To live means to be conscious or to be aware that Life is being alive within me right now. In my experience, I think I started becoming conscious only after I first started my practice with meditation thirty years ago. I think, we are all unconscious all the time except when we meditate. There is an aliveness in us, in our body, in each cell of our body and in the space around our body. We are usually unconscious of this aliveness as we remain stuck in our cycle of thoughts in our thinking-mind which is focused on the world outside.
Meditation starts happening when we return back to the awareness of the aliveness within our body. The breathing process is one of the biggest clues for us that something amazing is happening inside us right now. We are not doing the breathing, it is happening within us. Although we can engage with this process and play with it by changing the pace and rhythm of our breathing, we did not start it by ourselves and we are not going to voluntarily stop it by ourselves. Someday for sure however, it is going to stop. Until then we do have a choice of whether to be conscious of it or unconscious of it. Whether to be alive each moment of life or just robotically go through life.
To be alive right now is to be conscious of our breathing and expand this consciousness to the whole aliveness in us. I call it Awareness, to hold a background state of awareness throughout our life. In the beginning it would be momentary and we end up loosing consciousness as soon as we go back to our routine monotonous life to which we have become habituated. As we gradually give up our ingrained habits to replace it with a new habit of holding a stance of active acceptance, it becomes easier to not lose consciousness for progressively longer duration.
Please read some of my other posts and answers to see what is meditation and how to inculcate the practice of meditation into our life and what goals can be aimed for with such a practice. I have linked one specific answer that may be relevant to your question.
Selvan Srinivasan · 2y
What is the goal of meditation?
For each session of meditation itself there cannot be any goal. Meditation is a practice of non-doing being when you hold a stance of a disengaged witness to all that is arising or happening in the here and now. Things are constantly happening within us and around us. Things happening within us include thoughts arising in our mind, emotions arising in our emotional mind-body and physical sensations arising in our body. Things happening around us is constantly perceived by our senses of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. All of these together is called arising phenomena in the moment. It is happening momentarily and changing every moment. We do not just perceive these but constantly react, respond or engage with it. Our engagement is in the form of mental activity which may or may not be followed by physical activity. When we choose to simply sit and witness the arising phenomena without engagement, it is called meditation. To hold a goal for this would necessitate mental activity and therefore it is not possible to meditate while holding a goal. A stance of active acceptance and allowing towards all arising phenomena is necessary to remain in the state of meditation for at least a few minutes. Therefore there is no goal of meditation. However, you can have a set of goals as an outcome of the regular habit of meditation practice. Use these goals to motivate you to continue with the practice regularly and cultivate a habit out of it. When you spare some time for a regular meditation practice you can except a lot of practical benefits arising out of this in your life. These include better sleep, improved memory, lesser stress, lesser anxiety, more confidence, more decisive, clarity of mind, peace of mind, joy, better and deeper relationships, mastery over emotions, physical fitness, higher immunity, relief from chronic disease conditions, etc. If you would like to read more about an effective meditation practice that could throw up the above benefits please read the answers linked below and the articles linked therein.