Meditation as a practice is an effort to stop the mind from its natural tendency to weave thoughts. In meditation, you need to relax yourself and then focus your mind on a divine form, a sacred sound, a word or phrase as a mantra; or to focus on your own physical body, your own breath or your own thoughts. It is, in fact, sitting with your own mind for a while.
You watch the drifting thoughts in the space of your mind. As you keep watching, the mind wanders away; you bring it back to the watchful, playful, mindful, act of being in the mind, for the mind, with the mind. Then you are in the grand world of your Inner Being. This is meditation.
It is not just a forced technique to practice. It is the playfulness of your spirit. Remember - the purpose of meditation is not to achieve anything. It is to reach a state of letting go, a profound state of relaxation. Meditation is your willingness to do nothing. You are obsessed with doing too many things. As if that is not enough, you are obsessed with doing them perfectly! That leads to untold stress. In meditation your effort is to attain to Non-Doing.
To do something without any expectation, then the mind cannot calculate any more. It has to melt. It melts into the flow of the Universal rhythm of joy. Meditation empowers your mind to be more disciplined, more focused, more refined, more content. True happiness in life, flows out of it spontaneously. Meditation connects you to that spontaneous inner source.
One of the best ways to enter Meditation is to watch one’s breath. As your mind comes close to the rim of your nostrils, you witness the warm air moving in and out. Count to ten while breathing (one cycle of inhale and exhale would be 1), then again start from 1 to 10, you will see that your mind is calming down and with that, your body and mind are vibrating in a higher frequency. This vibration invites lightness and luminosity, health and harmony into your life.
Meditation need not always be simply sitting quietly, absorbed in Oneness. One can be in a beautiful state of meditation, even in the process of doing. You need to be awake to your inner reality - to your spirit! You can do the same things mindfully, consciously. For example if you are doing the dishes, recognize that you are not doing them alone. The water is also washing them. The detergent, the sink, the trees that provide you oxygen are also washing. The clouds in the sky provide the water. The air helps you to breathe. Mother Earth, the air, the sun, all have joined with you, in celebration. You feel washing dishes is a chore only when you cannot consciously connect to the Cosmic process involved in your work.
When you feel a part of the whole, everything becomes sacred. You don’t work; you are not doing. Work happens through you, it flows through you. You are no longer an obstruction. When you are not mindful, it is your ego, thinking in isolation, which feels alone. With mindfulness, your consciousness expands. You access the Whole.
A true yogi is one who does not give up action, but who makes action divine by turning it into worship and meditation.
The effort in meditation is always to be effortless. In meditation, as you persevere through the initial obstacles, you begin to feel your natural connection to the universal field of energy and vibrations. You feel the calm state of your mind. Mundane emotions are transmuted into a joyful experience of giving and forgiving. You feel your body and mind are in rhythm with the universal rhythm, and you are not struggling to be happy any more. Meditation thus is more an inner journey toward the Self within, a journey for discovering the real 'I" as contrasted with the “I” that goes through all the ups and downs of the outer world.
As you bathe in that Cosmic Energy, bask in it, dance in it, you are in the utter ecstasy of divine bliss. Once you realize the need to connect to your deepest Source within, you will come to know what you have been missing all through your life. It is your love affair with your Self!
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