(Photograph: Tree of Life Meditation Scarf in Pink)
Meditation just isn’t about believing one thing. It is about being attentive to your expertise. When the thoughts may be concentrated and centered, it calms. And as soon as the thoughts calms, it’s simpler to see the reality of our expertise. However as a result of our minds are stressed, it’s usually tough to look at the reality of our expertise.
Within the e-book Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, meditation (or yoga) means the cessation of the modifications or fluctuations of the thoughts. Ideas, concepts, emotions, feelings preserve effervescent up all day lengthy. Cessation of that’s meditation. Merely put, it’s the thoughts chatter that pulls our consideration away from what we expertise within the current second.
For instance, for example you sit to meditate. You start to focus in your breath. You are feeling the feeling of air in your nostrils as you inhale. You discover your chest rise and fall with the breath. Then abruptly you marvel “What am I going to have for lunch right this moment?” Your thoughts simply fluctuated and you’re now not current along with your expertise. That is an instance of the modifications of the thoughts that meditation is making an attempt to quiet.
The purpose of meditation is straightforward, however not all the time straightforward. Our minds are so conditioned to observe thought strands that take us from subject to subject. That consistently take us anyplace, besides the place we at the moment are. Changing into caught up in ideas feels so pure to us as a result of we do it virtually on a regular basis.
Why even hassle to shift our consideration to our expertise somewhat than our ideas? What’s the level? What occurs when our thoughts calms?
As acknowledged within the third sutra of Yoga Sutras of Patanjali…
“When all ideas stop, the self, the witness stays or stabilizes in its personal nature, personal type, our essence.”
Ideas usually stop once you go to sleep. Additionally, it occurs typically in meditation once you go to sleep. However that is not the identical as meditation. When you find yourself asleep you aren’t acutely aware and conscious. In meditation, you’re acutely aware and conscious because the thoughts calms and ideas stop.
When our thoughts has calmed and our consideration is targeted on the breath, the physique, the second or our consciousness…house opens up for seeds of perception to be planted. Realizations that carry us near our true nature.
Take the instance of a lake. The water of the lake is completely nonetheless. There are not any waves or ripples. And the water can also be very clear. There is no such thing as a mud. A nonetheless and clear lake means that you can see all the way in which to the underside of the lake. But when the water has ripples and is muddy, it is virtually not possible to see the underside of the lake. Equally, within the lake of the thoughts when it is calm and clear, you possibly can understand your true nature, the very essence of who you’re. To understand, on this sense, is to expertise it. It is a right away expertise. And that’s the function of the meditation.
You now know what can occur when ideas stop. However what if ideas do not stop? If ideas are there, then what occurs?
When there are ideas within the thoughts, you change into recognized with these ideas. You suppose I’m so and so. I’m completely happy. I’m unhappy. I perceive what this individual says. I do not perceive what this individual says. I need this. I do not need this. I like this. I do not like this. All of those are ideas. And you then change into recognized with them. The True Self may be skilled when the thoughts is with out ideas. And that’s the function. That’s what known as Self-Realization.
These days, meditation is used for leisure, stress administration, hypertension administration and to look younger. And sure, meditation gives all these advantages. However that was not the unique function of the meditation.
There was a narrative I as soon as heard from Swami Sarvapriyananda that I might prefer to share. The story goes like this…
The yogi, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who popularized Transcendental Meditation right here within the west was as soon as requested why he was instructing meditation as a technique to be calm, management hypertension, handle stress and keep younger, provided that these weren’t the true functions of meditation. His response was “I give them what they need so they’ll need what I give them.”
They need calmness. They need leisure. They need much less stress. They wish to reside lengthy and look younger. It is all doable. He went on to say “As they apply and get these advantages, they change into increasingly more inquisitive about the true function of meditation, which is what I wish to give them. Then they need what I wish to give them.”
We want you all the very best in your journey to Self-Realization. And it doesn’t matter what motive you’ve for working towards meditation, you’ll reap the advantages.
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