If you're looking for meditation instruction or want to learn some meditation techniques, whether you're looking for meditation and relaxation techniques, or if you want what you might call spiritual meditation techniques, whether you need anxiety relief, and whether you're looking for meditation for beginners or advanced students… no matter why you want to meditate, you might want to realize that there are different types of meditation. And not every meditation technique is right for every person.

There's a reason why Tiger Woods doesn't play football.

There's a reason why you don't want see Henry Kissinger on Dancing with the Stars.

There's a reason why, as it's said in ancient texts, the Buddha taught 84,000 different meditation techniques to his 84,000 different students.

There's a reason why in Hinduism they say that each person has his own god and must discover his own way of praying to and, ultimately, becoming one with that God.

And the reason is obvious: we're each unique.

Who you are is different than who your neighbor is.

So it's helpful to work with the way you are, rather than fight the way you are.

In other words, if you are Christian, you may want to explore Christian meditations.  There are dozens.

If you are Jewish, there are many Jewish and Kabbalistic meditations.

If you're Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist, there are meditations that emphasize the beliefs and ideas inherent in each of those religions.

If you don't think of yourself as religious, you might want to take a moment to think about your own personal nature, your own psychology.  For example, are you someone who enjoys sitting still in a quiet place, or are you someone who needs to be moving in order to process information? Are you someone who is able to feel sensations in your body easily, or is your body just that thing that happens to be attached to your head?  Do you enjoy probing philosophical ideas and looking for the way things work?  Are you better at following instructions, or would you rather have the barest bit of direction and then go off on your own? Do you easily get absorbed in something that you're reading or in your own thoughts or feelings, or does your mind easily move from object to object?

You see, none of these are a problem.  There are meditations and meditation techniques designed to work with any one of those situations… and many that I haven't even brought up.

I have a good friend who was one of the first Western meditation teachers. And asking him to sit down and keep his attention focused in one place for an extended period of time doesn't produce deep meditation results for him, because that's not the way he's built.  But practices that allow his him to move his attention throughout his body, from experience to experience, and investigate deeply what he's experiencing and how he's experiencing it… well, with that technique, he's an ace.  If he had gone to a meditation school that said, "Concentration is the only kind of practice," he would never have become a great meditation master.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a test that you can take, a meditator's personality test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Meditation Personality Inventory, that identifies different characteristics that you have and different meditation techniques that might fit who you are.  So you may have to poke around a little bit.

This is where your discerning wisdom is important. Because some meditation teachers will say their technique is "the only one" and that you can't go jumping from practice to practice.  "Like digging a well," they'll say, "you have to just keep digging until you hit water." That's a great metaphor, but sometimes there's no water where you're digging!

So the best suggestion is to find a meditation practice that gives you immediate results, and then dig there for a while.  And if it doesn't continue to give results, you'll have to decide for yourself whether you're trying to dig a well in the desert, or whether you haven't dug deep enough.  My recommendation is trust yourself rather than getting answers from anyone who has a monetary interest in you agreeing with them.

In other words, if you ask your teacher, "Should I stay, or should I go?" and they say "Stay! And you need to come to the advanced workshop for $5,000," then, personally, I would go to another meditation teacher.

It's not uncommon, and in the Tibetan tradition for teachers to say to a student, "I can no longer help you. Here is the name of someone I'd recommend you study with instead." If your meditation teacher isn't willing, or able, to make that kind of suggestion then you might consider that important information.

I don't think that meditation requires believing everything the teacher says.  It's about becoming independent, and discovering and trusting what is genuinely authentic for you.  Be careful, if someone suggests that they know better.

Next Post: Why do you want to meditate?

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