My mental meditation is similar to my spiritual. For mental, I make coffee and sit to read; for spiritual, I light a candle and sit to breathe.

For mental, I watch the words and count the pages; for spiritual, I watch the gates of my nostrils and count the breaths.

For mental, I arrive at a place, inspired and thinking, like my mind takes a step up, into a plateau on a higher intellectual level, where I am free to move about with increased brain function, pulling memories from this and that book, making them debate one another, picking up the winner and putting it down in my own words, writing more and more notes in the book’s margins, until there is too much and I must move onto my own blank pages that I fill with what seems to fill the gaps between the books I have read so far, though my fillings may, unbeknownst to me, live in a book I have not yet read.

For spiritual, I arrive at a similar place, after having watched my breath for some time, I can see the candle’s dance play through my eyelids, I make this my drishti and watch until my senses let go, and now travel to a plateau through my third eye where I can play without a sense of space or time.