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Transforming the world with meditation
I meditate every day. Sometimes I formally sit in meditation, usually on my train commute to and from the city for work. More often, I meditate in the flow of life, while I’m in the middle of my day and doing other things.
I think that meditation is key to my happiness, success, and peace. It contributes more than anything else I do to my emotional intelligence, which means my interactions with others are more enjoyable and productive. Meditation enriches all of my experience — it makes the beauty of the world more apparent to me, and it makes me feel connected to that beauty.
When I meditate, I turn my attention as fully as possible to this here and now moment. But more importantly, instead of giving all of my attention to the objects of my experience — my surroundings, the people, the situation, my thoughts, even my breath — I draw some of my attention back to what is experiencing my experience.
I’ll explain what I mean — because I think it is something very few of us ever consider.
Most of us, unless we are in deep sleep, are always giving our attention to the objects of our experience. The word attention comes from the Latin tendere, which means “to stretch toward” something. We stretch ourselves toward the objects of our experience when we give our attention to them, but we rarely consider who or…
