“If every 8-year-old is taught meditation, we would eliminate violence within one generation.” – Dalai Lama
Meditation in today’s day and age isn’t exactly a secret whether you’re on a profound spiritual journey or just someone with a busy schedule looking to relax the mind.
There are a large number of interpretations of what exactly meditation is and what is the purpose of it.
If you have not heard of the story of Gautama Buddha, in short, it goes like this.
Gautama Buddha was raised in a really rich family and had everything he could ever want; he had all fortune, all the fame, all the women that he could have dreamed of, and his family loved and cherished him so much.
He had grown up in the religious realm of Hinduism; he knew most of the knowledge that had previously been taught, all the wise principles known to the Hindu tradition.
And, yet, with that fame, fortune, money, wisdom and women, he had still felt a sense of lack.
He had felt voids and insecurities and that there was a higher level of feeling, a higher peace that he was not being shown through everything he knew.
So, after 6 years of searching and experimenting to find that certain something he was, he finally gave up his search and sat under a tree and meditated for 7 straight days.
It wasn’t until he finally gave up his search and decided to go within that he had finally become enlightened, hence he is known as the Enlightened One.
Not only his life but also the direction of humanity had changed instantly in that moment—forever.
Gautama Buddha is still making a large impact on the earth centuries later from his quotes, his teachings and, most importantly, from the energy he sent in that point in time until now.
The first thing you should understand about meditation is that it is not, and I repeat is NOT, a religious principle.
If you look closely at religions, in particular organized religions, you will see that Buddhism is not a religion either, it is a way of being. But this is another topic for another day.
“Even if 1% of humanity becomes meditative wars will disappear.” – Osho
The interesting word Osho uses there is “meditative.”
When you think of meditation you can picture someone doing a yoga position, or lying flat on the ground, with their eyes closed.
Osho uses meditation in a whole new light then the proverbial basis. One of the very basic points of meditation is to quiet the mind.
The whole point of meditation is being aware of that dimension that is here, looking, and witnessing, and that is this present moment.
Waking up to your awareness of this present moment, or the conscious presence, is what Buddha woke up to when he became enlightened.
He awoke to what?
He woke up to the present moment.
How can you wake up to present moment?
It’s because until you TRULY know what the present moment is, you are asleep.
This is not bad, but unless you awaken to the present moment then you (the mind) will be restless. Waking up means finally resting in the true space of peace.
Everyone looks at the present moment as a conceptual point in time.
You can’t get to the present moment without the past and you can’t get to the future without going through this moment is generally how it’s looked at. That’s the logical view of the present moment.
But most of humanity does not REALLY know what the present moment is. The present moment is not a way of looking at life, it’s not a perspective, it’s not a deep way of thinking, in fact it’s not about thinking at all.
So when you wake up to the present moment, what you’re actually waking up from is mind dominance.
You’re waking up from the never-ending stream of thought.
Every person you talk to will say “Of course the present moment exists, silly!” and then they will go entire days, months, years and even lifetimes without fully encompassing what truly the present moment is.
In other words, they will be stuck inside of mind dominance until further noticed of what this moment truly is.
Mind is past, which is memory, and anticipation, which is future.
You go on planning your day, at 11 P.M I have to this, then this at 4:30, then 7:30, then 9:30, and your whole life becomes about planning things and then you wonder where time went.
Where it went was you were so busy planning a life that you didn’t realize that life can only happen right here and right now.
The reason we don’t understand what the present moment really is, is our mind has been conditioned since the beginning of humanity that we must think our ways through life.
The very basis of waking up to the present moment is so that we can use time as a tool rather than time using us, by being completely stuck inside of it.
And this essentially is the basic foundation for all meditation. Meditation is about being aware that you are right here, without the mind knowing it, or without thinking about it.
You don’t need to sit somewhere to meditate, to maintain a special pose, or to repeat a mantra or affirmation; just simply by being aware that you are right here in this instant without thinking about it is to meditate.
Meditation is not about how to live, or what you should or should not be doing; it’s simply saying no matter what you do, existence, which is your awareness of this moment, becomes the focal point.
This means, in translation, the focal point of your life is not to get stuck in time because of what you have to do.
With this being said, I have made the foundation of my life to be aware of this present moment, but because my mind, just as yours and the rest of humanities, has been so deeply conditioned to be thought, in past and in future, I take the time every day to focus intensively on my awareness of this moment.
This is rather to focus, not with your mind but with your inner body energy. Focus through your body, allowing the non-movement of mind to happen and to happen for good.
The mind will want to jump back in, the past will want to come up and so will the future.
This is OK, let the mind do whatever it wants, just know that the non-movement of mind is still here, just when the thought comes, watch the non-movement neutrally observing.
It’s easy to say that our lives should be mainly focused on the present moment but it’s a whole other ballgame if there is an actual embodiment of this moment, and if it is entirely engulfed and overtaken by the awareness of this moment.
When we have technology from phones, tablets, laptops TV’s, bills to take care of, food to put on the table, gas for our cars and kids, it’s extremely understandable why the mind would be important.
It’s understandable why time is using us, because all those responsibilities get done with time.
This is not just about taking a break from all the technology and responsibilities you have.
The whole point of meditation is to get rid of all distractions from your phone or tablet and to just sit in meditation.
Meditation helps build the entire infrastructure of your life in terms of being aware of the present moment, or conscious presence.
It helps to detox the mind from all the thought that its drugged up on.
I’m a big proponent of sitting however you feel the most comfortable, because you don’t want to be distracted by physical discomfort.
People would have this notion in meditation, when you’re in pure presence that you are quieting the mind.
I would say that that is the wrong vibration of words, however, because the thought of meditating still seems like you are “doing” something and so does quieting the mind.
But what are you actually doing?
What action are you taking?
The point is you’re not doing anything; it may seem like you are doing something but during meditation there is absolutely no doing.
So don’t see meditation as an act, or it will keep you stuck in time, when you’re trying to see timelessness.
And, also, in terms of quieting the mind it has the feel of acting; when you look at the nature of mind, the mind itself is the noise, it is the noise creator, it is a speaker of thought.
There is no such thing as a quiet mind in presence because there is only a such thing as the mind in the pure conscious presence.
So don’t think of it as quieting the mind, but letting the mind stop, being aware of the non-movement that is already here.
Even when the mind is loud with thought, the non-movement that watches it is still right here and does not leave you.
With this being said, getting engulfed by the present moment can happen in an instant, but rarely does that happen when the mind is so used to spinning its gears, when the brain is so used to putting in so much effort to think.
Letting the awareness of conscious presence overtake you is about slowing down the gears of the brain/mind, and this happens by repeatedly being aware of conscious presence every single time thought comes in, because every time conscious presence hits, it deepens, and it will deepen to the point of pure ecstasy, pure bliss…Nirvana.
And although Nirvana will not stay with you, it will show you the greatest experience that life has to offer.
And it will detox your mind of a LOT of conditioning from the past, and the need to obsess over what’s going to happen in the future.
Deep meditations or calming the mind are good experiences and they are necessary in terms of detoxing the mind from the drug of thought, but it is in deepest depth of the non-movement of mind, when the mind gets really flushed out of the common dysfunction of being stuck in time.
Picture someone being alive for 1000 years, and being drunk for the first 999 years and thinking that the blurriness, the amnesia, the confusion was based on reality.
But then someone induces that person off of alcohol and they become sober for the first time in their life and they realized that there is a WHOLE world that they have never seen before.
For most humans this blurriness, this amnesia, this confusion doesn’t come from being drunk, it comes from being stuck inside of time and thought.
“Time and mind are inseparable.” – Eckhart Tolle
After the first 999 years of his being drunk what do you think the chances of said person going back to alcohol for good are?
They are almost guaranteed, and that would be because of how much alcohol would be presumptively in their system.
The reason I used 1,000 years, even though it’s unrealistic, is because of how many centuries we go back in terms of the human mind being conditioned to think and only know thought.
And even a 1000 years isn’t that long regarding history.
This is precisely why, in order to make the foundation of your life this conscious presence, it’s going to take more than just being aware of it this moment.
Meditation is about, at least for this very moment, making your conscious awareness of this very moment the end.
