I have been wanting to do meditation since I was in school, but really found it difficult to sit and focus even for twenty minutes straight. I could only fancy the calmness and composure of this state of meditation, but I couldn't go into myself. I just tend to get some nonsense thoughts if I just force myself to sit silent with closed eyes for more than 5-10 minutes. Over the years, I've been trying on and off and have been improving a little actually. However, in the meanwhile I have started studying about spirituality and mysticism and found that there are many many different ways of meditating. In fact, there are elaborate techniques and exercises that can lead one to a state of meditation, which don't need sitting passively with closed eyes watching one's thoughts or watching one's breath. The key is not silence or closing one's eyes but maintaining a state of watchfulness and alertness wherever, whenever, and however one can. This discovery has been quite a liberating experience for me. This watchfulness is a state of heightened self-awareness (as opposed to self-consciousness which is other-oriented). So meditation basically involves accumulating or enhancing this self-awareness. One simple practical way of doing it is while watching a movie on the TV, for example, instead of getting completely absorbed in the movie, if it is an interesting one, one has to maintain an awareness of oneself, the viewer and the subject, simultaneously while paying attention to the movie, the object of one's attention. And this procedure can be implemented at a wide variety of activities, especially while walking or doing simple exercising, which do not need any mental involvement. By trying to following this method, one's attention is not just dissipated in the world of objects, but gets recycled to some extent. And I have understood that a central finding of many schools of Eastern spirituality is that attention/consciousness is energy or life; consciousness is the primary force in the universe. Meditation is simply a way of cultivating consciousness in whatever manner we can.
