Is Meditation a Spiritual Practice?

by Arden Martin

Is meditation spiritual? Good question. To answer it, let’s consider what “spiritual” means.

Your spirit is your essence: the most essential part of you.

Your spirit is the part of you that exists with and without your thoughts, fears, and even your identity — whether you’re happy or sad, rich or poor, healthy or sick. Through the ups and downs of life, through ever-shifting circumstances, your essential self remains.

Your essence, or your “spirit,” is the part of you that transcends the particulars of your life, and spirituality is all about connecting with it. Spirituality, then, doesn’t have to involve crystals, beads, or anything else in the “woo-woo” category. Spirituality is simply an exploration of your most essential self.

So what does meditation have to do with spirituality? Everything.

In meditation, you close the eyes and sit in stillness. You step away from everything that defines you: your work, responsibilities, relationships, hobbies, and all the thoughts and feelings that accompany them. Without all that, what’s left? Your essence, your spirit, the you that simply is — this is what you make contact with in meditation.

Does this mean that meditation is a thought-free experience? No. Thoughts and feelings may come, but they come spontaneously, with no agenda or attachment to a person, place, or thing. If you let them be, they tend to pass as quickly as they appear — and in the center of them all is you, in your simplest form of awareness.

Simply put, meditation is a process of de-exciting the mind and body, of moving from doing into being. The experience of being is the experience of your most essential self, and in that way, it is absolutely spiritual.

What this spiritual experience means to you, and how it shifts your perspective, is entirely up to you.

Want to dig deeper? Want to learn a simple, effortless technique for making contact with your most essential self? The Spring is here for you.