There are alot of meditation techniques and meditation practices. Most of them revolve around the idea of using the thinking mind, the analytical process, to gain insight about something.

If you do orthodox meditation, you should know there are levels called "dhyanas" or "samadhis" that roughly correspond to your concentration level. The higher the concentration level, the easier it is to see whats going on (like the levels of a building, higher = more range), so you gain a better insight.

This information is not much shared in meditation circles, so people waste their time and lives not knowing they should really request a teacher to show them how to increase their samadhi power and continue to make progress.