Meditation

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Nalin Kotari, One of Thousands of Spirituality Coaches on Noomii.

MEDITATION

Why meditate? To be here Now, to open the door to the Divine, to transform consciousness, to awaken. Through meditation, we learn how to experience the world nakedly by stripping it and ourselves of representations — words, names, labels, identifications, titles, roles, symbols, and categorizations. When we bypass concepts, the person we think we are disappears, and hence also the imagined boundary between “us” and the world. What we are left with is Presence.

True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascination with states lead only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial awareness.
(Adyashanti, 2012, p.21)

Meditation is a wake-up tool, but in the beginning, for many, it is a method through which we merely desire to feel better. And it is true that at first meditation can provide momentary relief from stress or suffering and some sort of high. But if our main incentive is to escape, the relief will not be satisfying, and meditation will not be a bridge to awakening. The catch-22 is that the ego-driven motivation of pursuing meditation with the goal of ridding our life of pain and filling it with peace and joy (as defined by ego) does not lead to true peace and joy. If peace is all we want, we might get some while sitting, but nothing in our perspective of the world changes, and hence nothing in our life changes. If what we desire is peace but not liberation, then we will have neither. But if we desire liberation, then we can have both. What stands out among those who have awakened is not their meditation method, posture, or spiritual getup but their sincere, deep longing and fearless, earnest eagerness to relentlessly face all aspects of themselves uninhibitedly and shamelessly. They lack the need to be liked or agreed with and are dedicated to Truth in each and every moment without conditions and at any expense.

Meditation does not deal with past or future. It is not a self-improvement program or a method for sorting out issues and inquiring about our shadows, challenges, neuroses, or fears. Inquiry engages the mind, the very thing we want to leave alone while sitting. Meditation is a method to do nothing, rest in nothing, be no one, and discover the immense sacred something that we are. Meditating to achieve anything, even awakening, does not work. The very nature of striving is effort by mind, by the one who does not exist, the one we need to give up.

Meditation is self-abandonment. It is coming into awareness of Awareness; becoming the Knowing by giving up the knower. There is no one who becomes free. Ego does not get to wake up. Again, waking up is from ego. That means we abandon the one who is seeking, we leave him or her alone for a bit in order to discover our True Self, freedom itself. Note that I am using the word “discover.” Meditation is not a journey from one state of consciousness to another; it is a discovery of that which we already are, here and Now. And that discovery, called awakening, is something that one day suddenly, unsuspectingly, is revealed by Grace.

When we take control of giving up control, thoughts become fewer, quieter, and farther apart, and that which is beyond the personal mind can make itself known; the door is open for Grace to come and bring us home. Awakening is not a process of increasing our levels of intellectual understanding. It is the personal mind witnessing our True Self recognizing its own presence within us. The Awareness that we are becomes aware of itself through us, the most important “a-ha” moment you will ever have. The one who was seeking is at that moment seen to have never existed. Meditation is a time to allow Awareness to reveal itself. When our ego-driven motive to engage in meditation to feel better, is replaced by an altruistic desire to give ourselves up for the Unknown, an unpredictable wild ride will bring us great gifts way beyond our imagination and notion of “high.” Here are some brief introductory meditation directions. Your teacher might offer slightly different or additional suggestions.

THE SPACE: If possible, it is nice to have an area in your home that is set aside for
meditation, a private corner closed off from sounds and activities. Otherwise, and ultimately, any location is a great place to close your eyes and go in.

THE BODY: There are many time-honored meditation postures, each with its own
beautiful benefits. The intention with the posture I suggest is to not feel strain in any part of your body. When your attention is not drawn to discomfort, it is instead available to witness Spirit awakening to its presence within you. The important work of releasing blockages and freeing up energy, as some meditation postures encourage, can be done through complementary practices, such as yoga, qigong, or tai chi. Awakening does not come through struggle or after attaining perfection of a particular meditation pose. Once we see the world from the perspective of Source, blockages will be released and energy set free with much greater speed and ease.

Pick a posture in which you are upright with uncrossed arms and legs and so comfortable that you can be relaxed and sit still for the duration of the meditation. Unless you have a disability where you have to be lying down, horizontal postures usually do not work, because we easily fall asleep. If you have chronic pain, get as comfortable as possible. I have about fifteen different kinds of low-to-the-ground chairs and pillows that I switch between as my body keeps changing and aging.

PROPS: Some people like to keep photos of their teachers, a candle, a timer, a
gong, and speakers for when they want to play a guided meditation. Using incense can help in an indirect way. If you light incense ahead of each sit, the mind comes to associate the smell with Stillness, and entering into meditation can start to occur more spontaneously.

FOR HOW LONG: Start with five minutes and work your way up to thirty minutes or more. But
once you have decided how long you are going to sit, do not shorten it. Complete your commitment. Not giving in to impulses will help in coming to see thought as separate from what you are. It is also useful to get a nice- sounding timer that tells you when your sit begins and ends.

HOW OFTEN: Aim for once a day and more when you feel drawn to it. It is better to sit for
five minutes each day than for ten minutes every other day. Quality is also better than quantity. A practice that is just another item on your to-do list is meaningless and easily turns into a worship of its own or becomes a way of boosting your ego: “I am a meditator.”

HOW TO MEDITATE: There are many different traditions of meditation, but as the purpose is to
awaken to what is beyond the ordinary mind, it is a waste of time to engage in methods that keep the mind activated throughout the sit. Be careful with guided meditations. Many keep your mind engaged by asking that you think about or imagine this, that, or the other thing. It makes no difference whether you are asked to imagine yourself in the most pristine landscape or to think about the holiest deity or the greatest scripture passage. Thinking is staying in the mind. Meditation is leaving the mind alone.

Whichever method you choose needs to help still the mind and thereby make room for the recognition of the Unborn. As understanding the Absolute is beyond the range of our human instruments, we have to lay them down, relax, and allow a different way of perceiving to emerge. However, for some people, at the beginning of the meditation it can be helpful to use a breathing exercise; listen to a sound, such as a gong; or make a sound, such as a mantra, chant, or kirtan, as a way of settling down and listening their way into Emptiness. But do not contemplate the meaning of a mantra, chant, or kirtan — simply allow the words to become vibrations without association. And after a few minutes of using one of these techniques, let it go. Meditation is not manufacturing Silence but discovering that it is already present.

The work of meditation is the practice of detaching from our emotional, thinking, and physical body. Disengaging makes our mind empty and available to witness our Natural State of being. Meditation is a kind of concentrating on not concentrating but without much effort. If you put too much energy into “accomplishing Silence,” you are using the mind. With effortless effort, as the Buddhists say, meditation is the only way to come home.

Once you are comfortable, be still and close your eyes, or rest your gaze on the floor slightly in front of your body. Sometimes a mixture of eyes closed and open can help you not drift away with thoughts. Find and then stay with the “I am” feeling, disassociated from everything, even disconnected from the two words “I am.” Just rest in the “I am” sensation. If this sounds confusing, start by thinking the words “I am meditating.” Then take away “meditating” and just stay with the remaining “I am.” And as soon as you can, let go of the words “I am” and just stay with the sensation behind or underneath the words.

Or: Relax into the awareness of Silence or Emptiness. Not necessarily the sound of silence or physical space, but a three-dimensional kind of silent and invisible presence.

Or: Listen to the nothingness that lies behind and between sounds, thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

Or: Rest in the Void.

To rest in Eternity, our mental, emotional, and physical body needs to be completely open and unguarded but not used. When thoughts, feelings, memories, fantasies, or sensations spring up, or even bombard you, just leave them alone. But do not repress them or try to force them out. They get their power from your interest or dislike. Keep disregarding all that surfaces as you note unimportant noises, such as a car passing by or the hum from a household item. Just do not get involved — let mental, emotional, and physical noise come and go, while gently drawing your attention to that which is behind it, to that which is aware of it. Watch from a distance without engaging. Where are you then? What is watching and ignoring?

What you are looking for is where you are looking from. — St. Francis of Assisi

If you have chronic pain, try to leave it alone and watch it. Draw your attention to that which is aware of the pain, kind of like drawing your attention to attention itself, over and over again. It is okay if this is all you “do.” And it is okay if your rest in Eternity only lasts for brief, recurring moments.
You might have had a glimpse of your True Nature earlier in life and now you are comparing, waiting, and trying to “get back to that same experience.”

This is a hindrance, because you are keeping yourself in time. Memory is past, and the activity of seeking, or in this case reliving a memory, is also an activity of the mind! Meditation is letting go of time and the mind. Do not chase anything within time or the mind. Once you give up your attachment to a particular memory or idea of what the Ultimate is, you are free to have it in the Now. Where imagination runs out – there it is! Your Source.

Traditions where the goal is to achieve a particular altered state of consciousness, regardless of how ecstatic it makes you feel, are not helpful because they keep turning on that which we need to let go of. If your mind is in an altered state of consciousness, it is not available to witness the Vital Force. The ordinary mind can experience a large variety of expanded and altered states of consciousness, but this is not meditation or awakening — it is an experience of the personal mind. We enter meditation when the ordinary mind is not used. The objective of meditation is to help you awaken to what you are or from the entity you think you are. The by-product of that discovery might make you feel ecstatic, but that euphoria is not an altered state of consciousness — it is bliss arising out of the Ground of Being.
Do not hurry to progress, because then you are drifting into effort. Be content with exactly where you are. When you have experienced Emptiness, even for just one breath, Silence will begin to invigorate your life, and you are on your way to a high that you will never come down from. If you have the thought, “I wonder whether I am in Silence now?” you are not. There are no thoughts, emotions, or worldly sensations present at the same time as you are resting in Silence, just a subtle Awareness that you are experiencing “nothing” or looking from “boundless inner space.” A thought may, however, interrupt Silence, and then you know that Silence happened, and you can usually fall right back into it and by contrast recognize when you rest in Emptiness. And one day you may realize that this Emptiness and the Awareness of it feels much more like “you” than thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. Then you have awakened to your True Nature.

Even for people who have realized their Original Nature, thoughts, emotions, and sensations continue to arise during meditation. But slowly, more and more Silence enters our lives, and even as we move about our day, we begin to relate from the place of Presence. Our interactions become much more spontaneous, relevant, and alive. As we awaken, events in the inside and outside world are seen as similar phenomena, both witnessed by what we are and arising and subsiding within what we are. The division between things happening in our head and the outside world disappear. A car or a thought passing by will both be experienced as happening outside and inside what we will come to know as our True Self. At that time, our relationship to the voice in our own head and a voice coming from another person becomes the same. Depending on what the voice says, we listen and respond, or we ignore it and walk away.

NOT TOO HARD AND NOT TOO EASY: If you experience resistance to meditating or to finishing a session, watch the resistance as you watch anything else that arises and finish your session. It trains you to not go with your personal mind, to recognize its separateness from where you are looking from, until it becomes clear that where you are looking from is you: the Universal Mind! The activity of meditation should feel fulfilling in itself and generate a sensation of wholeness. Meditation will create space for the Sacred to emerge until one day it breaks through and in a flash you see it as your own True Self. And when that happens, it is so simple that you will wonder what took you so long. It is right here, now, inside you, and always has been. Do not give up!

LIVING MEDITATION: Whether sitting still, moving about, or dealing with life’s many demands,
living meditation is resting in Silence in each daily activity, so we are prepared and more skilled in sustaining Presence when challenges come through. Take every stolen moment to put your attention on whatever is behind whatever your mind is on. Put attention on Awareness itself, on the real you, and rest there, sometimes with your eyes closed and at other times with your eyes open. Do this while sitting in the car and waiting for a green light, waiting for an appointment, waiting for kids or for dinner to be ready, or while lying awake at night. You will never be bored again.

Meditation in action is participating in life without identifying with, naming, or judging what we come in contact with. It is resting in Awareness, but not necessarily awareness of anything in particular. It is sensing our environment and people energetically. We then come into a presence of being that feels like undirected Love, like taking in the beauty and perfume of a flower with an empty and quiet mind. Meditation with open eyes has no voice in the head saying, “Oh, what a beautiful flower, and its aroma is amazing!” Note how the mind has a compulsive, obsessive habit of wrapping itself around every single thing and dishing out opinions, categorizing, packaging, and labeling people and events. As you make this kind of watchfulness into a practice, a gap between the real you and the world will be created, and this gap will get wider and wider until the borders collapse, and the nonexistent false self vanishes; the observer merges with the observed. That is awakening.

Eventually whether in conscious sitting meditation or going about our day, we come to realize that there is nothing to gain or lose from life, so we might as well receive it all with equal reverence. Bow to each moment as it is Divinely given.

This lifestyle is a form of self love. The more Silence there is in you, the easier it will be to listen to that inner voice telling you what is True in each moment. Truth will shine its bright Light into all the nooks and crannies where ego is still hiding. And with each shadow exposed and released by conscious Awareness, our life becomes increasingly lighter, regardless of our responsibilities and circumstances.

AFTER AWAKENING: Anyone can become aware of his or her Eternal Nature. It is not reserved for
those with exemplary conduct or virtue. The Eternal is here, now, in all of us, and we miss it by looking for it. After we awaken, meditation becomes a practice of resting as that which we have found ourselves to be — the Infinite. We continue allowing the Universal Intelligence to melt ego away, to proceed with transforming us and shining through us. You know you are free when you can go back into the thick of life, engage in the most challenging situations and relationships, and, without effort, difficulty, or discomfort, participate and respond from the Peace within yourself. With your conditionings and identities cleared, you have no more buttons to be pushed. But continue to be vigilant! Situations may arise that reveal an uncleared weed or two. Leave no stone unturned.