When we enter meditation, we enter an unpredictable space. Closing our eyes, stepping inwards, we begin a journey that has no map. Here, there’s no knowing what we may encounter. Meditation is a letting go – allowing ourselves to be with what is in the present moment, and being alive and alert to its myriad possibilities.

For some, this may be disconcerting. Entering fully into meditation is a gesture of surrender. It requires that we relinquish our preconceived ideas, expectations and need for control. It asks that we let go of discursive thought altogether and tune into deeper levels of perception. Meditation is an invitation to perceive life without the veils of our conditioned judgements and opinions, and to immerse in the true nature of reality.

This reality is deeply unpredictable. Our world and everything in it – including ourselves – is an ever-flowing vortex of movement and sensation, never static, perpetually transforming and evolving. Yet so often in our daily lives, we view things around us, as well as our own thoughts and feelings, as fixed and immutable. We get stuck in our habitual ways of perceiving life, and we become lost to the aliveness, the constant flux and infinite possibility of existence.

Meditation offers us another way. The practice invites us to release these habitual patterns and blocks and to open to what is. To suspend our preconceptions and pay bare attention to our reality. To allow what arises to arise, and to be with the fullness of the present moment, focusing our awareness without projecting or becoming lost in our thoughts. In doing so, we release ourselves from the certainties our minds construct, and step into unchartered territory. This requires courage, and the willingness to let go of familiar footholds. A challenge, perhaps – yet also an invitation to liberate ourselves, and to experience a new way of perceiving, alive with the pure potential of the unknown.