Understanding the meditation process

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Understanding the meditation process

 

 

Meditation can be described as a continued, unbroken awareness of the

mind in its raw state. It involves the overcoming of distractions and

dissipated energies into a blissful awareness.

 

Let us look at it this way - at any point of time we are consumed

with countless thoughts and emotional baggage at the conscious and

subconscious level. This prevents us from experiences true,

uninhibited bliss. Bliss will result from an expanded awareness of

the happenings without any attachments and bondages whatsoever.

 

Meditation is a process which equips us with tools to experience this

bliss. It shows us the path to live everyday life using these tools.

 

People who meditate realize that they experience a beautiful inner

space as they disengage from the outside world and go deep into

themselves. They get detached from their ego and the emotional

bondage to experience this feeling. But as soon as they come out of

it, they return to their 'personality shapes'. These shapes are

accompanied by learned patterns of behavior and thinking about who

they are and what they can or cannot achieve.

 

We must strive to relate these two states - the higher meditative

state and the daily conscious state. At any point of time, we should

be aware of our 'higher state'. Meditation is mind management and

helps us do that.

 

What meditation does:

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Meditation helps us overcome our manifold desires and distractions.

It does so NOT by curbing desires - which will always be there - but

by rendering them inconsequential in front of an unbroken and larger

desire of existence. The more we can hold onto the memory of the

meditation practice, the easier it is to pull yourself back from the

endless desires.

 

Meditation teaches us to be a 'witness'. While we are meditating, we

are detached and enjoying the moment. But the moment we finish, we

lose it and return to our distracted state. So, we need to develop a

meditative lifestyle. This lifestyle will help us observe and

understand why we oscillate between the calm meditative state and our

daily state of mind. We then understand what patterns of our

lifestyle disturb our calm, blissful state.

 

Important prerequisite for meditation:

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For successful meditation, we must be 'grounded'. Grounding is that

anchor that helps us to be stable in the meditative process.

Normally, grounding can be anchoring to your breath or your body

movement while in the meditative state. It can happen that as you

proceed in meditation, you reach a stage of unknown where you have no

confidence to proceed further. At such a time, grounding is of great

help as it provides a memory of where you are and what you are doing.

It provides a stability to rest upon as energies start to change

while proceeding in meditation.

 

How to use meditation:

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In meditation, we should develop the capacity to use our energy to

manipulate our mind and how we feel. We should be able to understand

what is going on at our deeper levels. Only when we understand the

issues can we tackle them and take them out as a distraction to our

calm being.

 

In 'Antar Mouna' there are stages to do this. In stage 1 we witness

the sensory information. In stage 2, we witness the spontaneous

thoughts. In stage 3, we create thoughts that need to be tackled.

Stage 4 deals with grappling with unconscious forces as they arise.

 

As you see, meditation is a time to work upon ourselves, to tackle

issues that prevent us from being in a perpetual meditative state -

one thatis without fear, anxiety, insecurity and desire.

 

Once we develop a meditative state we can see the strongest of

emotions for what they are and deal with them in a calm confident

manner.

 

Source: From Health & Yoga