Meditation is about letting go. You let go off any of thoughts floating , running in your head. Without force, relaxing the muscle of your mind muscles, taking a break from your reasoning process. Welcoming all thoughts, rejecting none, and judge none of those incoming thoughts and images. Giving not any mental comment upon the impressions coming to your mind. That's how meditation is practiced in general.
Along my meditation journey, I've played with key words which reminded me of what I need to do during meditation.
"Shut up and listen"
"Relax the mind"
"no comment"
"Witness the mind"
"Watch the mind like a TV"
"Be a stone, react to nothing"
"Be a baby, reason not"
"Observe each thought, let no thought come and go without you knowing"
"What's the mind movie today, time to watch it"
Each day, trying to do better than the previous. I had only one goal mind. A goal to become very good at listening and watching. Yes, I only needed my inner ears and eyes for this meditations.
People with a very active left brain, those who reason a lot, could face difficulties at the beginning. I know this because I'm one of them. I've a super beta left brain which doesn't stop reasoning, which can chat for hours none stop without showing any sign of fatigue. . Hence it's been very hard for me to calm my mind during meditation at the beginning. At the meditation center where I guide meditations, many people have also admitted to have the same issue. So it's a fact.
From practice, I've come to a conclusion that it would be a mistake to kill the mind from chatting. In fact it needs to learn how to even chat more and also how to shut up. It needs both skills.
Meditation is a practice which gives us a skill. Not a tool to kill one of its natural property which is to think, visualize and reason. Nothing is bad, it's the timing and the way we use them which makes anything good or bad.
After a million meditations in your life, you should reach a level where you can willingly release your mind to not say any word when there is no need to. And to reason as hard as possible whenever you need to. Yes that's what they don't say in meditation centers of the physical world. They only ask students to stop the mind from thinking. Then the poor student feels that there's something not natural about it then it won't be long before they quit.
Then you would ask, why develop the skill of shutting up the mind? Well, first because as we were growing up, we've naturally practiced our mind to chat a lot. Let's face it, life has a lot to make us think about constantly and we are slowly loosing our child like skill of letting go of the mind.
Secondly because we are not living life to it's full if we don't know how pause the mind from thinking. There is as many benefits from thinking as to pause the thinking process.
And guess what, both process complete each other. Thinking and not thinking. Those two are meant to alternate to strengthen each other. For example you would think better and more intelligently if you for a moment you pause your thinking before resuming to think. Hence we naturally think better after a good night sleep.
The mind is like a machine, we should switch it on when we need to use it, and switch if off when we are not using it. If it continuously keep running without a pause, well it get weakens soon. And we are surprised why younger human beings are fast thinkers than older people. Why younger people have a much better memory, and why they are less stressed.
And so pausing the mind from thinking is good for the brain/body health. But there's a curious benefit on top of that. Which would interest the spiritual minded people.
For being able to pause the mind from thinking, we get to become aware of new impressions surrounding us and which are within us. And that's what I'm mostly interested about in meditation and the core reason for having not stopped meditation until today. The joy that comes from it can't be described and it keeps increasing the better we get at this skill.
There are millions of impressions we humans do not really pay attention to. Simply because we are too much distracted by the external world and even by our own random thoughts.
Our mind machine is not just a thought making machine, it is also a thought receiver machine.
Yes it's like a cell phone in that manner. It send and receive messages. We receive all kinds of messages coming from different dimensions, and even from people around us, but most of the time we don't know it when they come because of that existing noise in the mind. How are you going to hear anything which is not from you if you don't shut up first.
Many of the impressions we receive from humans around us are sometimes perceived as our own thoughts in the mind. Meaning sometimes what we think is our own genius thought is NOT. Same for the bad thoughts. Sometimes we are just the carrier of someone's else idea. Hence many have killed, rapped, stolen because of some other people's thoughts floating around earth. Our mind attracts the kind of thoughts which matches the thoughts you usually entertain in your head. That is how a music keep producing new music, the writer keeps writing new words, the scientist keep getting new ideas. The fact that you say, "Hoo I've just gotten an idea" should explain it all.
But it's not the reception of human kind of thoughts I'm mostly interested in. It's the impressions coming beyond the normal noisy mental world. There's a space around us where very subtle impressions, thoughts and images are floating. Impressions you may only become aware of if you become good at meditation. If you become good at properly using your inner eyes and ears. And later you may even add some personal impression to it using your inner mouth.
Okay, in case you are starting to wonder what I mean by inner ears, inner eyes and inner mouth. I'm referring to your psychic yet natural ability to process inner impressions like thoughts and mental images and make mental conversations. Those natural abilities are made available to you thanks to your invisible organs of senses called the chakras. The inner ear is your throat chakra, the inner eye is your third eye, and your inner mouth is your crown chakra.
And so many sensations may occur to who reaches the spaces of uncommon impression during meditation. Some have felt like floating, as if their soul was separating from their body, some others have felt being in the space, other like being in box. Others felt a great peace they didn't want to come out of it. Others saw some of the structures/shape of the universe. Some received solutions to their earth problems for school, work or life situation. Many receive spiritual lessons from it and make contact with various entities which matches their kind of mind.
What you will get in touch with when you reach this subtle quiet space I've been talking about, depends entirely on your kind of mind. If you take care of animals, you would probably attract finest information about animals, if you are are a cook, it would be easy for you to get to know new a lot more food. If you are an esoteric people, you would attract mystical knowledge which you can use to better your spiritual life.
Love and light to all.
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