If you're looking to relax, clear your mind, gain spiritual insight, or maybe just take a mental vacation…  Here's how: meditate.

There are number of different ways to meditate, and even more different ways to learn how to meditate.

In fact, most religions have many different ways to meditate.  For example, in the Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist traditions, each has a form of contemplative meditation where you take a teaching or a passage from a sacred text and spend time quietly contemplating it — finding the truth of it, or discovering how it affects or applies to your daily life.

Similarly, in the same traditions, if you look into the mystical schools, you'll find meditation techniques that involve concentration, or focusing, or quieting the mind.

And if you look to science in the West you'll find a number of people who have tried to demystify meditation, and to show you how meditate without  any of the trappings from all those other traditions.

One of the tricky things about learning how to meditate is that each tradition, each style of meditation claims to be THE way (and some argue about the way to WHERE). And unless you know, for example, the difference between a concentration practice and an awareness practice, how would you know whether their claim has any merit.

I've heard meditators have heated arguments about the way they're supposed to hold their hands when they meditate, because each one learned something different from a teacher who said, "My way is the correct way." Seriously, do you actually think your success in meditation depends on whether your right hand is holding your left, or vice versa?

So how do you cut through all the mythology, or all of the partisan meditation politics if you're trying to try to learn to meditate?

The best suggestion that I can think of is take it all lightly.  If some meditation teacher says "This is the way," know that there are hundreds of others who say the same thing.

Try a technique and see if it produces results. If it seems like it takes more effort to do the technique than the amount of benefit it gives you, maybe that one's just not for you.

Don't believe anyone who says that you're not getting results because there's something wrong with you, or because you just don't have the ability how meditate. If you hear that, definitely learn meditation from a different teacher, and possibly try a different meditation technique. And when I say "a different technique," I don't mean a variation of the same thing.  I don't mean a different way to concentrate.  If your original practice was trying to focus on your breathing.  I don't mean look for a different way to focus on your breathing.  I mean, try something completely different.

If meditation isn't easy and enjoyable, you probably won't continue, especially beginner meditators. Learn to meditate to bring enjoyment into your life, now, not more stress about whether it's working.

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