When you allow a glass of muddy water to stand, the mud slowly settles revealing a layer of clear water. So it is when you allow your mind to be ‘still’ by, for example, watching your breath. The thoughts, feelings, sensations, images and everything else that generally streams through your mind settles like the mud in a glass of muddy water. What is then revealed is your ‘clear water’ mind, your natural or unconditioned mind.
In this mind, you are able to watch the rise and fall of all the ‘mud’ WITHOUT IDENTIFYING with it. Instead, you simply watch your thoughts, feelings, sensations, images etc without judging them, attaching to them, averting them, getting sucked into their dramas or lost in their web of associations whether good or bad.
This ability to observe your mind in this way has MANY BENEFITS or by-products including a sense of FREEDOM, peace, joy, boundlessness, the unblocking of energy trapped in various parts of the body (healing),and the experience of being the infinite AWARENESS that you naturally are.
Meditation is Self Awareness – awareness of the conditioned self as well as awareness of the unconditioned self. In this moment to moment awareness is truth. It is as simple as that.
People have many misconceptions about meditation and there is far more that has been said about meditation than has been actually experienced. And so I am asked many questions. I do my best to answer, to explain what meditation is and what it is not, what we might gain from it and how. But I also say, and this is probably the most useful thing that I have to say:
Just do it.
Observing your mind will make you aware of many things, one of which is this:
Judgment, attachment, aversion and resistance have painful effects.
When we do any of this, we pinch ourselves off the natural flow of Love, of Life. The effect of this is a feeling of unpleasantness, discomfort and even pain, its intensity determined by how deeply and chronically we have invested in the stories that these judgements, attachments, aversions and resistances entangle and are in turn entangled by.
When you observe the mind, you realize that it’s not the person or thing or situation that is causing you such pain but your very reaction to them/it, a reaction that at some point was fueled by a judgment you made about them/it! Such a realization is liberating!
How so?
Because you realize that it’s up to you rather than the person or thing or situation to relieve yourself of your pain. You realize that you can change the way you react to something. You no longer have to wait or hope for the person, thing or situation to change – something that you have no control over anyway! And the ‘miraculous’ thing that happens when you change how you react is that people and things can’t help but change! How so? Because an integral component in the matrix of relationships – You – has changed!
So, talk less and practice more. Ask less and observe more.
If you have a sincere attitude and give yourself a chance to yield fully to the practice, you WILL experience its MANY benefits and you WILL live less and less out of your conditioning, its judgments, its demands, its fears, its neediness, its unworthiness, its harshness and so on and more and more out of your natural, unconditioned, peaceful, loving, free and limitless self.
Isn’t this what you want? Really? So, please, just do it.
Take a gentle, relaxed, open approach and I assure you, not only will you experience all the benefits I mentioned and so many more, all your questions, if not answered, will become irrelevant 🙂
If you’d like some help with your meditation practice or starting one, why not sign up for one of my Meditation Packages?MENTORING
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