We started The Sunny Way to ask questions about creating the future. What does it mean? What is possible? And, probably most importantly, how can it be done? We’ve covered a lot of ground in our exploration and what we’ve found—what I’ve found—is that our actions, our own growth and development, are the seeds from which larger creations spring. If we want change, we must change ourselves.

According to integral theorist Ken Wilber, one of the most powerful ways to prompt development within ourselves is meditation, and my experience over the past year has borne this out. Practicing meditation has caused me to grow in many ways, all in the direction of increasing confidence and strength.

Several people have asked me about my experiences with meditation—what it means, why I do it, and how it works—so today I’ll answer those questions to the best of my ability. I’m also writing for my own benefit—in 2009 my commitment is to meditate every single day, so all the good stuff I’m about to say about meditation is meant to remind me as much as anything else!

So ... what is meditation? There are thousands of ways to do it, and just as many different contexts in which it is undertaken. But the basic idea is simple—to cultivate an ability to watch your thoughts as an observer without getting wrapped up in them.

Why would you want to train yourself to do this? There are lots of good reasons:

1) Your thoughts are not always accurate.

We all have the experience of completely misinterpreting reality. Have you misread someone’s motives lately? Or told yourself you’re ugly or stupid when, objectively, you’re not? These are all inaccurate thoughts. Why would you want to automatically put your faith in them? Meditation trains you to stop and consider before believing whatever randomly flies through your mind.

2) Your thoughts are mechanical and repetitive.

You think and feel the same things over and over again—we all do. Minds love patterns, which means they are apt to falling into ruts, which means that if we take our minds too seriously, our behavior will likely fall into ruts, too. We end up living by rote rather than with intention. Meditation allows you to see your ruts so you can avoid falling into them.

3) Your thoughts are conditioned.

Most of what you think is not even really what you think—it’s what others have taught you to think. See: “The world is flat,” “A woman’s place is in the home,” and “A healthy economy means a growing economy, no matter the price.” At different times, all three of these statements were so obviously and self-evidently true that it didn’t even occur to anyone to question them. Meditation opens up space around these “well, duh!” ideas and allows us to question them.

For all these reasons, it makes sense that getting some distance from our thoughts would be good for us as individuals trying to get hold of our lives. But meditation also helps to build up our ability to act with conviction in the greater world. Here’s how: most of us completely identify what goes on in our heads. We think that the sum of our thoughts is who we are. We get caught up with our patterns and fascinated with our own stories because we think that these are the things that make us special. Instead of looking up and out of ourselves so that we can participate in the world, we hunch over our little gardens of craziness, indulging every idiosyncracy and nurturing every neurosis.

Meditating breaks down our ability to identify with our stories, patterns, and problems—the activities of our minds—because, if we are our thoughts, then how could we watch them as we do in meditation? Who is doing the watching? Breaking the identification with our thoughts puts a little space around them so that we can look at them and judge their accuracy and reality from a more objective place. And from that place, we can choose our actions rather than simply acting out old conditioning.

When Wilber talks about meditation as a reliable method of enacting deep change in a human being, this is what he’s talking about—breaking old patterns, jumping out of ruts, and developing the strength to act from decision and intention. Hard to believe that choosing to sit still can set all this in motion, but it does.

The instructions I follow are very simple: Be still. Be at ease. Pay attention. Your mind may lie still or it may jump around like a monkey; you may feel peace or you may feel terror—it doesn’t matter. Just continue to be still, be relaxed, and let everything happening inside and outside your mind to be as it is.

When I relax deeply into a meditative state, I see the biggest possible picture, and I dissolve into it. The experience itself is almost indescribable, so rather than try and fail, instead I’ll talk about how practicing meditation, especially on a daily basis, impacts my life.

• When I emerge from meditation, I feel as though I’m walking around with a big clear sky in my head, relaxed and ready to face the world with ease and interest.
• The moment between when I take in a stimulus and when I react to it lengthens, giving me both more options to choose from and more time to choose.
• I have a better view of the big picture, which calms my emotional trigger finger right down. Situations that made me crazy in the past suddenly don’t. I don’t take things as personally.
• My path becomes more distinct, and it’s much easier to stay on it without getting distracted or overwhelmed. I feel calm and light-hearted, clear about what needs to be done, and strong enough to take it on.

Of course, these possibilities are not fully cooked—I have glimpsed but not fully delved into them. My practice has been off-and-on, and yet I’ve grown and learned so much. I’m excited to see what will come out of a whole year of dedicated practice! And of course, I will report my findings.

If it’s true that we must be the change that we want to see in the world, then we all have a lot of changing to do! What are you taking on in 2009? Let us know in the comments.