Some people might describe meditation as somehow stopping all thoughts and silencing your mind. Some may be able to do that after years of practice, but I don’t think it’s important. What I do is sit still and allow myself to be passively aware of everything around me and in my mind. I don’t actively engage in any thoughts and I experience them arising on their own—as though they operate without me. I see that my thoughts are like the wind blowing on my face. Both of these things happen entirely on their own, without me. When meditating I’ll frequently become distracted by my thoughts and engage with them. That’s fine. I go back to passively experiencing them the same way I experience the subtle sounds around me. That’s it. That’s all there is to it if you’re looking for any therapeutic benefit. Becoming “present” like that on a regular basis will will leave you calmer, better able to focus, and better able to control—or separate yourself from—your emotions. Arnold Schwarzenegger did this for a while in the early 80’s when he had a lot going on in his life and he was having trouble focusing. He learned how to become present and focus on the current moment whenever he needed to and he no longer needed to meditate regularly. The deeper lesson that our Aryan ancestor Buddha and others discovered is that you start to see that many of the things you thought were part of yourself—like your thoughts—are not. You eventually see that even the idea of your self is only a mental concept—an illusion—and that you may not even exist. Then you start understanding a lot of the things Jesus said and you can no longer relate to most people and life seems both wonderful and pointless at the same time. Don’t worry about all of that for now though. Just sit still and listen to everything around you, including your own thoughts.