Meditation
All humans can benefit from a meditation practice. Meditation is magical because it assists us in releasing the hold that the mind and emotions have on us. We learn to rest in awareness and to watch the mind’s thoughts and the body’s feelings, becoming the witness, the observer. The highest form of meditation, according to the masters, is to become aware of awareness, conscious of consciousness. When the thoughts arise in the mind, if we identify with them and think that we ARE the thinking mind, we create misery inside. When the feelings arise, and we block them or push them away in order to avoid feeling them, we harden our hearts and create more painful feelings in the long run. Thoughts are not who we are, and feelings are just sensations that want to be experienced, and released.
Meditation is the practice of becoming aware of what is constantly going on inside of us. Meditation gives us a break from being the “thinker” and allows us to be our spirit, the watcher, the observer of the thoughts and emotions. We get to rest back in spirit and feel the awareness within us. This practice allows us to clear away the garbage that is covering up our inate nature, which is joy and peace and love. That is what our spirit is made of, and we can’t experience that unless we uncover it. Children inately know this sense of spirit, they are present in the moment and notice the beauty in the world around them. We can look at the world with the eyes of a child, the beauty of our surrounding, the gratitude we feel when we see the big picture of this amazing planet and our place in it, the joy of being alive, the peace that comes from letting go.
Most of this world we have no control over. I don’t believe that spirituality is the feeling of solid ground, but that spirituality is the feeling of freefalling through space, hurtling down the rapids of life on an inner tube with nothing to hold on to. And rather than feeling fear about this, I believe that knowing how little control I have over life and its events helps me to stay in reality, helps me to let go and have faith and accept things as they truly are. And when I do this, I see a beautiful synchronicity to life and feel protected by life. This world was here for billions of years before me, and will be here long after as well. I am just a human on a speck of dirt flying through space around one of trillions of stars. My problems are not real, they are just thoughts in my mind and emotions in my body. True reality is that I only have a few years here on this amazingly beautiful planet, full of beautiful humans and animals and plants and rocks and mountains and oceans.
Meditation allows me to remember these things, these glimpses of reality. It allows me to quiet the voice in my head by ceasing to identify with it, and resting in the awareness of my spirit, watching this world unfold before me and enjoying the ride. If there are thoughts, I release them and watch them. If there are noises, I detach from them and hold my true center. If there is an ache or pain, I feel the joy deeper inside me and release my judgments of the sensations of the body. If my mind wanders, I guide it back to breath in this moment. We can use mantra - chanting a statement like “breathe in love, breathe out peace” or Om Namaya Shivaya, or anything we want to quiet the mind and give the mind something to focus on. Mainly I just attempt to hold awareness, being aware of being aware like a fun house mirror stretching into infinity. And I rest in spirit, in the present moment, full of love and light and beauty and joy.
