How to meditate
Returning to the field that is always here
I have been a student of meditation since the late 1990s. It began when my client, an engineer from Vietnam, asked me after a particularly challenging day if I had ever heard of mindfulness or tried meditation. We were working side by side for months on a large, multi-year technology project, leading the organizational change component. It was complex and overwhelming at times, and we were designing tools and creating roadmaps to help thousands of people navigate that transformation.
That’s when I discovered what would change the course of my life: how to find peace within. On a corporate campus outside San Francisco, I learned to rest attention on the breath, even in the midst of it all.
There is a place within you that is always present.
As Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us: “I have arrived. I am home. In the here, in the now. I am solid. I am free."
Beneath the swirl of doing and becoming is something steady and quietly alive—a field of presence. A homecoming to what you already are. My teacher, Jack Kornfield, often tells us that “In this moment, you can sit quietly and recognize that you already are what you are seeking to become.”
Meditation is this gentle return. Not a project of self-improvement, but a practice of remembering. Right here, in the middle of it all—grief, joy, uncertainty, beauty—there is a way of being that holds it all.
Meditation helps us live with balance in uncertainty, softening into the unknown and remembering that presence itself is our true refuge.
A Gentle Way to Begin
You don’t need anything special. A cushion, chair, a patch of grass, or shoreline will do. Meditation happens wherever you pause. Find a place that is quiet, and invites relaxation.
Find a posture that’s both comfortable and alert. Allow yourself to arrive into the full dignity of being human. This posture says: I am here. I am available to this moment.
Four-Step Pathway Into the Field
Ground the Body: Feel contact points—feet on the floor, seat supported. Let attention drop into the body. Breathe. Here I am. Grounded. Held.
Stabilize the Mind: Let attention rest on the breath. When the mind wanders, gently return. The grace is in returning.
Open the Heart: Breathe with tenderness. Invite kindness. Whisper: May I meet this moment just as it is. May I meet myself just as I am.
Relax into Wider Awareness: Soften and sense the wider field—open, spacious, steady. This is the field in which all arises.
Qualities That Nourish Practice
With meditation, we train attention and cultivate qualities of mind:
Curiosity: What is it like to simply be here?
Allowing: Let everything be as it is.
Compassion: Be gentle.
Acceptance: Trust this moment.
Gratitude: For breath, life, being.
The field is always here. Each pause is a return. We practice meditation to ease the glide path back to our natural state, beneath it all. Even in chaos or pain, something vast and unshaken remains within you. Presence isn’t earned. It is innate.
During the years that followed that early project, I went on to work in increasingly complex engagements, living in three continents, being pushed and challenged and stretched. Life brought in deep sorrow and intense joy along the way. The lessons about coming home to the present moment allowed me to return again and again to the place of peace that is always here. Rumi says, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” And it is in the field that we are returning.
And so we practice, this homecoming to stillness. It starts with attention.
From the beloved poet Mary Oliver: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Stillness becomes devotion—to life, just as it is.
A Gentle Invitation
This is the doorway. Already, always is a shared sanctuary for remembrance. Here, we explore living awake, embodied, and at home in the sacred field of now. Like anything, it becomes easier and more natural with practice.
Presence is the path. This is where we begin.
At the core of meditation is this truth: You’re not learning how to meditate. You’re remembering how to be.
I would love to hear:
What is your experience with meditation? What helps you return to presence? What do you find most challenging?
“At the core of meditation is this truth: You’re not learning how to meditate. You’re remembering how to be.”
What an amazing way to approach the practice. Thank you for this insight Laurie.
Thanks to you and others, I am a daily practitioner of meditation. It does help me stay in the moment and realize that I have everything I already need right here. Thank you Laurie! We appreciate you very much :-)