Meditation In India
WEDNESDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2009
What is meditation?
It is a two-step process – journey and destination.
The ultimate goal is the realization of the Self. The Self is your very own being – your soul, the substance you are made of. It is so near and yet appears to be very far as it is covered by agitations and impurities of the mind. It is like a lake that is covered by dirt and whose waters are restless. You can see the bottom only when the dirt is removed and agitations subside. The bottom has always been there. It is just that you are not able to see it.
The immediate goal of meditation is the realization of peace and purity. Purity means detachment from the causes of restlessness.
It is only when the mind is peaceful and happy that meditation is possible. There cannot be any depth in meditation if you are restless and unhappy. These days, even the process, i.e., the work you do for realizing the Self, is called meditation.
This process gives peace and happiness. This, in turn, prepares and gives you the realization of the Self. Both the journey and the destination can be called meditation.
How is it done?
For meditation, there has to be a sincere desire that one has to grow towards the higher centers of consciousness. It requires determination and sincerity about the goal of unconditioned peace, love and freedom.
The meditator has to find a comfortable and firm posture in which back, neck and head remain in a straight line. This ensures alertness in meditation. The mind should be feeling fresh as with a tired mind, one cannot do deep contemplation.
In the beginning, most of the work is done for detaching from mind’s restlessness and its roots. One should be careful that one does not put anything under the carpet. One must face oneself in meditation. That will involve detaching from the thoughts and the causes of restlessness in the mind.
All agitations in the mind take place because one is too attached with certain conditionings and take them to be absolute truths. One is also involved in many illusions and is not ready to let them go. In meditation, one develops in indifference from the previous character patterns and does the work on them.
As one gets deconditioned, one comes to experience unconditioned peace, happiness and love. That is a strong foundation for meditation to happen and deepen.
In the initial practice, it is more of contemplation that is practiced. One uses the mind’s higher faculties to outgrow its lower nature. As one progresses, the use of words and thoughts becomes less and less. One is able to experience peaceful stillness without using any supports.
In the end, when the duration of meditation deepens there takes place the experience of the shift of identity. One realizes that one is an eternal blissful awareness and the identification with the body was only a transient and detachable notion. One is said to be enlightened when the individual awareness merges into the universal awareness. “I am” is replaced with “I am not”.
Source: http://www.prlog.org
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