Trying to do, without trying, to not do
Tom Campbell spent the early 1970s as a physicist in Robert Monroe's laboratory, running experiments on out-of-body states and helping build the binaural-beat technology that came out of it. He then spent thirty years writing up a model of reality with consciousness at the bottom of it instead of matter. Meditation sits inside that model in a specific and rather modest place.
His description of what it is for has nothing lofty in it. Meditation, he writes, is a technique you use to quiet the constant jabber of your brain-based thoughts and ego — an intellect chattering away about nothing and everything. And more flatly still: meditation is no more than a tool to help you control the intellect and thus enable you to find and integrate with the core of your being.
The instruction he gives for the doing of it is a single sentence that most people have to read twice. What you are trying to do, without trying, is to not do. He follows it immediately with: read that sentence again — don't you just love it? If it makes sense to you, you are on your way.
The claim underneath the joke is serious. Within this kind of meditation, he says, you do not actually have to learn how to meditate. You only have to learn how to stop blocking it from happening on its own.
So today there is nothing to achieve. Five minutes. You are not trying to relax, empty your mind, or feel anything in particular.
The chapter Campbell points people to when they ask him how to meditate.