Your posture is the object
Sit upright, on a chair or in a cross-legged position, and ensure your posture is proper. Tilt your chin slightly towards your chest so that your neck can relax and breathing becomes easy. Close your eyes!
Your hands are the object
When people pray, they fold their hands together. You can hold your thumb with your other hand; this is calming. Or you can place your hands flat against each other, just like they greet each other in Asia. Namaste! Various mudras, each with its own meaning.
Breathing is the object
Pay attention to your breathing and feel it becoming calmer. Breathe deeply but relaxed, ensuring that both the abdomen and the chest are involved. Count in for 1 – 2 – 3 – 4, and on exhalation, try to exhale in 6 counts.
Your thoughts are the object
Thoughts come and go; you realize that you are not thoughts and therefore may let them go. In silence, you think of a mantra and repeat it in your mind or chant the mantra with full attention; Oooooooohm.
The spiritual world is the object
You invite the spiritual world by sending out an intention. Loved ones or angels come closer when you sit 'into the power'. You raise your energy and alignment takes place with the higher, the Divine.
Mindfulness, awareness or 'awareness'
You may have already realized that I could go on like this for a while. There are countless forms of mindfulness practice with which we think we are meditating. However, there is only one object of meditation, and that is the core of meditation itself: awareness, or 'awarenessAll the examples above have been described as objects of meditation; or as a subject to arrive at a form of awareness. Paying attention to your posture, your hands, your breathing, and so on. But that is not meditation; that is a tool to train and discipline ourselves.
True meditation is everything and transcends everything
Ultimately, meditation is about seeing, acknowledging, and accepting our true core. Our core or essence is nothing, nothing other than pure awareness. It is nothing because it is nothing known to us in form, content, size, or identity. It transcends all of this and encompasses it simultaneously. You must therefore fully expose yourself, make yourself vulnerable, and let go of every object that attempts to give form. Who and what you are cannot be limited by these objects of meditation.
Let go of everything and discover 'who' is letting go
Each object of meditation as outlined above is like a vehicle that attempts to take you to your destination. However, you are already at your destination; you do not need to go anywhere. Therefore, when you come to see that the objects are merely a form and you perceive this form from 'something', then you will realize that you are already perceiving from that essence of the self. It is your identification with the objects that prevents you from being one in awareness.
Realization is therefore not bound to faith or religion, to prayer or a meditation technique, to a God or a spiritual world. Realization lies within the reach of the observer. The art of meditation lies in its simplicity, and that is precisely what makes it so difficult.