I propose a new form of meditation, which should actually replace all former and other types. That sounds refreshingly arrogant, and I couldn't give less of a damn. While it's been determined that meditation changes the brain in reportedly positive ways, it's just a form of self-indulgent distraction and suppression: Focus on one's breath or on a mantra to quiet the mind, suppressing the natural reaction of emotions and bodily emotionalized sensations. Quite unbecoming to the human species. Pathetic, I'd say.
Real meditation should be to receive the world like a baby, but silently. Though a baby would experience stimuli and would cry, shriek and laugh, an adult's similar expressive reactions would be too mixed with experience and ideation to enable the pure meditative effect. The goal would be not to shut the eyes but to open them. Not to artificially suppress feeling but to be awed by things, probably by everything.
True meditation would be taking a walk and just looking at what's around: a tree, the leaves, the sidewalk, a cloud or the clouds, a street sign pole, a mailbox, a roof with chimney, the rain, a child catching a bee on a flower, a pebble or refuse in the gutter. Smelling the air, but not hearing the murmur of traffic because that would engage the adult mind. Silently, without judgment, philosophy, analysis. I'd say that ninety percent of human thinking is refuse in the gutter. We carry decayed and putrid ideas and assumptions, often of a cynical bent, that have no originality. But a baby is quite original, and we should return to that.
This practice would be as difficult as traditional meditation is for most people. Most of us can't quiet our mind as the process requires. Thoughts come "marauding back in," as Dan Harris said in his "10% Happier" video.* But this new meditation would purify by cleansing not by distracting and numbing. It would have the salutary effect of creating regressive innocence. That's what the world needs.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.