Everywhere we look, we’re bombarded by advice from spiritual, self-help and wellness coaches to meditate—trust me, I’m one of them.

But, If I asked you what the purpose of meditation is—would you know?

What if I told you that the purpose of meditation is not to be more mindful, or to calm down, or to feel more connected or to even hear your intuition?

Don’t get me wrong.

Being mindful, focusing on the present moment, loving yourself, feeling more connected and guided are all really amazing effects of meditation, and they may be the very reasons why you meditate—but they aren’t the purpose of meditation.

The purpose of meditation is to clear the subconscious.

Not quite sure what that means? Let me break it down.

Our subconscious is like that garage or that closet or that basement in our house that has become the unspoken storage centre for our life’s possessions: the things that we’ve put away in boxes or that we still haven’t unpacked from a previous move; the stuff that we’ve tucked away until we have the space or the time to open them up and sort through them and either throw them out or put them away.

Sometimes we’ve organized the boxes neatly, clearing a path so that we can walk through and navigate the space with the just an occasional trip. Other times, we find the stuff is all over the place creating blocks and hazards everywhere.

In our subconscious, each box represents something different. We might have a couple of boxes that we’ve been carrying along with us from past lifetimes (just like when we move to a new home). We might have a couple of boxes filled with fears and emotions and experiences that have been passed down and donated to us from our parents, or grandparents, or even our great-grandparents. And we definitely have a couple of boxes filled with memories and experiences and emotional attachments to any of the events from our current lifetime.

So, how do we clear up some space and deal with all these boxes?

We meditate. We commit to a daily practice of going through each box one by one, showing gratitude for the lessons and the gifts that each experience has given us, and releasing the emotional attachments that no longer serve us.

We sit and we stop trying to silence the mind. We allow whatever wants to come up to come up, acknowledging that the chaos in our mind is our ego’s way of avoiding having to deal with the really deep stuff that needs to come up. Our ego is like our bodyguard, and meditation is our opportunity to thank the ego for protecting us while simultaneously giving it the day off.

Only then will the silence come.

By clearing our subconscious, we’re unlearning all the fear, all the judgement and all the lies we’ve been taught are necessary to protect ourselves and to “get ahead.”

But most importantly, when we clear our subconscious, we remember our divinity, our greatness, our light and our purpose: to raise the vibration of the planet by inspiring others do the same.

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Author: Demetria Jackson

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Alice Popkorn/Flickr