Meditation can be corrupted into false or bogus forms, and recognizing these counterfeits is essential to understanding why genuine meditation matters so urgently. Al Portune first identified fear and worry as a perverted form of meditation, noting that many people are "past masters of meditating—just not on the right things." Fearing constitutes a form of meditation that intently focuses on failure, and the constant rehearsal of foreboding mental pictures often becomes a contributory factor in bringing dreaded events to pass, as illustrated by Job's confession that "the thing I greatly feared has come upon me." Proverbs 10:24 confirms that both fear and faith are reinforced through this meditative process, showing that the mind's habitual focus—whether fearful or faithful—tends toward self-fulfillment. Daydreaming or mind wandering represents another counterfeit, masquerading as meditation because it floods the mind with vivid pictures, much like legitimate meditation does. However, while God intends the imagination to envision His kingdom or concretely apply His law, daydreaming allows the mind to flit randomly and chaotically from subject to subject rather than engaging in disciplined, directed thought. A third and particularly insidious counterfeit stems from Eastern and New Age traditions, especially Transcendental Meditation. J. Hampton Keathley's analysis reveals that Eastern meditation stresses detachment from the world, the loss of personhood and individuality, and merging with a cosmic mind—ultimately seeking escape from existence itself. This approach encourages emptying and blanking the mind, which ironically makes practitioners more vulnerable to satanic or demonic influence rather than protecting them. The unifying thread among all these false forms—fear, daydreaming, and Eastern-style emptying—is their passive, diffuse, non-focused, and non-directed character. They represent a surrender of the mental discipline that legitimate, godly meditation demands. Genuine meditation requires a fully attached, active, engaged, and disciplined mind, standing in direct contrast to counterfeit meditation's detachment, escapism, and surrender of the mind to alien forces. This distinction connects to a broader danger: if something other than one's own deliberate choice determines what one thinks about, a person is no longer in control of his own mind and has effectively surrendered his identity to alien thought patterns. Keith Thomas's observation that mental laziness constitutes one of society's greatest curses reinforces this point—legitimate meditation is precisely the kind of focused, effortful activity that mentally lazy people avoid, often perceiving it as coercive rather than liberating. Ultimately, the failure to distinguish true meditation from its counterfeits, or to neglect meditation altogether, leaves one spiritually flabby and vulnerable to losing the very core of one's God-given identity.