Meditation as relaxation

Meditation has become an in-thing nowadays. People doing chi-kung or yoga will like to have a meditation session afterward. So, the teachers switches on some light, and by definition meditative, music, and everybody fold-up their legs (or sit down if legs are too-tight to be folded), and the students are instructed to think of something happy and soothing, like a flower, a waterfall, sunset (of course, no bosses, no spouses, and no serious subject like compassion). Some can keep their mind on the soothing images and feel happy afterward where some complain their mind keep wandering around. To the latter, the teacher says, well, at least you listened to some good soothing music. And the students are generally happy, and feel having got good-value-for-money: you paid for some chi-kung or yoga classes and get a free bonus called Meditation!

Best selling fictions are enjoyable and, sometimes, contributory to our good well-being, and able to learn a few phrases of colloquial English (or whatever language the fiction was written in) too. Yet, the reading experience is nothing like, say, reading James Joyce. It is the same with relaxation meditation. Meditation without chi gets you no where near anything substantive. It is mind only, or more correctly put, consciousness or ego only. It won't affect your physical body like chi-meditation can, and it won't affect your unconscious and therefore won't help you to integrate even a tiny bit of your unconscious with your consciousness (i.e. not therapeutic). Put it in another way, relaxing meditation can sooth your ego and you will feel more confident "to kill" tomorrow, ending up with the same frustrated ego the next evening, and waiting for another dosage of relaxing meditation to do its proper job!