3 modes of meditation

Broadly speaking there are 3 modes of mediation: mental hygiene, spiritual exploration, and reflective contemplative.
Mental hygiene (we often call it tidiness) is what we teach, through practical lessons and exercises, guided by an instructor. For example, what to do with stray thoughts while meditating. It’s one thing for a meditation video or app or facilitator to say “empty your mind,” but what on earth (haha) does that mean? How?
Our mediations are designed to help you understand dealing with these thoughts rather than just telling you to do it while we wait.
Second, spiritual exploration has brought more people to meditation than any other goal or set of guiding principals. Many religious traditions have meditative teachings and many modern systems of meditation come from, in whole or in part, ancient wisdom traditions.
But also think of the greater Consciousness Movement at work in our culture today and things like CE5. Quite a lot of folks are coming to The Dojo for those kinds of experiences.
Then there is the contemplative mode, wherein people use their meditation mind to discover profundities of their life and human experience. Think of the phrase “meditating on it.” Having that kind of intention for meditation can be very instructive and useful, especially when part of a larger system of understanding.
Necessarily there is overlap among the three modes which are, by admission, supremely generalized and reductive. The key to any and all mediation is consciousness. Greater awareness and agency of consciousness is the ultimate goal—stated or not—of any meditative mode.
Awareness and agency of consciousness. Wow. Talk about generalizations! We’ll tackle those subjects in future posts.