Different people approach meditation for different purposes. Some people feel drained by the world’s constant demands and turn toward meditation, hoping to shut things out and experience calm within. Others are troubled not so much by the world’s outer noise as the mind’s inner noise; they turn toward meditation to shut the mind up and have some inner calm.

While meditation can help us both shut the world out and shut the mind up, it can do much more. Meditation begins with slowing ourselves down by striving to fix our mind on some steady object such as our breath, a candle or a mantra. By that focus, we become aware that the events whizzing by us and voices buzzing inside us are different from us; we are conscious observers, existing beyond both the world and the mind.

Such inner perception is accelerated and deepened by Gita wisdom and its recommended yoga practice (chapter six). Thereby, we gradually perceive that we are spiritual beings; that we are parts of a whole: a universal spiritual reality that sustains everything internally and externally (06.29). Progressive yoga practice reveals that all-pervading infinite to be the all-attractive divinity, Krishna. When we perceive him in everything and everything in him, we never feel lost (06.30). 

Being thus illumined by meditation, when we look at the world, we see things clearly as they are, as energies of the divine. We see life’s events not merely as favorable or unfavorable or neutral based on the filters of our mind’s attachments and aversions; we see events as parts in a cosmic plan for our and everyone’s spiritual evolution. And we diligently play our part in that plan, moving steadily deeper into our Lord’s supremely safe shelter. 

One-sentence summary:

The essence of meditation is not shutting things up or off; it is slowing ourselves down to see things clearly, as they are.  

Think it over:

  • How can meditation help us shut things up or out?
  • How does Gita wisdom deepen our inner perception?
  • Illumined by meditation, how do we see life’s events?

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06.30: For one who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, I am never lost, nor is he ever lost to Me.

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