Meditation for Spirituality

Meditation can improve our lives in very practical ways. It’s great for focus and clarity. It can promote relaxation and even ease symptoms of ADHD. Arguably, though, the most important and profound benefits of meditation come from its ability to connect us with spirituality. At Meditating Simplified, we define spirituality as the direct recognition and embracing of our true nature. Spirituality is nonreligious, nontheistic, and free of any belief or blind faith. It is an empirical investigation into the nature of the self and consciousness. Therefore, the content on this page is not meant to be taken as ideology or dogma — it is up to you to consider the ideas here with an open and curious mind, test them out for yourself if you so choose, and come to your own conclusions. Spirituality has the intrinsic value of helping us understand our own human experience with greater clarity, but it can also deepen the practical benefits you may have already experienced from meditation.

The following techniques are not as straightforward as simply following your breath, repeating a mantra, or paying attention to bodily sensations. They are simple techniques, but they require some theoretical understanding to be practiced effectively. We will explore this in some depth. If the explanations here are too confusing or esoteric, feel free to skip ahead to the guided meditations. They will provide you with enough context to practice on your own.

Impermanence

A foundational principle for spiritual insight is impermanence, the notion that all things eventually pass away. Most people understand this truth on some level — death is decisively unavoidable — but there are nuances worth understanding. Impermanence not only refers to endings, but also beginnings. When a person dies, their body takes on a new form as it decomposes. Our experience of the person becomes a collection of memories. When one chapter of life ends, a new chapter begins. Consider that every ending, without exception, is the beginning of something new. What this ultimately points to is the fact that reality is always changing.

An important facet of impermanence is that it scales infinitely large and small. That is, constant change happens on both a micro and macro level. Just as human life arises and passes away, so do the cells that make up our bodies and the particles that make up our cells. Similarly, our homes, relationships, culture, institutions, countries, land masses, and the planets in our solar system are always in flux.

Impermanence also applies to sensory and mental phenomena. Everything we see, hear, taste, smell, feel, and think arises and passes away. Even when we sit or lie very still, there is change happening as physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts continuously come and go. These elements of our experience can change quickly or slowly, obviously or subtly — but they are always changing. The sharper and clearer our awareness is, the easier it is to see this change happening. Mental and emotional patterns can be especially subtle. With this in mind, it makes sense how meditation can help us see impermanence clearly.

Craving, Aversion, and Vipassana

Why does impermanence matter? It relates to suffering. Most people understand impermanence, but only on a very gross, intellectual level. They know impermanence is universally true, but they subtly behave as if it weren’t. This manifests as craving and aversion, which are at the root of all suffering. Craving is when we strongly desire and cling to pleasant experiences. Aversion is the other side of this coin; it is the stubborn resisting and rejection of unpleasant experiences. Craving and aversion reflect a subtle assumption that reality could be anything other than what it is. The problem is that reality is reality, whether it matches our desires or not. And, as discussed above — reality is a continuous flow of ever-changing phenomena. The more we try to resist experiences that are bound to come, while clinging to experiences that are bound to go, the more unhappy we become. Seeing that everything is impermanent allows us to meet our experience with a balanced attitude of equanimity. When we are equanimous, we acknowledge the pleasant or unpleasant nature of certain experiences without attachment or rejection. We simply observe reality as it is, which brings a sense of peace and calm. Equanimity can be cultivated through practice.

One method of meditation particularly well suited for understanding impermanence and cultivating equanimity is vipassana, which means “insight” or “seeing clearly”. In vipassana, we observe our breath, physical sensations, emotions, sounds, and thoughts exactly as they are, arising and passing away. The more we do this, the better we can see the big picture of impermanence, and the less power craving and aversion have over us. This ultimately reduces our suffering.

Vipassana builds upon mindfulness of breath and bodily awareness practices that you may have encountered on this site. Here is a guided vipassana meditation from Joseph Goldstein you can try, regardless of your experience level in the other practices:

Who is “I”?

As you cultivate awareness of the constant coming and going of experiential phenomena, you may gradually experience a more fundamental shift in your consciousness. Your sense of self, or ego, may begin to dissolve. In our default state of consciousness, we experience identity as a concrete, central, singular thing. We call ourselves “I” or “me”. However, the closer attention we pay to our experience, the clearer it becomes that our sense of self is essentially a hierarchy of thoughts and beliefs that exist as a conceptual layer on top of raw experience. This is what modern psychologists are pointing to when they say, “You are not your thoughts.” With consistent practice, passively observing the spontaneous, unchosen nature of thoughts and sensations, we can begin to see through the mirage of singularity. The once solid “I” begins to unravel, revealing itself as a collage of impersonal phenomena constantly arising and passing away.

Just as we typically don’t identify with sounds and sights in our experience, meditation can dissolve our sense of ownership over thoughts, emotions and even physical sensations. “My thoughts” become simply “thoughts. “My fear” becomes “fear”. “My soreness” becomes “soreness”. You may even start to disidentify from your body entirely for brief periods or find yourself thinking, “Who am I, actually? What am I?” The sense of a center to your experience may start to dissipate. This is normal — modern psychology and ancient Buddhist theory both tell us that the crux of our suffering lies in an over-identification with the contents of our experience. Craving and aversion come from ego. That said, self-dissolution can be uncomfortable, or even scary, when our state of consciousness shifts too rapidly. If your experience while meditating ever becomes overwhelming in this way, you can simply take a break in order to soften and integrate the new perspective.

Many ultimately discover after much practice that, at least as a matter of experience, the self is an illusion. If you are not your “self”, then, what are you? We could say that you are the amorphous space in which experiential phenomena arises — awareness or consciousness itself. A classic metaphor for this is to imagine a movie being projected on a screen. You feel as if you are the movie itself, when in reality, you are the screen that the movie of your life and identity are being projected onto. The various colors, sounds, and events of the movie come and go, while the screen remains the empty vessel behind it all.

These insights exist as experiential truth. We are not making any claims about the greater nature of reality. With this in mind, here is a guided meditation from Sam Harris to help point out the illusory nature of the self:

Nonduality

Another important insight we can have through meditation is nonduality, which literally means “not two”. Nonduality is a recognition that, at least subjectively, the feeling of separation you experience between yourself and the outside world is an illusion. You feel as if you are a subject looking out at an objective world that is separate and distinct from yourself. It may feel as if the essence of “you” lives somewhere in your head, behind your eyes. However, if you investigate your experience carefully, you will discover that this is not the case. Experientially, there is no firm boundary where you end and the outside world begins. Without a boundary separating you from the world, you are no longer merely a person having an experience of the world. You are part of the world, and the world is part of what you are. “The world” includes anything and everything that appears in your experience. In a certain sense, “you” are not even having an experience — you are your experience. Rather, you are the conscious space in which experience arises. This complements our understanding of the illusory ego. Since there is no central “I” to be found in experience, it makes sense that there would be no distinction between “I” and the sights, sounds, physical sensations, and thoughts that appear in awareness. As a matter of experience, you are awareness, and you are consciousness.

A great way for new and advanced meditators to grasp nonduality is through an observational practice known as “The Headless Way”. This approach, originated by Douglas Harding, helps you see and connect with the reality that, experientially, you have no head. This sounds simple because it is, but the method may surprise you with its depth and power. Here is a guided Headless Way practice from TheAttentiveMind on YouTube:

A Note on Epistemology

The goal of spirituality is, at least in part, to access truth about the reality we find ourselves in. So far, we’ve acknowledged above that the self being an illusion, and the notion that consciousness is fundamental to reality is all true as a matter of experience. Some claim that this cannot inform us with any certainty about the absolute nature of reality. In other words, some argue that there is a material world outside of our experience that we tune into through human perception, i.e. our bodily senses and consciousness produced by the brain. This implies that, metaphysically, experience itself is a sort of incomplete truth. Conversely, others claim that consciousness is legitimately absolute. This would mean that there is no outside material world. It even implies that consciousness precedes the brain.

So, how reliable is experience for getting us closer to truth? There is no definitive consensus, so you must contemplate this and come to your own conclusion.