what is meditation ?

To meditate is to think with a goal in mind. Some may meditate on money or murder. Regardless, the goal is discovery -- the answering of a question that will not leave us in peace until it is resolved. Meditation is scientific inquiry, and the outstanding scientists use logic and intuition to solve their mysteries. The scientist forms a question, researches what others have found, uses the best tools available, and is not afraid to admit they were wrong. To reach the highest goal, the discovery of one's true nature, requires scientific logic and scientific intuition. Who? what? where? when? how? why? are the topics of inquiry and meditation. We try to answer these questions with research and logic. Yet, the honest person is plagued by the shadow of doubt. We find that our minds are unreliable. We hallucinate, desires cloud our judgment, we assume, pre-judge, discriminate. A host of influences (cultural, psychological, and physiological) determine what we see and think, and we are rarely conscious of these influences. The lack of certainty regarding all that the mind perceives leads us to meditate on the nature of the mind. What is this flawed glass out of which we peer? To meditate is to strip the mind to its foundation in search of certainty. We find that all is in doubt except our awareness. We are aware of events in an apparently outer world of things and an inner world of our private drama. We are aware of thoughts. Yet, logic tells us that even awareness may have another side. Everything the mind witnesses has a flip side. There is awareness and not-awareness. Yet, we cannot conceive of not-awareness. We look for that which is behind awareness, because there is no where else left to look. All other roads have been explored or rejected. Our heart tells us the answer is there, behind the mind. To meditate is to ask questions, to think, to be honest about what we see, to listen to our intuition, and to desire an answer to our deepest questions. To meditate is to be honest about what we see outside and inside and reject what is less true.