Techniques

Beware of techniques in meditation.  We have the tendency, as beginners, to believe that a technique will get me when I want to go.  You don't know where to go in the interior journey, much less how to get wherever.  Well, I don't.  You read about or hear about darkness and emptiness, or the void and you think, "Oh, that sounds really good."  The technique  seems to tell you how to get there.  It gets you caught up, if you are not careful, in your own doing which will ultimately be your own undoing.  Yes, you may get to a darkness, or emptiness with your technique, but you won't be alone with Ultimate Reality.  You will be alone with yourself.  This is your own triviality.  Sitting still becomes cultish.  True meditation is grace, gift.  You wait.  God will do the emptying, plunging us into solitude, darkness and silence.  Technique can be a way to initially settle down, or settle down if something disturbed you from the environment.  It is a way to let go of peripheral thoughts about dinner menu or job or the weather.  And even then, you need grace, a gift.  Gift comes from the "Other" who is within you the whole time.  Your technique will not find this shy Presence.  Let yourself be found.