Apr 16, 2025 5 min read

21. What does meditation feel like?

It’s a deep sense of stillness that arises from truly knowing.

What’s that one thing you know how to do really well—something you might even call yourself an expert in? For me, that’s what meditation feels like. It’s a deep sense of stillness that arises from truly knowing.

In one of my earliest posts, What is Meditation?, I explored the meaning of meditation and drew a comparison between meditating and studying. When we examine the nature of reality, the self, or Truth itself, doing so with focused intention—much like we would study a subject at school—invites the meditative state. It’s this purposeful observation and inquiry that characterises meditation.

Just as with study, enlightenment often arrives as a eureka moment: that flash of insight or understanding that comes after sustained dedication and reflection.

Below is a short excerpt from my first book, Meditate: Breathe into Meditation and Awaken Your Potential, in which I wrote a brief chapter on the meditative state:

The Meditative Mind

"The meditative mind is a fearless mind. It seeks the truth in everything. It is intelligent and mindful and compassionate and desires to understand. Where there is conflict, you can find clarity instead of chaos; where there is pain, you can find management instead of a response; and where there is ignorance, you could choose to seek knowledge and raise consciousness with meditation instead.

Your mind is like a conscious control centre that processes the data it has access to. This data is then processed into a reality which instructs you on what to do. The data your mind has access to is the information received from your physical senses (the present) and the knowledge it can retrieve from your memories (the past). The past and the present come together to formulate a new idea, a reality which instructs your direction (the future).

Your mind’s job is to gather up this data and process it into an instruction that tells you what to do. From a meditative standpoint, your mind is where you determine what is real and what is not real.

Meditation allows you to harness control over the mind. It gives you the power to either accept or reject any experience of reality before you respond to it (e.g., anxiety, fear, paranoia), and with enough practise, meditation can put you in charge of the construction of your reality. Meditation places you in control of your experience of life.

Raising consciousness to this level of operation requires you to first train your mind:

At the beginning stages of your meditation practice, you are learning how to assert control over your mind and identify yourself as consciousness. To do this, you will be learning to prioritise and place your breath ahead of every sense, thought, and emotion to attain conscious control. As you practise and exercise control breathing, you will begin to disempower and alleviate symptoms of physical and emotional pain such as stress, anxiety, and depression.
Once you can assert control over your mind and how it responds to situations and circumstances, you will begin to raise self-awareness. Raising self-awareness is to be aware of your own presence in life and in your own mind. This will enable you to have better control over your behaviour and of your emotions. You will also learn to take more responsibility for yourself as you begin to recognise yourself as an independent conscious being.
As you exercise self-control, you will strengthen your meditation practice and can sit for longer periods with less distraction and more focus. Sitting for lengthier meditations is key to being able to process deeper-rooted personal issues and identify different realms of awareness. Now you can recognise the present, past, and future states of being, and start to develop a broader perspective of life and the world around you. I have noticed great improvements in clients who suffer from attention deficit disorder (ADD/ADHD) at this stage of practice.
A broader perspective of life can make you aware of how your mind functions and how you as an individual have learned to operate life and navigate through this world. This is when you will be able to forgive yourself for past mistakes, detach from deep-rooted traumas, slow down mental processes, and generally improve cognitive function. You will begin to recognise your innate intelligence. It is also at this stage when you will start to increase mindfulness and compassion.
As you realise how the mind works you can begin working to eliminate conscious contaminants such as trauma and fear. This will encourage you to lower defence mechanisms and release the guards which protect you in the present experience of life. As you become more present in life you will become more in tune with your body. You will begin to unlock your human potential and sense the power of your innate intelligence. You will recognise what you are capable of and begin to build an appreciation for your body.
This connection to your body will enable you to utilise your meditation to develop solutions to problems, especially where your health is concerned. You will also learn to listen to the innate wisdom contained within, developing self- trust and a self-actualised state of being. More on this can be found in the integrative development program in Section 4.
By this point, you are seeking only the truth. You are motivated to be the truest version of yourself and have the truest experience of life; therefore, you are primed and ready to raise consciousness into transcendence and this entire journey starts with breathing..."

**Continue Reading,** *Meditate: Breathe into meditation and awaken your potential.* **Available now on Amazon & Audible**

Meditation is not simply a practice—it’s a journey of self-discovery, empowerment, and conscious transformation. By training the mind to observe, to reflect, and to breathe with intention, we begin to experience life from a place of clarity and presence. This is the essence of the meditative state: an inner knowing that grounds and guides us.

In next week’s post, we’ll continue deepening this understanding with practical insights into one of the foundational elements of meditation—position and posture. Until then, take a moment to breathe, observe, and be still. The journey inward continues.

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Please note: Esoteric concepts are not meant to be taken literally or as absolute truths. However, they can provide valuable perspectives and context, helping our limited human minds grasp complex ideas.