Another day, another tweet about the magical power of meditation for self-improvement, written like this:
I meditated for 7000 hours
The majority of my results came in the last 500 hours.
Here are the best tools I've found to sky-rocket your progress - prevent you from wasting time:
Such content may encourage people to meditate, which is generally a good thing, but it does so for entirely wrong reasons, suggesting that we have something to gain or lose by meditating. And unfortunately, many people believe this.
"The majority of my results came..." About what kind of results or progress do they even write about? I have no idea. Maybe I haven't yet achieved these results despite meditating almost every day for several years. Or maybe there are no results that we can achieve and these people have lost themselves in the practice?
Who is even this person who can benefit from meditation? Can we enhance our ego or persona by meditating? Well, even if we could do that, I wouldn't be so proud of improving the self-image we've created - what's the use of that? And wouldn't it be a waste of time to use a tool designed to undo the projection of consciousness in order to enhance the projection?
So maybe it's a tool to enhance our soul - whatever it is, or get closer to our "Higher Self" - whatever it is? But aren't these still further projections of our minds - still further ideas about ourselves that we have because we are so attached to our individuality? Not great results to pursue.
Of course, most people cultivate their individuality and deceive themselves - consciously or not, to keep up the "poor little me versus the world" show. In this way, the idea of a persecuted ego that gets lost in the system of symbols and tries to survive in this cruel world, trying to improve oneself is indeed the main part of the show. But the meditation that supports such a process is not even meditation.
There is also a vast group of people who use mediation, as they say, to get rid of their ego. Although the goal is much better in this scenario, it ends up serving the same purpose as the desire to improve oneself - it only strengthens the ego, that is, the projection of consciousness. Alan Watts once beautifully said:
“The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.”
In other words, when we try to either enhance or get rid of our ego, we only strengthen the ego and enslave ourselves even more - not the best result.
Nevertheless, when it comes to our bodies, meditation can actually help a little, but not in the way many people perceive it. If we sit down to meditate with the intention of improving ourselves, it will not be meditation but active dreaming. This means that we give our power to our thoughts, emotions, or imagination – our minds. And it won't be an actual meditative state.
The reason why meditation has so many science-based benefits comes down to detachment from all the nonsense of the world and all the mess we've created in our lives even for a brief moment. And, of course, detachment from our self-image and all the drama of thoughts and emotions and our great desire to improve or change ourselves. The principle of true meditation is simply being.
In this way, the fact that meditation offers us so much health - especially mental health, benefits reflects how messed up our world is - even the brief moment of not messing with ourselves is so amazing that people write articles or even scientific works on the topic.
Though all these benefits aren't improvements, but side effects of undoing conditioning of body and mind - consciousness projection. You see, our nature is joy, peace, kindness, or love – not anxiety, depression, or anger. Just look at the average child not yet affected - corrupted, by our various systems, rules, limitations, and so on. The child just plays and experiences what is happening in the present moment, not thinking about the past, the future, or other nonsense.
And although someone might say: "Yeah, but we are adults - we can't chill like that anymore." Well, it's true that we all have our problems and responsibilities, but it's not that bad when we live in the present - most of our suffering comes from the internal drama of thoughts, emotions, or imagination, not actual experiences.
Life is a creative play of role-playing personalities, and meditation is indeed a great tool to relieve from the play once we get too involved, which can surely reduce stress, anxiety, and all this. In this way, meditation is not a tool for self-improvement, but for self-discovery.
And all the talk about the benefits of meditation is a trick used by various spiritual teachers and gurus to get people interested in meditation. They do this with the hope that people will actually sit down to meditate and dig a little deeper into their nature when they fail in their quest for self-improvement - or even discover something by accident by remaining silent for even a moment.
Meanwhile, all the talk about the benefits of meditation by Twitter "gurus" is a trick to sell their silly courses, calls, and the like. Be careful because such people talk about the magical benefits of meditation just to sell something, implying that meditation is a powerful tool but we are all doing it wrong.
Don't fall for such cheap tricks of self-proclaimed gurus or coaches. Instead, just sit, close your eyes, and experience all the happening - noises, lights, images, thoughts, emotions, or anything else, as an observer, without judging anything, and stay in that state for as long as you can. And if you need guidance, seek and follow the advice of the actual and legendary guru, Ramana Maharshi:
“Giving up all notions about country, caste, blemishless community, asrama (status as a bachelor, family man, ascetic or one who has renounced the world) and associated matters, hold on to and practise always meditation upon the Self, your own natural state.”
