Meditation shows you yourself and all your inner and outer restlessness. The simple practice of sitting quietly within oneself is surprisingly difficult. Physical discomfort arises, mental distraction too, and emotional turbulence sometimes overwhelms us.

Perhaps the biggest difficulties are found among the small, insidious phenomena -- irritability, planning, not being able to resist making a phone-call or writing down a reminder to do something. If -- and it may be a big if -- we can surmount all these obstacles then the rewards are great; a tranquil sense of inner abiding, or being in oneself, a serenity which no amount of pretence can get close to and an experience of inner peace of rectitude and honoring life, movements of grace and wisdom that surfaces in you like reflections of the sky in a still lake. Finally meditation shows you yourself, so what are you waiting for?

It is a flawless guide to your ego's attempts to fail you in becoming your true self, learning to live from the stillness of compassion, centering, learning and practicing inner guidance and cultivating inner peace. Only through thorough in-turning do we learn who we really are, beneath the level of facade and disguise we have presented to the world for so long. This experience is a great home-coming and a simple gift of authenticity. When we arrive the heart opens in an unmistakable way and we become capable of compassion, quietly caring, profoundly kind. The heart becomes our new and constant, genuine center and a reservoir and source of inner peace and guidance.

Meditation is the dependable link to your source and self-abiding truth; it is the essential spiritual practice for all serious aspirants on the spiritual path, because it urges you towards awakening to transcendence, and ultimately to the divine. What other way, other than sitting quietly, can direct us to ourselves? It is openly available at any time. When we practice just sitting, quietly allowing thoughts, feelings and all kinds of experiences to go by, we become identified with our awareness which in turn lodges us firmly in truth. It is the central practice in spirituality because it is the closest we can get in holistic form to the experience of complete emptiness and profound fullness, both at the same time.

This presence, residing in the opposites short-circuits the rational mind and expands into areas of truth, the unknown and the truly spiritual. For there are no truly spiritual experiences, and no rationally or intellectually expressed truths. We can only point at the moon, only speak in image and metaphor, simile and symbol to express the timeless truths of the perennial philosophy; that which has always been, always is and always will be.

BLOG entry #117

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Meditation Show You YourSelf’ was first published in 2011.