Today, meditation is a word and a concept almost everyone knows and has a clear understanding of what it means.

But when I was growing up, it wasn't a familiar concept. It wasn't part of the public conversation. And if it was mentioned at all, it was typically as something mysterious or funny, something you didn't have to take seriously.

While it was perfectly fine to play sports and train the body, the idea that one could practice and upgrade the capacity of the mind and heart was not really present.

Fortunately, things are different now. Meditation has gained traction in many contexts.

And at the same time, the word as it is used today is a designation for a very broad and diverse range of activities.

In that way, it is a bit reminiscent of the word sport, which as a concept also spans a wide range – and is used for things as diverse as darts, fun football and training for an Ironman.

Just like with sports, meditation can be approached with very different motivations and in many different ways.

For example, you can play sports to recover from an injury, to better handle stress, to get in shape, to lose weight, for the social aspects, to challenge yourself and meet your limits, or different variations of two or more of these points.

Similarly, meditation can have many approaches: Some meditate to find peace, to relieve stress, to strengthen focus and presence, to get to know themselves better, or to approach the mystery of life, however one might imagine it.

Or you meditate to be able to face and deal with some of the forms of suffering we all encounter sooner or later: such as loneliness, meaninglessness, or as the Buddhists say, illness, old age and death.

And another frequent motivation to start practicing can be the desire to improve one's relationships and one's relationship with the outside world in general.

Because if we look deeper into our relationships with our fellow human beings, into the light and darkness of relationships, into conflicts, compassion, love, sorrow, joy and failure, we have the opportunity to discover that there is some deep connection between our relationships with people and the world around us, and then our relationship with our own heart and consciousness.

And we can discover that we have the opportunity to change our relationships with the world around us by not only reacting to the world, but also by turning to the place within ourselves where the image or experience of the world is formed and processed.

Just as there are a multitude of sports, each with its own practices, history and traditions, today we have access to, and information about, a very wide range of different forms of meditation. Each of them also has its own methods, rhythms, benefits and possibilities.

There are many ways to classify these different approaches.

 

Understanding one's practice through three approaches

A way that has proven useful for many to better understand one's own practice and to possibly organize it so that it can develop naturally is to consider the meditative training of presence and warmth as a process that unfolds through three basic approaches:

• Self-regulation.
• Self-expression.
• Self-liberation.

When I started meditating, I was not familiar with this simplified, yet often instructive, way of dividing the motivation for practice.

When I look back on that time today, it is clear that it was self-liberation and the ideas I had about it that got me started.

Those notions, along with the experience of meaninglessness – and the resulting longing and search for meaning.

The way it simultaneously pressed and called me made me throw myself into practice, with an idea of a great possible liberation as the horizon.

Today I can see that in this not entirely realistic fascination with the distant goals of a possible future, I overlooked that at that point in my life I probably needed to work more down to earth with the other two approaches. With regulating and trying to expand my boundaries and my horizons. 

 

Self-regulation

In this approach, we primarily use meditation to regulate thoughts, emotions and bodily reactions, thereby gaining a greater degree of control over the way we relate to ourselves and others.

This is typically done by trying to create inner stability and balance.

This is where most of us begin our meditative practice. Often with exercises that help us invite our attention out of and free from the more mental states we spend most of our time in. And into states that are more connected to the present.

The methods we use for this initial form of meditation are, for example, focusing attention on the breath or the body, performing a body scan or various forms of gentle yoga and movement. With the primary goal of calming the nervous system and bringing the consciousness together. With all the benefits this entails, such as reducing stress, increasing sleep quality and strengthening the ability to be present and empathetic.

 

Self-expression

When, through self-regulation, a certain calm and stability has begun to emerge in our system, there may be room and curiosity to explore aspects of ourselves that have otherwise been beneath the surface. Sides that may have to do with creative expression or other forms of personal development. Perhaps also room for feelings for or curiosity towards a possible higher goal in life.

Here, meditation can become a way to discover, explore and develop inner potentials and resources.

This can, for example, take place through self-reflection, visualization exercises, and exercises focusing on deeper contact with the heart and body.

The goal here, or perhaps more accurately the process here, is to get to know yourself more deeply, to discover your inner resources and longings and dreams. To let them shine and unfold into the world. And to discover the freedom in being yourself, exactly as you are.

At this point in the process – if one can follow and accept this slightly simplified description of meditation as a movement in three steps – there will also be, to a greater extent, the opportunity to bring one's projections home.

The emotional stabilization and increased self-knowledge that practice has made possible will provide peace and energy to let go of some of the prejudices and veils through which we inevitably see the world.

Projections are the part of ourselves we do not have the insight or strength to take responsibility for, and therefore take it out on others. Meditative practice, at the self-expression stage, is a possible and significant aid to greater emotional self-responsibility that allows us to begin to see others and the world more as they are and as it is.

 

Self-liberation

The third approach is for those who want to investigate consciousness itself. That is, not just the content of consciousness of thoughts, feelings, memories and sensory impressions, which are the things our attention almost exclusively dwells on. But the very container or space from which those things arise and appear.

Such an investigation will almost always also include a curiosity about the self. The feeling of being precisely “me.” A feeling or sensation that is so familiar that we hardly notice it.

But what is its essence, its core, and is it also just content in consciousness? And if the sense of self is just content in consciousness, who or what are you really, behind it all?

This interest, if balanced, will encompass more than self-interest.

Because in the very idea that it might be possible to begin to release consciousness's attachment to its content, there may lie a sense of deeper cohesion.

There may be an intuition that every content of consciousness, no matter how 'fine' and collective it may feel, contains a sense of 'I', that there is a 'me', a 'something' that experiences this content.

And that sense of such a 'me' or 'something' will contain what we can call a personality contraction, a contraction that separates us from others.

So wanting to escape this contraction and truly feel connectedness with others, maybe just in a glimpse, can be a motivation to practice towards self-liberation. A valuable motivation.

 

Methods and motivation

The methods used in this approach are of a more curious, investigative, wondering nature. In the meditations, it is no longer about improving something or changing something, but rather about doing less and less.

Meditation here moves towards a direct examination of the self and of consciousness itself.

One might ask how it could be helpful to know where one stands in relation to the three approaches? 

As indicated above, it would have been a great help to me, when I began to meditate, to know the three divisions. I would then have had the opportunity to discover that although I longed for something I had partly heard about, and partly perhaps suspected myself, could be self-liberation, at that time it was self-regulation that both my body, my mind, my situation and my relationships called for. If I had understood this, I might have been able to spend my time and energy on methods and practices that could have more precisely addressed my actual needs.

If you are curious about where you stand in relation to the three approaches, you can, for example, consider the following questions:

What do I want to achieve with meditation?

What motivates me to meditate, and what often gets in the way?

What is the feeling when I meditate? Is it exciting, uplifting, open, confusing, strenuous?

What am I missing in my meditation? And in my relationships, and in my life in general? Structure? Depth? Meaning? Emotionality? Cohesion? Freedom?

You can also notice which techniques you are naturally drawn to, and – as I said – what you long for in life in general.

It can also be the case, as suggested in my own example, that one's system and life situation call for one approach, but that one actually has more desire and energy for another. It is also valuable to become aware of this, so that one can plan and act based on that knowledge, and for example, weight one's practice in such a way that one gets around what one wants, but also gets to work on what is actually needed.

 

Finding guidance and sticking to the basics

Above – and in general in this short text – I have concentrated on what we ourselves have the opportunity to do.

But when it comes to the more radical motivation that lies in seeking self-liberation and deeper meaning, at some point you will need reflections. From spiritual friends. And from one or more teachers.

This, finding and receiving guidance, is outside the scope of this short text. But I have written about it in the blog post ”Finding a teacher”, which is about the learning relationship.

And then it's probably also like in sports, the basic training you keep doing. Self-regulation is absolutely central both to the way we can be in life, and also in the studies and development of the other two approaches.

Self-exploration and self-expression are enriching and exciting, and they also almost inevitably bring up things that can be challenging for the nervous system. It is therefore essential to work on self-regulation at the same time.

At the same time, exploring the deeper layers of personality and the idea of who one is are necessary steps on the path to self-liberation. Because one can only let go of what one is aware of. In this way, the three states are interrelated, both as a prerequisite and an enrichment for each other.

For me, understanding the three approaches has been a great help in both my practice and my life, and it is my hope that it can be for you too. Not as a fixed system, but as an invitation to be more aware of intention, motivation, needs and desires in practice, whether your personal emphasis is on peace, development or freedom.

In a way, all three approaches are about exactly that: bringing more awareness and authenticity into our lives and being. In our relationship with ourselves and in our relationships with our fellow human beings.