Ultimately, meditation is perhaps the most transformative of all “strategies” in that it is the gateway to a deeper connection with the joy of living, which appears to be part of our “true nature”.

In all systems of meditation, the goal is to have a CLEAR mind. The "normal" state of the mind always flitting from thought to thought , is compared to a “cage full of wild monkeys” in yoga books. The object of meditation is to steady the attention on one thing for a period of time. Many people experience this rapt attention naturally, in flow activities. The idea is to expand out this "mindfulness" to more and more of our actions.

The whole world as it is at the moment  - internet, TV, games on our computers and mobile phones – almost seems set up to produce the opposite and to bring us into more distraction and proliferation of random thoughts. Spending time in meditation connects us back to ourselves, increases more of our capacity for happiness and allows more of our latent creative energy to flow. In short, yogis believe that the fragmentation of our normal thinking process can be  a handicap and the purpose of meditation is to produce gaps between our thoughts where we can experience life at a deeper level.

In a recent edition of the sit com “Ugly Betty”, the heroine, is accused by one of her friends of living in “ Betty Suarez land” and only seeing things her way. In truth , most of us are stuck in our own version of “Betty Suarez “ land, or Margaret Forde land, or whatever your name happens to be.  The view of man as put forward in most of  the eastern spiritual traditions such as yoga, zen, buddhism,  is that the state of most people is one of “sleeping”, unconsciousness, slavery, of being identified with the “false self “, the ego, that arises as a product of our upbringing, and  the conditioning process we have been through. In all of these traditions, the view is that we have identified with these habitual thought patterns and the emotions based on them, that we see them as being “us”. This “misidentification” is seen as the source of all pain, all unhappiness. As Eckhart Tolle puts it “  Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we do not realize this because everybody else is suffering from it, so its considered normal. “

In contrast to this state of slavery is the state of freedom, of enlightenment. As Buddha puts it, enlightenment is to be free of all pain and suffering.  It is to be fully awake, free of the misidentification with the mind and its repetitive thought patterns, and to be connected with your inner being, your true or higher Self, in a state of connectedness with all life which is a state of continuous joy in living.

Meditation then is the gateway to moving from the “sleeping” to the “awakened”, enlightened  state. It is the process of waking up, of  becoming more alive, of moving into a higher level of consciousness, a greater sense of joy and inner freedom.