All of the great religious traditions have within them an approach to meditation.  For the beginner to approach meditation through the forms and symbols of a familiar religious culture makes obvious sense.  However, it should be equally obvious that, because of the very nature of belief, there may be difficulty in going beyond the form to the direct experience of unconditioned meditative awareness.  In some cases specific aims or goals connected to these religious forms are set up and these can be impenetrable barriers to true experience of meditation.  Again the difference is between the direct and unitive experience of Being and the formal practice based on a system of belief.  Since none of us were born religious, this being something taught later within the family, culture and tradition into which we are born, it follows that the meditative awareness which is inherent at birth is not subject to or dependent on any particular religious form or practice, helpful though these may be in providing us with the structures to recognise and maintain it.