Meditation from Latin means “to think and reason.” In fact, nothing to do with thinking or reasoning meditation does not have, so its strange that this word is translated from the Latin language, and not from sanskrita¹. Meditation as a practice was invented in India, not in ancient Rome or Greece.

In our time on the topic of meditation, there are many speculations. Bunch of people who think they are engaged in meditation, in fact, do anything but meditation.

In reality, the process of meditation is diametrically opposite to the usual definition – is not thinking, but rather stop our mind. As aptly said nicely known Indian named Don Juan ² – stop the internal dialogue.

After all, our minds are constantly babbling something, and therefore our attention is constantly directed to something external. But when we stop thinking (just stop), then our poor attention will have no choice, but to send its light inside of us. Figuratively speaking, the attention – it is light that is always on, but it always directed outward. During this same meditation, this light is sent into us, into the depths of our consciousness, the subconscious, and sometimes deeper. So this is a true self-knowledge, the journey inward. We begin to see that our thoughts, as it turns out, it is not ours, begin to distinguish one thoughts from another’s, and even can discover (oh, horror!), that have no our thoughts at all (or very little), but there is only borrowed thoughts. It’s not scary.

Our subconscious do an interesting thing – this little room in big mess, because we very rarely looks, and as a consequence there is a lot of dirt, mess horrible, scattered all around and upside-down mountain of dirty socks. But, nevertheless, somewhere in this mess is hidden a treasure. This treasure is our Divine Soul, which is abandoned under a mountain of dirty socks, our sinful passions, thoughts and habits. The ultimate goals of meditation – is to find and clean up our sweet soul from all this dirt.

I think it would not be amiss to say that meditation is a spiritual practice is present in all three world religions, and leads to enlightenment, nirvana, salvation, the kingdom of heaven, holiness.

Even if our exercise in meditation will not be so successful, that we achieve enlightenment, however, we should do it. The fact that our minds are constantly says, spent a lot of energy and vitality, meditation also allows you to keep this energy and make people more healthy, happy, successful.

Meditation – it’s hard work of our souls, because oh how to stop the mind is not easy, sometimes we can hardly control our thoughts. Few people only, who can take and not think about anything. For this needed training – training the mind. It’s like in the gym, where we walk to train your body, carrying the bar, swing your biceps, triceps, abs. During the same lessons in meditation we train our mind instead of biceps and make it obedient to our will.

The process of meditation is very similar to the process of taming a wild horse cowboy, who is constantly kicking, trying to run off somewhere, to throw the rider, that’s just as horse speaks our mind, as a rider – our will. If you manage to tame the mind, it will be very good.

The human condition, when all thoughts disappeared, is called Dhyana. Dhyana – this is real meditation. However, just to reach the common man Dhyana is not possible, it’s like when someone first came into the gym and immediately tries to raise the bar of 100 kilograms. In order to raise the 100 kilogram bar, you must first be trained in lifting barbells better. The easier bar is called Dharana. Dharana is translated from Sanskrit as “concentration”, this is the process when we concentrate our minds on any one short thought for some time. This short thought is called a mantra.

Mantras are different, in Buddhism, the most popular mantra – Om mani padme hum.

Of course, the mind will be naughty, trying torn in different directions (and our job is to contain the mind, concentrating on the mantra). Broadly speaking, meditation – Dhyana and Dharana is, in a narrow – only Dhyana. I found good figurative description of what the concentration and meditation. Imagine a dog that randomly runs around the playground, and kept putting off a handful of sand and wrote on the swing. Challenge concentration will be put on a dog chain around the booth. Meditation is called the state of the dog when she calms down and gets into the booth.

So, to begin meditating, you just sit in a quiet and convenient place to concentrate your mind on one thing, but since we live in the Christian world, instead of Buddhist mantras perfectly fit any Christian prayer, above all, to pray from the heart, all mind and with all heart.

About the techniques of meditation, see in the following articles.