It was the great Spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti, who once said, “If you think that meditation is sitting in a corner of your room for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then getting up and paying no attention to the rest of your day, you are NOT meditating. You are fooling yourself!” What does he mean by this? Meditation is the process of watching the mind, paying attention to where it wanders, and then bringing it back to a place or point of focus. The point of focus can be watching the breath; it can be holding a mantra or a specifically designed intention or thought. When we devote a small amount of time in our day to paying attention to where the mind wanders, and then spend the rest of our waking moments letting the mind run chaotically around, we are not “getting” what meditation is all about. We are, as Krishnamurti so dramatically pointed out, merely fooling ourselves.
It was the great scientist/mystic Emanuel Swedenborg who first originated the phrase, “You are what you love, and you love whatever you give your attention to.” What this means is that our awareness is a form of love. Love is not limited to what we like, or feel we have an affinity for. Love is inseparable from our awareness. When we give something our attention, we are also giving it our love. Love, being the most profound force in the Universe, will bring more of whatever it is we are giving our attention to, into the whole of our life. The purpose of meditation is to awaken to what we are giving our love to - to become conscious of what we love, by virtue of giving it our attention.
How this Spiritual Law, “You are what you love, and you love whatever you give your attention to” translates into our everyday life is this: when you give your attention to worry, self-criticism, or bad faith in life and love, then you actually love being stressed out, “less than” and a victim. Shocking isn’t it! We perceive these things as something we do not love, something we would like to avoid, and something we do not want in our lives. However, if you are giving it your attention, you are inviting more of it into your life.
Meditation is a practice designed to support us in the process of catching our mind when it wanders off, and seeing where it goes. By doing this, while we are caught up in the flow and unconscious habituation of everyday life, we gradually become more and more aware of what we are doing with our love. Meditation is supposed to be a way in life; it is not supposed to be an action that lives in a vacuum. Meditation is a template, used to hone the skill of making your mind your best friend and not your worst enemy.

Meditation activates an inner alarm system that draws our attention back to the bigger questions of life: “Is what I am presently giving my attention to what I really want to be doing with my love? Is what I am thinking about really the best use of my love, right here, right now? Did I come here to the Earth to build a monument to worry and unhappiness with my love? Or do I choose to empower something else with my love, something infinitely more life sustaining.” Each of us decides what we choose to do with our attention, and what attitude we choose as a response to life.
In the midst of working, shopping, refueling at the coffee spot… while in the throws of everyday life, this is when we need to be aware of where the mind is wandering off. Can we make it through the day consciously catching our attention as it plunges off into negativity and limitation and bring it back? Or will we sleepwalk through our lives, letting our attention bounce around like a winning shot on a pinball machine? Without understanding the importance of judiciously watching what we give our attention to, we will never get the balance and power out of meditation that it is designed to bring into our lives. Without connecting the Spiritual Law, “You are what you love, and you love whatever you give your attention to” to the intention and action of meditation, you will be reducing meditation to a tacky, new age cliché.
Ultimately, meditation is about holding the awareness that we can be love in every moment of our lives. Meditation is here to support us in not getting distracted by the things happening within or around us, to hold fast to aligning our attention to the truth that we are Divine Love and Wisdom in this and every moment and that no one and no thing has the power to change that. When you can hold that “love of the truth” with your attention, meditation has served its purpose - to help you embody being the unconditional Love you are, no matter what the world throws at you. Meditation is the soft quiet voice that reminds you, “You are what you love, and you love whatever you give your attention to... so Love wisely.”
© 2008 Article from Wisdom Rising By Vaishali

Vaishali, author of Wisdom Rising and You Are What You Love© has appeared on Oprah & Friends Radio Listen to Vaishali’s radio show “You Are What You Love” © every Saturday at 5pm PST on KTLK 1150 am in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara it is also live-streamed. Visit www.purplev.com for all things Vaishali.