I meditate for 30 to 45 minutes every afternoon and in shorter bursts early in the morning on some days. Sometimes, I even pull the car off the road and meditate for a few minutes if the mood strikes or I am upset.

I think I ought to explain why I meditate since there is so much confusion about meditation, and everyone meditates for their reasons. And I have promised to be open about my life. To some extent, my writing is edging closer to its original goals. To share life, good and bad, openly and truthfully, the good Katz and the bad, but always the real one.

I am deeply committed to my own idea of spiritual life, and I am not there yet. But I’m not getting off the path.

For me, meditation is not a glorious discovery or the secret to happiness. It is essential to genuine spiritual life.

For me, meditation is not about solving complex problems, making more money, being healthy, or finding strength. I don’t expect to meet God there or shed all of my anger and fears. I’m not running for  Saint.

Meditation for me is both more straightforward and more complex.

I meditate to gain sufficient control over my mind, memory and will to help me withdraw from the exterior world and the business and activities and thoughts and concerns of my daily, temporal existence. I believe this has helped me get to know myself, the good and the bad, and understand who I am in many unpleasant ways.

Meditation has helped me see the truth about myself, which was difficult and painful.

It also helped me learn to love myself and realize that if I couldn’t do that, no one else could love me, and I couldn’t love anyone. Almost immediately, Maria came into my life, which convinced me that meditation was valuable for people like me once and for all and could help transform my life. I’m not a proselytizer, and I don’t believe everything good for me is good for everyone else. I can only share my own experience and hope someone else can relate to it somehow.

Secondly, I meditate to explore the idea of God, if he exists for me, and in what way. I believe that in meditation, my God will reveal him or herself to me if he exists. I’m getting closer in meditation to understand what I mean by God.

Thomas Merton, the author and Trappist Monk was my inspiration and guide for meditating.

“The real purpose of meditation,” he wrote, “is this: to teach a man [or woman] how to work himself free of created things and temporal concerns, in which he finds only confusion and [argument] and sorrow and enter into a conscious and loving contact with God.”

I can’t seek Merton’s very powerful idea of God because I’m not sure either that he exists or that I believe in him. I think I do believe in a God, but I believe it centers for me on what the Quakers call “the light,” the center of a soul, the beating of the heart, the creative spirit. Meditation has very much helped me to find that light, feel it, and believe in it. Merton was devout, but he wasn’t didactic. He welcomed readers and friends that loved his work but couldn’t embrace every word of it.

Merton taught me that the success of my meditation couldn’t be measured by the brilliant ideas I get or the great resolutions I make, or the feelings and emotions produced by my interior and exterior senses.

I will have only truly meditated, he wrote, when I have come, to some extent, closer to realizing my idea of God and feeling close to him, her, or it.

At times, and over time, and for brief moments, I think I have found my light and what it means to me and my spirit. Those moments are powerful, chilling, transformative. I never know when they will come, but I will never stop waiting and looking for them.

I see my God in many places, in my love for Maria, the animals’ love for me, the flowers I grow in my garden, the photos I take, my blog itself. I see my God wherever the creative spark rests and lights and sets fire to the soul. I see God in my ability to change and grow and learn at any age. I see God in the love of my life, and even in the anger that still resides inside of me. I see God in my growing love of me.

Many times, I feel emptiness and helplessness in my meditation. Far from realizing the spirituality I am seeking; I think I have failed.

On the contrary, wrote Merton.

This bafflement, this darkness, this anguish of the soul, and helpless desire is the very point of meditation. If meditation only produces images, ideas, and affections that I can understand, feel, and appreciate, it fails. This darkness means I am getting close; it is bringing me closer; it introduces me to the night where I can no longer imagine the idea of God and then realize that I have to go deeper, inspired only by blind faith and hope and love. That is enough.

I think that is the point for me: the purpose. The feeling of faith,  hope, and love.