By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

How do you know you’re really meditating? The different inner experiences you may have can be confusing.

If your mind becomes still, you might wonder if maybe something should be happening. And if something happens, like inner lights or visions, you may think you’re imagining it or making it up.

If you delve deeper than your mind, a meditative immersion into the deeper dimensions within, you might think you fell asleep. But if your mind is busy, you might conclude you’re not meditating.

If you get insights into the nature of Consciousness or inner answers to life situations, you might conclude that you were thinking the whole time. But if you don’t get any inner insights, and all you did was repeat mantra the whole time, was it merely a waste of time?

So many questions!

There is one answer to all these questions. One easy way to tell if your meditation was truly meditation, regardless of what happened during your meditation – when you open your eyes, do you feel different?

Washed clean, rested, refreshed? Settled, meaning centered, free from anxiety, serene. Your breath is more open. Your peripheral vision may have expanded. You may feel you had stepped out of time, into the timelessness of your own Beingness. Yes, you meditated.

How long does it take to get there?

A minute. Less, actually. For your own Self is right here, right now, in you, being you. Closer than your breath. More intimate than your mind. Present within your own presence, Consciousness being you…