Does meditation help?

To the question « how does meditation help you? » I can only answer by a shrug – it doesn’t, and I did not ask for help when I started to meditate. I asked for freedom and for conversion, I wanted enlightenment and experience of God. These things now are all coming about, but saying that they “help” sounds to me grotesquely, comically absurd. They don’t, honestly. They make my life more complicated than ever, they confront me to the questions I really do not want to face, they lead me to the places no one in their right mind would choose to be. Meditation set in motion forces and processes that I cannot control and only partially understand. Whatever wisdom I acquired thereby, it is the wisdom of insecurity. No, clearly, meditation does not “help”; God is no-thing, and cannot be summoned to fix my life…  What emerges instead is a sense of happiness which does not depend on events and circumstances of my chaotic life, a touch of the fundamental joy of being that lies deep within and can be shared with others in a simple act of presence. That's what it is about, really.

On fulfilment, or "Babette's feast"

It seems absolutely incredible to me that there are people who do not understand what it means, "to be fulfilled in and by doing" something; who cannot believe that some things are done for the mere joy of doing them. Not to be approved, not to be thanked or appreciated, not to be praised and accepted, but simply because just doing it fulfills us and makes our craving for approval redundant… 

I am reminded of Babette, in the awesome film "Babette's feast", sitting in the kitchen after having cooked a gastronomic meal for a bunch of strangers. Nobody thanked her, and she did not expect or need thanks: because she represents the lavishness, the ever-abounding bounty of God who does not care about approval. 

I agree with a sigh: these things that are done with no desire for approval are rare, and it is debatable how much of this inglorious motivation we conceal from ourselves when we think we have none. But they do exist; in them we participate in the abundant, luxuriant divine life, where being and doing are absolutely unconditional, therefore absolutely free.