To pika
If you are talking about Christian or western meditation then fine, I can't touch you, because if thats what you are talking about then anything you say about it will be politically correct; just throw the word any where you want. However, if you are talking about eastern meditation or even more specific such as Hindu or Buddhist derived meditation then you are not by any means meditating.
Attention is part of thought. If you invest attention thought will follow immediately. Thought process:
Its simply not. I am talking about abstracted concepts of smells, taste, touches, sights, and sounds. Attention to these smells, taste, touches, sights, and sounds is not attention to our concepts of them, in fact they are often opposites. Attention is attention, its not part of thought; Thought is only a single function of a single part of the brain. To say that if you are paying attention to something and by extension you are thinking about it is wrong. Paying attention to something without thinking about it is the basis of most (object based) meditation.
1. Recognition of subject alone. (attention)
2. Define the subject.
Next two possible things can happen.
3a. Use the definition of the subject to expand on the subject.
3b. Use relevant information to expand on the subject.
4. New relevant information is thought up.
With ought attention, irrelevant thought will ****** the thinking process or even stop it.
By just using #1 and not #2-4 you make no mental progress and the point of meditation is destroyed.
Something that particularly pisses me off is that the western world deems stuff like this as meditation. Which one of those steps separates itself from learning about something as mediation? What makes those things different from learning or thinking about something and, instead, makes it mediation?
1. I see water
2. I call it water
3. I see water is wet
4. I think if I don't want to get wet I should stay away from water.
If you want to call that western meditation, fine.
But don't call us losers, rub your cultural ignorance in our face, and pretend to know about everything you talk about when both the majority and origin of the subject at hand don't in any way resemble the activity you are talking about.
Its Aum.
and its the first part of a sentence in a chant that that goes "aum mani padme hum" which means "here I am." The Aum part to the best of my knowledge is similar to our "I am" except without the "I" part though its not really "am."
*respells necessary*
Intelligence IS needed with the complexity of the processing information. With meditation you can only go so far with a finite knowledge/ intelligence.
Intelligence is needed for learning/western meditation, which after your definition seem to be pretty much the same thing.
noobs... 
