I’ve been meditating wrong!

I recently found out that, well, I’ve been meditating wrong. I’ve had the wrong idea of what the goal was.

It’s not surprising. Meditating is such an internal thing, such a subjective experience, that it’s impossible for us to all ensure that we’re on the same page about it. And, as it turns out, I was on a different page than I meant to be.

See, I had always believed that the goal of meditation (And I’m speaking here specifically of mindfulness meditation. Other kinds of meditation have different goals.) is the cessation of thought. Stop thinking! It’s hurting you. That’s basically what I believed.

But I happened to read and hear a couple of things within the span of two days that suddenly opened it up for me and made things more clear. Mindfulness practice isn’t about stopping yourself from thinking; it’s about watching your thoughts. When you’re sitting in meditation, you obviously don’t want to engage with thoughts that arise–but nor do you want to push them away. The idea is to simply let them be, let them think themselves, and watch them.

It’s a bit like being in a movie theater watching a movie and suddenly remembering where you are. You look around at the other patrons, at the empty seats, at the curtains, the wall sconces, et cetera. The movie is going on, and you can still follow the plot, but you’re not engrossed in it the same way. You’re not being carried away by it. And if it’s a dramatic scene, the drama isn’t pulling you in.

In mindfulness meditation, what you’re looking for is the space between the thoughts. That’s where you want to live. You don’t destroy the thoughts, you just slip between them.

This is certainly not easy, of course. But it’s nice to know the goal. I still have days where I can’t seem to achieve this at all, I can’t find the space between the thoughts even for a second. But then there are other days where it feels wide open and peaceful, and it’s nice to be there.