them also fluctuates, is also unstable and uncertain and this results in a great deal of suffering.

But if I am not the body, if I am not the mind or ego, who am I?

There is only one way to find out: Look inside. This is the purpose of meditation: know yourself.

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Patanjali explains that when the mind's activities have been arrested, then the true inner nature is revealed. This true nature is described as untainted by birth or experience, unchanging, eternal, a witness only and of the nature of existence or being itself - one with truth and established in utter peace and bliss - this is our true nature!

However, when we sit still, shut the eyes and look inside, we immediately become aware of the continuous activity of thought. Even if we make an effort to quieten these fluctuations of the mind, it refuses to switch off. It produces constant noise.

This screen of constant noise obscures any deeper observation of the nature of being. The only way to see if there is something beyond or beneath the mind is to stop its activities. Then one can observe what remains, when thought activity has been arrested.

Going directly into meditation is thus impossible for most people. For this reason, there are a few other preliminary practices (asana, pranayama etc.) that bring ease to the body and quieten the mind - making it fit for meditation.

The mind goes through ups and downs but the inner nature is unaffected by what it experiences. The inner self is unchanging - ever established in being, truth, consciousness and bliss.

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Through re-identification with essential being, we can relinquish the attachment to mind, body, image, profession, ego... and re-connect with the innate inner bliss.

Mind is the problem.

Seeing mind as an object, just as body is clearly an object, relieves us of identification with its pleasures and pains and the ups and downs of the rollercoaster of life. This allows us to center on serenity and inner peace as the source of being.

The more we revisit the source, the more that source acts as our foundation.

This is the true benefit of meditation.