The Daily Goal of Meditation

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In this article, you will learn what the daily goal of meditation is. You will discover how you can use meditation to get in touch with the deepest part of yourself. You will also learn how meditation can help you break away from limiting thoughts and behaviors.

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Just as thunderous clouds conceal a beautiful blue sky when a storm moves into the area and just as violent ocean waves obscure crystal clear water, the thoughts of our minds have a tendency to hide the magnificence that is found within each of us. However, unlike the storms that will pass and the waves that will settle, negative internal thought patterns often hide our deeper nature day after day, month after month, and year after year. The daily goal of meditation is to settle these thoughts and discover who we truly are.

With each passing day, every individual is experiencing different things which are turned into memories that are stored in their minds. From the time we are toddlers until we reach adulthood, these memories, or experiential references, become key components of our decision-making processes. The information that the brain sends us is useful in certain situations, but it also dilutes the deeper parts of ourselves from shining brightly. This cover-up is easy to see by analyzing how particular ideas in our minds cause us to think and behave in certain ways. For example:

• We are led to believe, because of past pleasurable and painful experiences, that we must continuously seek new means of pleasure to find the fulfillment that we crave.
• Because the messages, or thoughts, that we receive from our brain are based upon past life experiences and societal input, they are often built around the ideas of competition, scarcity, and judgment.
• Because society tells us that outer success is what will bring us happiness, we are constantly pursuing newer, bigger, and better things.

While it is easy to assume that the thoughts that you have are directly related to the person you are, the truth is that at the deepest level of your being, you are nothing but pure awareness, love, and happiness. Thanks to the inner exploration efforts of spiritual sages, the daily goal of meditation was discovered: To reconnect with this dynamic and vibrant part of yourself.

As we grow up, and gather additional references, we are continually becoming more conditioned to act based upon the internal dialogue patterns that come from our self-concept or ego. We come to believe that we actually are our thoughts, emotions, and feelings. This, however, can also be proven inaccurate by observing the constantly changing nature of these things. Even our physical bodies are changing on a constant basis. The truth is that the thoughts, emotions, and feelings that we experience are nothing more than the clouds passing over a beautiful blue sky, and the deepest part of yourself is this sky.

By utilizing meditation techniques, ancient spiritual sages were able to uncover this reality, and if you are willing to undertake a regular meditation practice, you too can realize this truth.

With each passing year, an increasing number of Western citizens are beginning to incorporate a daily meditation practice into their routine by utilizing various meditation techniques that are found in Eastern spiritual religions, namely Buddhism and Hinduism. It is estimated that nearly 18 million American adults (8%) employ some form of meditation practice in their daily routine, and we should expect to see this figure continuously rise over the coming decades as more individuals discover the numerous benefits that they will receive by forming a regular practice. Still today, however, many Western citizens do not understand what the daily goal of meditation is.

Each time that a properly trained individual sits down to practice meditation, his or her objective is simple. He or she wants to quiet their mind by using their ability to focus their attention on a particular object. There are many types of meditation that use different objects of awareness to focus the mind (mantras, the breath, the body, visualization), yet they all aim to quiet an individual’s internal dialogue by bringing them into a state of present moment awareness.

As the mental chatter in the mind begins to dissipate, the individual finds a place of pure stillness where there is nothing to grasp for and nothing to push away. Eastern spiritual religions teach that this state, pure awareness or consciousness, is your deeper nature, your true self. By regularly practicing meditation, you can discover who you truly are, find your deepest desires, and enjoy more meaningful happiness and success, but unless you are willing to take the steps to understand how your way of thinking and behaving is typically based on faulty information, you will never find this place.

By utilizing the practice of meditation, you can become liberated from the ignorance, negative thought patterns, and troublesome emotions that you accumulate as you age. The process of reconnecting to your true self is a process that takes time because we have become so conditioned to act based on the input we receive from our ego-driven brains. Our thoughts, actions, and feelings are often determined by how our brains relate our past, present, and future experiences, situations, and circumstances.

Many spiritual seekers will tell you that the ultimate goal of meditation is to reach a state of enlightenment, and it is widely believed that meditation is one of the components needed to reach this state. If an individual were enlightened, they would be living from the deepest part of themselves, present moment awareness, on an every-second basis. In this state, an individual would be completely content in the present moment and wouldn’t rely on the messages of the mind to help them make decisions.

While enlightenment is certainly a worthwhile goal, here at Balanced Achievement we believe that instead of tirelessly pursuing this constant state of nirvana, you should only focus your attention on the daily goal of meditation. You should only worry about connecting with the deepest part of yourself each time you sit down to meditate.

Over time you will be able to deepen your connection to your true self and experience greater levels of fulfillment, but you should only strive to meditate with mindfulness and concentration so you can increase your levels of self-awareness, or consciousness, and get in touch with your deeper nature. This is the daily goal of meditation and this should be your focus.