Meditation: How deep are our roots?

The tree above is a picture from my back yard years ago.  For some reason, it never took, and was slowly dying.  We dug it up, and I was fascinated by the roots.  they were very developed, but not deep into the soil. 
  
Meditation is a word that usually brings images of eastern religion or yoga or other.  We label all these as foolishness idolatry (and rightly so), but not meditation. To ponder, to consider, to ruminate, to imagine, to pray.  These are acts of meditation.  Meditation is the active pursuit of truth, by denying external noise, fleeting desires, and surrendering our will and opinions to that of the Truth. How deep are our roots? I have added mediation to my new years resolutions, though I am not doing very well yet.


Hippocrates illustrated the challenge, here is wiki interpretation of the original :

The task is hugeLife is [too] short
The right time is like a razor blade...fleeting
The road to experience is fraught with hazards
To continuously accept reality and critical thought over hope and prejudice is taxing.  


the original from Hippocrates 

Art [is] long,
vitality [is] brief,
occasion precipitous,
experiment perilous,
judgment difficult.

This Wikipedia article found after the original Latin phrase was found in Matthew Henry commentary around Mark 4, the parable of the sower.  What great effort and reward results from listening, beholding, hearing....

"This parable is to teach you to be attentive to the word, and affected with it, that you may understand it. If ye receive not this, ye will not know how to use the key by which ye must be let into all the rest.’ ’ If we understand not the rules we are to observe in order to our profiting by the word, how shall we profit by any other rule?" 

The parable from Mark 4:4-9
“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.  And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away.  Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.  And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”