Meditation: The Scientific Method of Self-Study

subjective experience as you go. This gives points of reference for the changes you have experienced. When looking through the eyes of the new you, it might not be easy to see how much different you are now from the way you used to be.

Step 5 allows us to put working principles in place to help us continue with further experimentation. Keep in mind, these are just working theories; they are subject to change and improvement.

To illustrate, allow me to share an example from my own life. Several years back, when I was still in the Army, I started meditating every day before I went to work. As I continued practicing, the meditations grew deeper, and it made the early part of the day more pleasant at work. I noticed, however, that I wasn’t really developing the ability to deal with my day-to-day challenges in a ‘meditative’ way (step 1). It was like a peak experience that would wear off. I read through some of the meditation books I had at the time, but did not find anything that really applied to what I was experiencing (step 2). I figured if I could find a way to practice in the morning or throughout the day, I could experience more freedom when challenges come up. So I started playing with quick methods of meditating, and short meditative exercises (step 3). I wasn’t very good at keeping a journal at the time, but I did measure my satisfaction with the day, as well as individual experiences with and without applying the techniques (step 4). Based off this, I continued to test and practice these methods to this day. A vastly simplified version of my results would be “When I’m in a good space, I get better results. When I’m in a bad space, I get worse results.”

This is only one

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