According to the Akashic Records, meditation is one of the greatest cornerstones of spiritual ascension because it gradually changes your identity. Most people believe meditation is about becoming calmer, reducing stress, or improving focus. While these are beautiful side effects, they are not its deepest purpose. The deeper purpose of meditation is to help you remember who you are beneath the mind. It is not a practice of becoming someone new. It is a practice of removing everything that has convinced you that you are someone you are not. One of the greatest misunderstandings about meditation is that people believe they are trying to stop their thoughts. According to the Records, this is not the goal. The goal is to stop unconsciously identifying with every thought that arises. Before meditation, a person hears a fearful thought and immediately believes, “I am afraid.” They hear an angry thought and believe, “I am angry.” They experience anxiety and conclude, “This is who I am.” Meditation slowly creates space between awareness and experience. Eventually you begin to notice something remarkable. The thoughts are changing. The emotions are changing. The body is changing. Yet there is something within you that has remained constant through every stage of your life. Meditation introduces you to that unchanging awareness. The Records often compare the mind to the surface of a lake. When the wind is constantly blowing, the water becomes disturbed and cannot clearly reflect the sky. The sky itself has never disappeared. The reflection is simply distorted by movement. In the same way, your true nature has never left you. The mind has simply become so busy, reactive, and identified with its own activity that it cannot clearly reflect the deeper reality beneath it. Meditation does not create truth. It simply allows the turbulence to settle so truth can reveal itself. As you continue meditating, something else begins happening that many people mistake for failure. Old emotions begin to surface. Grief, anger, fear, sadness, loneliness, shame, and forgotten memories may suddenly arise. Many people assume meditation is making them worse. According to the Akashic Records, the opposite is occurring. These emotions were already living within the nervous system. Daily activity simply kept them buried beneath distraction. When the body finally feels safe enough to become still, those unfinished emotional experiences begin moving toward the surface to be acknowledged, felt, and integrated. Meditation is not creating emotional pain. It is creating enough safety for healing to begin.