A guided meditation is when your imagination is lead on a particular journey with the purpose of achieving healing and realizations through purposeful contemplation and reflection. You could have someone speak or read a guided meditation to you, listen to a professional on a CD or read your own onto a recorder and play it back to yourself. The idea is to let go of any thought you may have and allow your subconscious mind to follow the words that are spoken. Many people prefer guided meditation because even if you fall asleep you will still benefit from it subconsciously.
A simple guided meditation will help you to achieve deep relaxation and release negative emotions or beliefs that are preventing you from being further enlightened. When you enter into deep relaxation with such great deliberation you can touch on experiences and feelings that are usually hidden in unreachable parts of your mind. By allowing your conscious mind to sleep, experiences come forward to be acknowledged and released from your subconscious. This enables you to become more positive in your contemplation and reflection relating to past experiences you have had, and you can also replace negative programming with confidence and high self esteem

Calm Mind

You are right - so many people dismiss Guided Meditations as 'not meditation' but it is.

I run Guided Meditation classes 3 times a week, and each and every person walks away after getting something from the class. ANd quite often there is positive feedback when they come again the following week ... so yes, it is good.