Everyone is talking about it – in newspapers, magazines and on TV. But, what does meditation mean? How is it done and how can it be learnt without travelling to India or being admitted into a Zen monastery?
 
Most people live normal lives and use only a small part of the potential that their conscience as human beings could deploy. Meditation helps us to develop the potential of our conscience, since it reinforces understanding and therefore intelligence, creativity and the ability to give meaning to our lives. Meditation is a natural state of being. Everyone has surely experienced it sometime without recognising it as such. The methods and techniques of meditation are resources to create an inner space that helps us, on the one hand, to find solace by distancing us from daily stress, and on the other, to discover the basic truth in ourselves and in life. 
 
Meditation... how to do it Over the next articles about meditation I will explain some simple exercises that can be carried out any time, anywhere, and which help to amplify our conscience as it calls our attention to the living reality of the moment and puts us into contact with it.
 
Listen to the silence We are so accustomed to hearing noises and voices that we have forgotten that every sound is born out of silence. All sounds, high or low, short or long, arise from silence to then disappear back into it. Even though we may not feel that there is a single moment of silence, in fact every sound and every voice disintegrate into it. 
 
Instead of hearing only the noise, we can focus our attention on the silence that is behind. Try to consciously perceive the instant in which sound arises from silence and also the moment when it dilutes into it again. Through this exercise we become aware of the fact that, behind all of the sounds that surround us, silence is always present. 

Dassana has been leading meditation courses in Ibiza, Holland and Germany.