Meditation or True Freedom?

“To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe” (Sartre)

I have gone into the question of meditation for some time now. What is meditation? Is it to sit in one place eyes closed and relaxed? Is it just a means to escape the daily grind of life to reset and reboot? Is it getting in touch with our forgotten self as we are busy playing the character XYZ? Does it mean after meditating for ten minutes we go back to the character being stressed or disturbed?

Is it cultivating a silent mind, controlling and suppressing our thoughts? If the meditation is pre-meditated is it meditation at all? Is there such a thing as practising meditation?

I guess the primary question here is, Is there more we can take in from meditation into our lives?

Meditation although an eastern notion, if we look at the root meaning of the word “meditation” is “ measure” and measure was also important to the Ancient Greeks. Measure not about the comparison of an object with an external standard or unit as done today but more to signify the measure within oneself the inner harmony as essential to a good life. The Greek tragedies often highlighted man’s psychological suffering (unhappiness, loneliness, anger, stress) as a result when gone beyond the proper measure of things. If the inner self was out of harmony then the same would manifest outwardly as well.

So how do we connect with our inner self, is it a world that we can explore? The self, free of the stories of the character, the pains, the emotions, jealousy, gossips, all of it. Can we come to a place within ourselves free of this persona we carry every day? When we are not meditating can we operate from this place of inner awareness to see, act and behave intelligently to every situation that comes our way? Not in a way of a rehearsed character with make-up and costume we do so diligently but associate newness to every moment every day.

Can we lose those layers we built around ourselves for years and years, and hold on to nothing? Losing the tremendous self-concern of our story and character, not as a means to escape but dropping off our masks and sitting naked with our true self not shaded by our problems, relationships, worries of others judgments, our prejudices.

As we find ourselves merely repeating patterns of our life, can we let go of it daily as we accumulate it daily to bring in new possibilities? It feels like true freedom to me. No effort whatsoever to not make effort, ending of the wanting and needing, ending of the many responses, reactions to everything that goes on but be at home with yourself in peace all the time.

Will losing our persona take us on our discovery of our inner self, not as a story in our mind but as an experience, like a scientist exploring a rare species of butterfly for the first time. Similar to how we explored the world outside of our bodies. The self common to all of us merely coloured by our specific stories but underneath we are one shared being.

What if the few moments of our day (like when we are meditating) we are living and the rest of the time being bound to our character, our memories, our past, we are not living at all?

What if stepping out of this web is our true freedom and expression of our real potential? To bring in a proper measure of things internally to manifest the same beauty outside in the world as well.