There are often ups and downs in our lives, success, failure, gain, loss, joy and disappointment, pain, suffering, chaos, confusion, insecurity. And no matter how much we strengthen our ego, develop our confidence and personal qualities, we still remain vulnerable and dependent on external circumstances, people, situations, and events.
But there is a place in us, deep inside us, where everything is fine, there we are independent and free, a place that is our true nature, a place where we are “at home.”
Hermann Hesse writes in Siddhartha:
“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.”
And as one of my favourite authors, Deepak Chopra says:
“People need to know that they have all the tools within themselves. Self-awareness, which means awareness of their body, awareness of their mental space, awareness of their relationships – not only with each other but with life and the ecosystem.”
“Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there – buried under the 50,000 thoughts. the average person thinks every day”.
There are many types of Meditation,
but everyone can find the one that is best for him. You don’t have to be a Tibetan monk or a Zen Buddhist to meditate. Everyone can meditate, and this is our most natural state.
I like Meditation, in which you just sit relaxed in the silence and focus on your breathing, or as it is said in Buddhism – you do not focus exactly but merge with your breathing. You pay attention to everything that happens to you – such as passing thoughts, desires, feelings, etc., but nothing is analyzed, evaluated, determined.
You don’t need to stop your thoughts or try to control your reactions. The mind is best directed by simply being released. We constantly have thoughts in our heads, and they flow constantly. The mind is like a naughty monkey jumping from branch to branch, and if you try to tame it, it will start jumping even faster. But in Meditation, when you just “observe” the passing thoughts … they subside, stop, and a “gap” appears between them.
Many authors claim that you should not think about anything during Meditation that you should stop your thoughts. But it is challenging, if not impossible, to consciously say to your thoughts, “STOP.”
There is a modern zen-koan:
“Can you not think about anything without not thinking about it at all?“
If you sit and think, “I don’t think about anything, my mind is empty,”… that’s thought again. So you shouldn’t try to stop your thoughts, and you shouldn’t think about it. It would help if you did not give any pompousness to the Meditation or expect too much from it. It will only hinder you. You just sit and watch … and let everything happen. Let it just be. If any thought arises – “do I do it right? “or some emotion appears, not to go into it and evaluate it, not to blame yourself, not to stop it, but to observe it … and then it flies away.
It is best to imagine that you are sitting and watching the sky – birds fly there- big and small, loud and quiet, clouds cross – white or black, turbulent or calm. But they fly back and forth, they come and go. They go, and the space remains calm and clean. Its peace and balance cannot be disturbed. Relax, and do not think whether your posture is correct. Get rid of any restrictions and any desire for control. If you try to follow some technology strictly, it will only strain you. Get rid of everything and don’t even think that you are relaxed or how Meditation should happen. Go beyond the limiting mind that is always trying to define. When you are calm, you will just feel. That is how the magic of Meditation happens.
“So whatever thoughts and emotions arise, allow them to rise and settle, like the waves in the ocean. Whatever you find yourself thinking, let that thought rise and settle, without any constraint. Don’t grasp at it, feed it, or indulge it; don’t cling to it, and don’t try to solidify it. Neither follow thoughts nor invite them; be like the ocean looking at its own waves, or the sky gazing down on the clouds that pass through it. You will soon find that thoughts are like the wind; they come and go. The secret to Meditation is not to “think” about thoughts, but to allow them to flow through the mind, while keeping your mind free of afterthoughts. “From Sogyal Rinpoche’s Tibetan Book of Life and Death
Thus, when you observe how reactions, thoughts, sensations appear and then disappear, you realize that everything IS and IS NOT. E. And that everything that happens in us is transient. Our reactions are triggered by some processes inside us, and we react knowledgable mechanically. Our consciousness is burdened by external influences, by our initial expectations and ideas, by our attitudes. But through Meditation, you go beyond that consciousness and reach our true nature, where we are detached from the outside world. Looking at things from this state, we understand that we can react to something in a new way and that everything that happens is a kind of game, an illusion, a temporary role.
In Meditation, we come out of this role and reach the Spirit within us. Some external event can never shake it. The Spirit is free from all the ego’s needs for approval, control, evaluation, determination. The Spirit inside us is always calm – as when there is excitement on the surface of the sea, but deep at the bottom, it is calm, and no storms can affect the peace.
In Meditation, you feel that the world is as it should be, that it is as it is. And it is not necessary to fight it, evaluate it, and complain, but to ACCEPT it. We don’t have to control the world because uncertainty is part of evolution, of change. But we can simply see the world as it is, without labeling it, without interpreting it, looking at it with clear eyes, without distorting the view through the prism of our burdened ego.
The place we reach during Meditation is the only place where we can find peace, get the Wisdom, the Power, the Love, the Freedom, and the Joy within us. Through Meditation, we can reach insights, decisions, inspiring ideas, peace, and balance. Because then we are free from everything because we have got “home.”
And a final words of wisdom by Steve Jobs:
“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom, and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before.”
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