What is spiritual meditation and self-discovery through spirituality? How does it differ from other kinds of meditation? Let’s see if we can remove the confusion and clarify things.
Many terms in the arena of spirituality are overused and misused. That is the case with the words spiritual and meditation. When words like these are overused, it is called semantic satiation. What happens is words lose their original meaning and value because they get defined and used in various ways.
Deepening Spiritual Awareness
There are several kinds of meditation, but that doesn’t make one more spiritual than any other. Attaching the moniker “spiritual” differentiates a product; it does not change the practice. Let’s look at why you’d want to use the term spiritual for your product.
Distorting the original meaning of words happens in the arena of religion. Religions like to assimilate terms into their belief systems so that they can sell their ideology. Western theology is well-known for appropriating many things to claim as their own.
Let’s begin by looking at the original meaning behind some of the terms they have appropriated. Deepening spiritual awareness starts with understanding the meaning of words and how they are used. The more you learn, the more aware you are and the less likely you are to fall prey to deceptive tactics.
So, What is Spiritual Meditation?
The Words Spiritual and Spirituality
The terms spiritual and spirituality relate to all matters concerning the spirit and the soul. This entity is the Observer of our consciousness. Our awareness floats on the vibrational energy we call consciousness. All matter and energy have a unique vibrational signature. It includes everything from light to rocks in your backyard.
The word spiritual is an overused term that implies something out of this world. Therefore, you can associate almost anything with spiritual significance. For example, eating spicy food can be a spiritual experience for some. (1)
Meditation
The term meditation is a little easier to define. Most people think of meditation as something you do with your eyes closed while sitting. Most people are familiar with seated forms of meditation, but there are also forms of moving meditation. For instance, Forest Bathing, Qigong, and Tai Chi are all methods you use while standing. Many different types of meditation methods can affect changes in awareness and consciousness. (2)
Similarly, almost any mental process for changing or altering consciousness can become a meditation form. Likewise, since all forms of meditation involve our consciousness, they are also spiritual.
Self-Discovery
Self-discovery is about finding out who you are. You are comprised of a body, mind, and the thing religions call spirit or soul. We refer to this aspect of the psyche as the Observer of our consciousness. So, self-discovery is the use of processes that help us identify and analyze our thinking. It can be complicated because we have several layers of the mind that work together to provide us with a filter through which we experience and value reality.
One of these layers of the mind is our personality. It is comprised of a mixture of nine attributes. We also have an even more primitive aspect of the mind: our instincts. We can’t change our instinctual stack variant, but we can learn to understand how it colors our values. Our instincts interface directly with the monkey or lizard brain that houses our fear, flight, or freeze mechanism, among other things. The monkey brain automatically regulates many bodily functions.
Our personality is a default setting that we leverage when we are operating with the ego in control. This autopilot mode allows us to focus the attention of the mind but often means we aren’t present. When we are present, then we can move beyond the default settings of our personality.
The subconscious mind operates in the background underneath personality and instinct. This partition of awareness contains what some refer to as soul knowledge. This is the universal wisdom with access to our intuition. It speaks to us using word pictures, symbols, and typologies that we can access via methods like the Shamanic Journey or Repeating Question Exercise. Deepening spiritual awareness is what self-discovery is all about.
Spiritual Meditation and Self-Discovery
When you put these terms together, you get processes for the exploration of consciousness that promote self-discovery and self-development. Processes for exploring consciousness and awareness help us explore our spirituality. Spiritual exploration is all about self-discovery and self-development.
Using the term spiritual with meditation is redundant. It is the way some try to distinguish their method as superior to others. It implies other forms of meditation are not inferior or not spiritual, which isn’t true. If a process alters or changes perception or awareness, it changes your reference to your spirit (souObservererver).
Tools For Self-Discovery Through Spirituality
We know that spirituality has to do with the spirit, the Observer of our consciousness. So, what we need are tools or methods to help us explore and understand this realm. We don’t have to create these techniques. Many ancient cultures sought out and developed methods to facilitate the exploration of the inner realm of consciousness. The hard work is already done. All we need to do is learn how to use these tools.
Self-discovery through spirituality is the essence of the ancient tools we call spiritual exploration. The mind is like a computer in some ways. Suppose you shut off your computer and stop the processes. Then, when you turn it back on, it works better. Unplugging your mind works the same way. Meditation helps us shut off our internal dialogue.
Deep Spiritual Meditation Practice
The proper type of meditation brings us in touch with the transcendent. We recommend Japa, or the commercial version of this technique, Transcendental Meditation (TM). (3) We put together an article outlining meditation’s benefits.
Seated meditation is the heart of this practice. For instance, after practicing meditation, we can think more clearly. Many of these methods are good for our hearts by reducing stress. Moving forms of meditation are also beneficial for increasing mind-body coordination and improving physical durability. The mind, body, and spirit share an intimate connection.
Another ancient technology found in many indigenous cultures is the Shamanic Journey. This is a form of mediation that uses rhythm and creative visualization to alter awareness and open the door to a landscape of the psyche. Almost every culture used this method with variations in the rituals and ceremonies surrounding it. One of the most interesting variations is the method called dreamtime of the Aboriginal tribes in Australia.
This form of spiritual meditation and self-discovery reveals the symbolism and typologies of the psyche. Freud and Jung used this intriguing landscape in the development of modern psychology. They also explored the use of other tools like automatic writing and dream interpretation. All of these can be considered methods of self-discovery.
Wester Religion Versus Spirituality
Many people equate the word spiritual with Western religion. The Western religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism come from the dying-god mythologies known as the ancient mystery religions. Everything in their religion is based on the belief and faith in myth and superstition.
Western organized religions spend a great deal of effort through social conditioning to equate their religious dogma, ceremony, and tradition with being spiritual. But the belief in myths and superstitions has nothing to do with exploring your spiritual nature. Pretending something exists is not spiritual; it is self-hypnosis. Most of their doctrines are tactics to sell membership in their religion. These tactics include the sale of health, the afterlife, and prosperity. Pretending does not facilitate self-discovery through spirituality.
Many people think Western organized religions are counterfeits. This is because spirituality has nothing to do with belief in religious dogma. Being spiritual means your actions exhibit the spirit’s higher virtues. It’s not what you believe but what you do with your life that counts.
Other regions use myths as metaphors to convey concepts. They don’t follow the error of Western theology. An example is the way other systems use the metaphor of Anthropomorphic beings. These are creatures with human characteristics. Ganesha is the Elephant-headed God from Indian tradition. He has an Elephant head on the human body.
Anthropomorphism is common in many religions from Egyptian (Osiris), Greece (Aphrodite), and India (Krishna). They blend human and animal characteristics. These word pictures are used as mnemonic memory devices. They don’t believe these creatures exist; they are the embodiment of certain characteristics.
In contrast, Western theology believes its metaphors exist. The metaphors of their imaginary friends and enemies are believed to exist on some other plane of existence.
How Religion and Spiritual Exploration Differ
When asked if prayer is the same as spiritual meditation and self-discovery? Our answer is no. Prayer is asking an imaginary entity to intervene on your behalf. Prayer is a tool of organized religion, which is dogma concerned with who might have created the universe, what may happen after you die, and integrity rules governing behavior. They wrap it in fear of eternal punishment for those who disagree.
“Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God’s infinite love.” ― Bill Hicks
So, if you ask someone in the Abrahamic religion what is spiritual meditation, they will probably describe sitting in prayer. Organized religion uses the term to describe “prayer.” It’s how religion rebrands prayer to make it seem beneficial. But appealing to an imaginary friend to intercede in our daily affairs is not spiritual; it is nonsense.
“Prayer is an act of the virtue of religion, which consists in asking for proper gifts or graces from God. In a more general sense, it is the application of the mind to Divine things, not merely to acquire a knowledge of them but to make use of such knowledge as a means of union with God. This may be done by acts of thanksgiving, but the petition is the principal act of prayer.” ― The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907)
The idea of prayer is another part of the liturgical trappings assimilated into the new “Universal Religions” of the Abrahamic tree. The Catholics point to the practice’s origins in the Mediterranean region’s Assyrian and Persian mystery religions.
“In the religion of the Medes and Persians, the cult of trees plays an important part, and with them, as with Assyrians, the symbol of eternal life was a tree with a stream at its roots. Another object of veneration was the sacred miracle tree, which within itself contained the seeds of all.” — Marie-Luise Gothein
The whole concept of prayer is illogical and based on self-hypnosis, not meditation. If God exists, prayer is irrelevant. If God doesn’t exist, it’s still a waste of time. Here’s why. If your God is omniscient and all-powerful, they have ordained things to happen, and your asking for change is a waste of time. If you have to pray more or harder to get something your God has already decreed, it means your God is playing mind games. He wants you to beg.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” ― Epicurus (4)
Creating a Spiritual Meditation Routine
To create your own self-development routine is easy. Often, the hardest part is finding the time. So, use your smart device to schedule time for spiritual exploration. You can develop a routine with as little as two minutes a day. You only need two minutes to meditate using the simple two-step process.
The ancient methods of spiritual exploration are tools for self-discovery. These tools predate Western religion. So, Western theology perceives them as competition and demonizes them to prevent its followers from investigating them.
We definitely recommend you include the deep spiritual meditation practice of Japa or TM in your routine. It is the most direct way to 4th state of consciousness.
What is interesting is that the creators of Western theology had access to the knowledge of the tools for altering consciousness. However, they choose to use the belief in mythology because it is based on groupthink manipulation tactics. They were more interested in creating customers they could control and provide cash flow rather than methods for self-discovery.
When asked what is spiritual meditation? Our answer is any process that shifts awareness or creates an altered state of consciousness. That’s because these processes connect us with our Soul, Spirit, or the Observer of our consciousness. In short, it’s all about exploring consciousness.
Self-discovery through spirituality includes many kinds of seated and moving meditation and analytical and mystical processes. We have many choices, from a simple two-step beginning meditation to the practice of the Siddhis of Patanjali.
The analytical processes include the Enneagram of Personality, Comparative Analysis, and several analytical tools. It has several spiritual technologies and techniques but excludes religious dogma when you define it in this way.
Creating a spiritual meditation routine is based on finding processes and teachers who can help you learn processes. Seek those who are on the same path. Find the tools that resonate.
“One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap to reach the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don’t leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.” ― Osho
In Conclusion
What is spiritual meditation? It is any process that helps you explore or change awareness. There are several methods that help you do this, but prayer isn’t one of them. Spiritual meditation and self-discovery have nothing to do with the belief in myths, superstitions, imaginary friends, or enemies.
Spiritual exploration is not the practice of religion; it is the use of processes. Some ancient Eastern traditions are the storehouses of these tools for this inner work. However, you don’t need to follow a religion to use these methods.
References
(1) Definition of Spiritual. Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
(2) Definition of meditation. Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
(3) Transcendental Meditation. Wikipedia.
(4) Epicurus. Wikipedia.