Meditation requires and develops “attention.” We generally talk about “paying attention” to something or someone. It is important to be very clear about what we mean by “paying attention,” for attention is crucial in meditation. In a very real sense, paying attention is meditation. Paying attention is directing one's mind or energies to something happening within or outside of oneself. When we pay attention, we expect or wait for something; and when it appears or occurs, we give heed to it, observe it closely. In this sense, meditation is active, not passive, as it is thought to be. Or rather, it is, paradoxically, and kind of passive action. In meditation, when something “comes up” in our flow of consciousness, we, from a quiet and detached center, focus upon it (the passive part) but we also stretch towards it (the active part), to see what that thing is—not necessarily as we would like it to be or fear that it might be.

In meditation, we come to understand the flow because we are not caught in the flow (as we almost always are otherwise) of ceaseless thoughts and emotions. Instead, we view them from a vantage point, and just experience, observe, and study them—good or bad, pleasurable or painful, or maybe just neutral. We attend to them, in short, without being all caught up in their ceaseless and mostly unpredictable flow—that flow just being the nature of consciousness in its usual state, our ordinary and ever-in-flux stream of awareness. When we are caught in the flow, however, we are, in a sense, not aware, even though we are experiencing. Meditation fosters awareness.

Most of us live in this perpetual stream of mere experiencing second to second, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day—even month to month, year to year, and for all our lives. We feel that we are a small boat being tossed and turned in that ongoing stream of our internal events. The stream may be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. But it’s a stream that we feel we just exist within and, in many ways, just cannot control. If the boat that we call “ourselves” is floating along nicely, we say we are happy. However, just beneath the surface of those lovely waters is our fear that we won’t be happy for long—that something or someone will come along to disturb our joy. Underneath each joy lurks the apprehension that it will go away. This causes us to cling. This leads to anxiousness, even unhappiness, in the midst of joy. We can use drugs—whether the drug is a pharmaceutical, work, sex, or even religion—to make us believe that we will always be happy. But even though everyone knows that this just isn’t so, and can never be so, we, wanting to be in control, go running here and there looking for something that will provide us with a life of mere joy. We chase the illusion of joy like a cat its own tail. And because it is an illusion, our ongoing program of pure joy through control leads to pain. Indeed, control is not the solution. It is the problem.

Rather, by clearly, courageously looking at our present unhappiness or dissatisfaction straight on, we may learn from it what it is trying to teach us: Why we are unhappy right now? What does this unhappiness feel like in our bodies—what shifting patterns, locations, types and degrees of energy do we feel in our bodies in this unhappy state? What choices have we made to get us to this point? Or what have others done to us that has brought us here (so that we may maturely experience our justifiable anger or sadness because of it, and then healthily learn to forgive, love and move on, just as the Savior said)?

What is the solution to this dilemma? Is there a solution. We believe, along with two millennia of meditators from within almost every religious tradition and even from some non-religious ones, that the answer is to continue to develop oneself in meditative practices. For, when consciousness is viewed from the higher state of “super-consciousness,” a detached consciousness that has been trained in meditation to see view our ordinary consciousness in a calm spirit of healthy curiosity, we then honor our inner events, each and every one of them. We can be like the Lord when He arose and said unto the sea, 'Peace, be still.' And the wind ceased, and there was great calm.” (Mark 4:39)