Tag Archives: embodied meditation

Why Do We Make New Year’s Resolutions?

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry by
Quan Yin in her Glorious Imperfect Beauty

Quan Yin in her Glorious Imperfect Beauty

What is the nature of a resolution? What does it do for us? Do resolutions prove to be effective? Do New Year’s resolutions assist our growth and evolution in the way that we hope?

Usually resolutions are designed to help us improve in one way or another – to assist us in cultivating healthier patterns and habits. We often resolve to quit something or take-up something new, something we think will benefit us. Commonly, the subject of resolutions have to do with simple changes in behavior. We resolve to eat more healthfully, stop being so impatient, or late to appointments. We resolve to exercise more, do more yoga asana, meditate regularly, start a pranayama practice,  or maybe, quit drinking coffee. You get the point.

Why do we do this? Is it helpful to look into the past and the future to plan our moment to moment behavior? Somewhat, yes. We do learn about how our actions in the world affect our experience of it. However, obviously, because these resolutions never hold, there is an inherent problem with them.

The problem is that all of the behaviors that we would like to alter, actually take place in one moment after another and involve some kind of outside-in control. “Don’t do that” or “Do this”, we say to ourselves until around January 20th by which time we have totally let go of our plan.

By then we have added the extra- great bonus of feeling bad about ourselves when we don’t succeed with our endeavor. Perfect set up for increasing the suffering around our own recognized unwholesome patterns.

Try this: NO RESOLUTIONS

Start where you are in each moment. Pause for a few seconds to recognize the vibrating mix of awareness and life-force that you are sitting in. Let that be the field from which you make a decision…in that exact moment about what action to take. Then do what you want.

You may be surprised by what you “want” to do.

Try it.

How Meditation Works—Thinking is Not a Problem

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Rest and Meditation by

ShivaDevi

Meditation is directed toward seeing life as it is. Regular practice can help us to experience directly the fundamental nature of life. It is about developing choice; choice to see and experience all the layers of our personal and universal existence. It is about seeing the fullness. Becoming able to witness the underlying support of the divine along with the beauty and richness of our human form.

Meditation effectively clears the obstacles to our accurate perception of the nature of life. The obstacles are the habitual patterns of perception and response that we explored in the previous article. (See Meditation is Natural). When we are locked into these habitual patterns our vision of life is basically limited to continually viewing our own thoughts and feelings – over and over again. When we become curious about the nature of our perceptions, question whether we can trust them fully, and what is actually going on – we are ready to meditate.

Meditation works because Awareness itself is already clear and Awareness itself is the foundation of the thinking mind. Follow any thought to its source and you find Awareness – Awareness without a thought, just Pure Awareness. Awareness is intelligence itself and nearly infinite potential. The natural movement of this Self-Aware-Intelligence is to express and create. The natural expression of Creative Intelligence through the human mind is to think.

Thinking is the healthy and automatic expression of intelligent and creative life force in our human form. Thinking is the wholesome function of the mind. It would be futile to try to stop the mind from thinking for more than a brief time. As long as we are alive our mind will be churning out thoughts, like our body will be churning out feelings. There is no problem in this! It is part of our design. We do, however, want to be able to put our thoughts into the perspective of their source. This will spontaneously support the most effective and useful action in the world.

Harnessing the Mind’s Inherent Curiosity and Intelligence.

Since the mind is highly intelligent at its source and is always thinking, skillful practice would be to harness the mind’s natural curiosity to experience its own nature. Since the subtle levels of our individual awareness are tinged with the qualities of the subtle nature of who and what we are all made of – sat-chit-ananda – awareness-consciousness-bliss, when we begin to follow any thought or feeling to its source we get closer to experiencing the deep comfort that is always emanating from our core. Bliss is the subtle nature of thought and feeling. Because this level of bliss – ananda – is so comfortable, when we use skillful means in meditation we are naturally drawn in to this deep feeling of comfort.

This is a completely natural and automatic movement of the mind because the mind does seek greater happiness and comfort. When left to its natural function the mind will turn toward what it prefers. Often the mind gets caught on the surface levels of awareness and doesn’t remember its source.

When the body-mind system is tense the mind tends to get caught on the surface. The mind literally ruminates over the stresses and strains of experience. The superficial layers of thought are just not as satisfying, or deeply comfortable, as the deeper layers. And when our mind is restricted to the surface layers of experience, through tension and repetitive thought patterns, it becomes dissatisfied. It’s own intuition tells it that there must be something more than this.

Often the mind needs a little help to start the journey inward and let go of the tension that is holding it on the surface.

INNER GRAVITY OF TRUTH – THE INWARD AND THE OUTWARD STROKES OF MEDITATION

Pure Awareness has an inner gravity – a strong force – that pulls our individual consciousness to it. A good technique will allow us to become swept up in the pull toward the comfortable emanations of Pure Awareness. It is pleasurable. We like it. We release into it and saturate in the healing qualities of clarity, rest, and rejuvenation. Intuitively, we all know this is our source, and yet we often can’t even imagine that it can be touched, experienced, and that it can be expanded into our conscious awareness.

It is actually easy once you know how to do it! It’s easy because it is satisfying… it feels good and it is the natural direction of the evolution of consciousness. All we have to do is get out of our own way! In order to get out of our own way we use skillfully chosen techniques that assist the mind in relaxing for a moment, so that the deeper fields of Pure Being can draw it in. As the mind moves effortlessly inward it enjoys the release and thereby finds it easier to relax. The process continues based on the increased comfort and relaxation and the mind dives deeper. Eventually it forgets itself, even if just for a moment. This process is extremely healing and restful for the entire body-mind-nervous system complex. This is the inward stroke of meditation.

The inward stroke – the diving in through the layers of consciousness to the deepest experiences of comfort and even bliss – creates profound rest in all layers of our being. It has the effect of releasing deep stress from the system. Interestingly, the release of stress causes an upward flowing of the mind, back toward the surface layers, in the form of thinking. In the process of stress releasing, thinking increases. This is the outward stroke of meditation.

Together, the inward and the outward strokes, provide a process of healing that is resonant with all of nature’s healing rhythms. Nature evolves in cycles of rest and activity. We see this in so many areas of life: life and death, day and night, summer and winter, spring and fall. We live by cycles of rest and activity. We sleep every night and we are active during the day.  We are born and we are young and we cycle into old age and we die. We inhale…and then we exhale.

Stress that is wound up inside cannot be released without an action. The action is a kind of unwinding of nervous system tension that has wrapped around itself and created a kind of knot. As the knot releases, it is expressed in thought. It can be a single thought, or a long dreamy series of thoughts. Thinking is an integral and important part of meditation! It is the outward stroke, so to speak. It is the result of deep experience and it clears the field of personal consciousness from the very stresses that block our clear vision of life as it is.

It is the nature of intelligence to be clear. It is the nature of your very essence to not be deceived by the convoluted workings of your mind. We sometimes think of the thinking mind as a young child, busy with the task of individuating from its parents and arguing for its separate existence. As the good parent we respect this process of individuation and enjoy it as a natural part of development but also know that the child is not in charge. The parent is the container for the child, keeping it safe. Left to its own devices a young child would have no frame of reference, no container for its development. Children need loving parents. Let the deepest layers of awareness become your container, your frame of reference for all that you perceive.

Meditate.

If You Can Think, You Can Meditate

Posted in Philosophical Inquiry, Practice, Rest and Meditation by

pic for meditation -blog

Meditation is a completely natural function of the human mind. We are inherently intelligent and curious beings. It is part of being human to wonder about ourselves and about life. All cultures have engaged in meditation and there are many methods of practice. Some are very precise and technique oriented and others are intentionally less precise. So many of the techniques are excellent. Different techniques resonate with different people. In this piece, I am writing more about the dynamics of meditation than about any specific technique. Meditations of all kinds work because they all arise out of the same body-mind-spirit system. They all need to rely on the natural tendencies of the body and mind to experience deeper comfort, happiness, and joy.

The secret of meditation is that when we can get out of our own way we can allow the deepest inner comfort to simply pull us in. It is natural. It is actually harder to resist than it is to do, but we have to understand the situation in order to free ourselves from our own crippling restrictions and inhibitions. Comfort is waiting, even bliss. There is nothing to believe in this at all – no belief is necessary. The only thing necessary is the burning desire to know. It has to be a burning desire because if it isn’t strong enough you simply won’t do it. For most of us, meditation is not effective when not done regularly. And regularly means every day… for many years. You probably do have plenty of time so now is a good time to start.

DEVELOPING CLARITY OF MIND AND GAINING CHOICE IN HOW WE PERCEIVE
Our minds have two basic directions available for movement at all times. We can look outward and focus on the outer environment, or we can move our awareness inwardly and focus on our inner environment. As we explore these realms, we learn more about them. Our experiences of the outer world build impressions, concepts, and ideas that we store within. These perceptions are colored by our inherent personality. Our personality is an intermingling of our genetic and karmic makeup, and the stored impressions of our life experiences. The blending of perception and judgments that we make about perception, creates another level of inner consciousness. We think about things. We feel things. We make decisions – consciously or not – and we act. We perform functions in the world. We relate, interact, learn more, store more, and color it with more of our own story. We build a life based upon our interactions and perceptions, the decisions we have made about them, and our ongoing experiences and relationships.

The key to successfully navigating this process is cultivating choice about how we perceive. We develop choice through inquiry into our perceptual faculties and discovering how they are informing all that we think and feel. Without choice we are simply at the mercy of our personality and our environment. Left unchecked, our stored impressions will color our experiences so thoroughly that we cannot differentiate what is actually present in any immediate event from the qualities and feelings that we are essentially applying to the experience from our own storehouse of impressions, images, and held-to-be-true concepts about life and self.

Worse, we don’t even recognize that it is actually our own impressions and previously made decisions that we are witnessing when we think we are experiencing something new! We tend to believe our perceptions without too much attention to whether they are accurate or not, when often what we are perceiving says a lot more about our inner state than it does about our environment, and importantly, about our relationships with others. This limited and usually inaccurate method of perceiving breeds suffering and confusion.

So often we essentially affirm our previous perceptions and decisions, in order to make quick sense of whatever is happening at the moment. This is an important agility that our mind has. It helps us to respond quickly to danger and ensures that we can take care of ourselves in urgent situations. But in terms of seeing the world as it actually is, making rapid decisions about each experience can block our access to some of the deeper gifts that our awareness offers. When we are so immediately sure that our perceptions and decisions about them are correct – and just in case they are not – we become locked into a response pattern that may or may not be the most useful for us anymore.

Often these immediate responses were important and useful when they first manifested. They were a function of health in that they likely did protect us from an emotional or physical danger. Our immediate reactions to danger can keep us alive through extremely difficult situations. Some of these very difficult situations can continue to persist for years and we need to remain vigilant in our own defense. But later on, in times of safety, our ways of managing these painful situations can actually be inhibiting our active involvement and enjoyment of our lives.

Again, the question is of choice. Do we have “choice” about how we perceive and how we respond to our perceptions? How fully can we trust our perceptions? Can we be sure that we are accurately recognizing what is being presented in a current situation? Or, are we coloring it so quickly with our own expectations that we are actually experiencing our own feelings about the event more fully that the truth of what is happening?

FINDING DEEP COMFORT AND SUPPORT—AWARENESS AND ANANDA
This can be so very tricky to navigate. We need a frame of reference and philosophy in which to contain this investigation. We also need inner comfort and support to nurture us through the process of determining what is true from what is not. Without an inkling that increasing levels of inner comfort may be the fruit of this endeavor, we would certainly not embark on it.

The very reason that this process of investigation ultimately bears fruit is that deep comfort is the nature of the “stuff” that supports the mind. The support of the mind – its True Nature – like the nature of absolutely everything else, is Awareness; Awareness without any object of perception – just vibrating Creative Intelligence.
Pure Awareness manifests. It joins with the stuff – the nature of things – and infuses it fully with its intelligence.

Awareness manifests constantly into the field of manifestation (us) — in waves of bliss. Bliss, or ananda – as the yogis call it – needs some serious definition. Ananda can all too easily be misunderstood to mean some sort of happiness as we normally think of “happiness”. Ananda really has nothing particular to do with happiness. Ananda is better understood as complete and total comfort. There are many ways to expand upon this definition of ananda as comfort but it is important to realize that it is very different from what most of us imagine when we think of “bliss”.  Ananda is the deepest embodied experience of profound contentment, the sense of being completely at home.

Using the meditative techniques of serious inquiry, unwavering self-acceptance, and keen discrimination (embodied-inquiry, santosha, and viveka) we begin to recognize for ourselves the subtlest levels of who we are. We come into direct contact with the process of Pure Awareness moving into form… through waves of tangible bliss.

The ancient yogic texts have provided a powerful and all-inclusive statement about the nature of life. They tell us that the nature of the mind is bliss: sat-chit-ananda or truth-consciousness-bliss. It is very important to note that there is no denial of human suffering in this statement. The statement does say that even the worst suffering has the same nature, because all of creation emanates from the same Source – sat-chit-ananda. The implication is actually profoundly inclusive in that it does not hold bliss to be an experience reserved for the lucky. Rather it is saying that no matter who you are, or what your experience has been, there is hope for finding deep inner comfort because it is who you actually are.

Ananda is underneath and supportive of our entire body-mind-spirit system. Ananda and awareness are woven into varying densities and vibrating at various speeds to create our energetic, mental, emotional and physical selves. Awareness and ananda are often veiled at the surface levels of our consciousness. It isn’t that ananda and awareness aren’t present in our structural selves. They are! It is that we have a strong tendency to perceive our thinking processes, our feelings, and all of the matter and the structural stuff of life to be the whole story.
If we were to inquire more thoroughly we would soon notice the underlying nature of all that we are. We would see, touch, taste, and feel, the Essential Blissful Awareness that is constantly present. Honestly, it is a simple matter of attention. Pay attention. No really…pay close attention.

Meditate.