Going to start a meditation practice?

This quote from Dennis K. Chernin’s excellent book, How to Meditate is the most helpful image I’ve encountered in my broad reading on the subject.

In the aftermath of the tsunami, the ocean as a reflection of the mind may seem dissonant, but read on and contemplate his analogy -

The benefits of meditation can be understood by the following analogy. The human mind is like the ocean, the conscious mind representing the surface of the sea and the innumerable fluctuations of thought and emotion representing the ocean waves. Lying beneath the surfaced is the unconscious mind, analogous to the deep and submerged ocean expanse. The turbulence of thought waves obscures the depths of knowledge underneath the conscious mind in a similar way that ocean waves make it impossible to see beneath the ocean surface. The process of meditation calms the tumultuous ebb and flow of the mind’s outer layer of wave activity like a calm day quiets the ocean surface. Unconscious repression and habits deep within the mind are allowed to rise to the surface to be observed, in a similar way that bubbles and currents rise and dissipate on the ocean surface. Since no energy is supplied to suppress them, the bubbles gently burst and dissipate. The dispassion averts the creation in the unconscious of further increased psychological pressure that can produce exaggerated emotional reactions, like tidal waves in the ocean. The conscious mind becomes quiet and still, and the deeper mysterious layers of the unconscious can be observed and experienced, similar to the way the ocean depths become visible on a calm, wind-free day. Finally, the individual, separate self merges with universal consciousness, like a wave that merges with the great ocean expanse. - Dennis K. Chernin, How to Meditate (Ann Arbor: Cushing-Malloy, 2002) pp. 34-35. (Used by permission)