So what’s the difference between meditation and concentration? in a lot of guided meditations, the teacher will say “okay, I’d like you to focus on your breath… feel it as it goes in and out of your nose and put your concentration on the tip of your left nostril…” And this is really useful for concentrating the mind—after all we’ve got so many thoughts that go in and out of our heads all day long, even as you sit down to meditate you’ll have this swirling cacophony of thoughts invading your conscious space. 

They’ll say “concentrate on the face of your teacher. Concentrate on the peak of a far-off mountain range and watch that…” So since the mind is prone to shiny object syndrome, concentrating in that way can help develop single-pointed awareness, and this is really useful. 

But this is not meditation. This is concentration. Meditation is when there is a subject with no object: I am the subject, there is no object out there for me to concentrate on. Meditation is residing in myself—in the Self—which is the heart of all beings. So even if a thought comes into my head of a cloud, or a taxi cab driving down the street, these things are all seen to be aspects of myself. They’re not a function of an exterior world out there—they’re in here, just as much as my thoughts are. In fact, the things I just mentioned are precisely in here, they came from my imagination, didn’t they? 

So we can conjure up this picture show in our imagination just like the world can when we look outside. Meditation helps me understand that I am all beings and all things. Everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever learned, watched on television or read about, every archaeological dig into the past and every futurist’s vision of what’s to come, these are all myself. It’s a completely self-contained universe. The universe is all inside of me… I’m not a drop in the ocean of the universe, it’s the reverse.

So that’s meditation. When we sit down to meditate we can allow the awareness to emanate not from the head but from the heart. And this is not the muscular organ that pumps blood on the left side of your chest, this is the heart chakra, more or less, the center of our being in our chest. This is not external to you, it’s closer than close. It is the subject, it is the witness. Papaji had a great satsang where a woman came in and asked “How do I find myself?” And he said, “How far do you have to travel to find yourself? Would you travel there by airplane? By boat?” And she said, “I don’t have to travel very far, I’m right here.” He said, “Okay, if you’re right there then don’t go anywhere. If you want to find yourself, don’t go anywhere, don’t move.” 

I’m asking you to do the same exercise. If you want to find yourself, when you sit down for your meditation, don’t move—physically don’t move, be still in the moment. Don’t twiddle your thumbs, don’t move your appendages, don’t rock around.

Don’t think, thinking is movement.

Bring all those tendrils of thought that are moving out into the world like little pea shoots growing in time-lapse, bring those back into the mind, let them contract back into the mind.

It’s like in the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy drops the house on the Wicked Witch, and her feet are sticking out and all of a sudden they shrivel up and fold back under the house. Do the same thing with all your thoughts going out into the world. Let them retreat back into your mind and then from there keep going down into your throat, all the way down into your heart, and let those thoughts be extinguished there in your heart. No images, no thoughts, no planning. Don’t move. 

Eventually through this process what you may feel growing in your heart is spiritual energy. It can feel like a downward-turned bud of a flower that begins to turn upward and bloom and open. Enlightenment isn’t a collection of great ideas that you have to memorize and practice, it’s a state of being. That state is unencumbered and free, and delights in its own beingness, and you can take it with you. Imagine bringing that to your family and friends, to your coworkers, to the people on the street and the clerks in the store. That state is contagious, and it will be developed over time in your mediations. It will make everyone and everything around you blossom, just like that flower in your heart.

Adapted from the podcast BEINGNESS with David Thomas Scott, now available on Apple Podcasts, Insight Timer, and Spotify. David is spiritual guide and mindfulness coach based in Denver. He is available for Zoom and phone sessions at davidthomasscott.com.