PRACTICAL MEDITATION: AN INVITATION INTO STILLNESS
By M. T. Dwyer
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CONTENTS
· Practical Meditation
· Introduction
· Architecture of Mindfulness
· Arriving in "This Moment"
· Three Core Skills
· Two Main Pillars of Meditation
· Four Bases of Witnessing
· What is Available to Awareness?
· Life Cycle of a Thought
· A Simple Summary
· About the Author

INTRODUCTION
The mind needs a purpose. Meditation is simply giving it the purpose of observing its own movement. It is an active, fascinating science experiment where you are the observer in the laboratory of your own mind. Contrary to popular belief, you are not searching for anything. However, you have the capacity to realize profound truths about yourself.

The Core Meaning of "Mindfulness"
To keep it simple, the word "mindfulness" comes from the ancient Pali word Sati.
· The Literal Meaning: "To remember."
· The Practice: In meditation, it means remembering to maintain your mental stance. It is the act of remembering to observe your thoughts but not to get lost in them.

This is not about forcing the mind to stop thinking but rather, it’s about creating a mental space so you can practice the neutral observation of your thoughts without getting swept away by them. It is being vibrantly alert to this moment. When you meditate, you improve the clarity between the real and the unreal.

The Ominous Reality
The human mind is a hyper-active, non-stop engine of thought creation—an organ so vastly powerful that it relentlessly churns out a staggering 6,000 thoughts a day, whether you want it to or not.

In 2020, cognitive neuroscientists at Queen's University used fMRI brain imaging to track "thought worms"—the literal moments where the brain transitions from one distinct idea to another. They discovered that the average person has roughly 6,200 thoughts per day.

That is a massive amount of mental traffic, and you may not be consciously aware of most of it. But you are the sole gatekeeper to this engine. There’s no one else on duty to rely on. But the great news is simply this: you have the inherent freedom to choose which thoughts make the grade of receiving your attention. Meditation is simply the practice of waking up to this capacity, moment by moment.