By Arun Goel
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:
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:
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:
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.
|