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WHY MEDITATE?
What is not obvious to most people is that A). they have an ego mind and B). they are not their ego mind. The process of discovering both of these truths and experiencing them as TRUTH is at the base of most spirituality, transformation, enlightenment, and many religions is about, even Christianity although it is buried so deep it is quite difficult to see.
After you experience these truths you will see that the degree to which you resisted meditation is the degree to which you are identified with and attached to your ego. The ego is the part of you that doesn’t want to meditate or doesn’t have time. But until you disidentify with your ego, you can’t see this. Afterward it is blatantly obvious.
For example to over simply Zen: They emphasize just sitting, eventually you will see, for yourself, that you are not your mind, not your thoughts and if you sit long enough you will most likely see you are not your body; and you have a mind, ego mind and a body.
Meditation is a simple, powerful method:
· to feel better
· to quiet your mind
· to discover you have an inner reality as well as an outer reality
· to learn how to access your intuition
· to achieve enlightenment
· to heal
· to look younger
· to see that you are not your chattering ego
· to see that you are not your thoughts
· and most importantly, it decreases your identification with your ego.
· when your mind is totally quiet, you will be super conscious not unconscious. In fact thinking renders you unconscious for all practical purposes because you are preoccupied with your mind and thinking.
· meditation is quite simply first practice in not being your ego.
· Then meditation can be the gateway to the Divine, whether it be Jesus, Buddha, God, your Self, etc.
· meditation is the part of transformation that requires discipline, work.
Meditation is a simple, uncomplicated, free, method that the Infinite Intelligence has created to assist us to find the truth.
The truth becomes obvious in the silence, inside. It is beyond doubt and your mind will always doubt.
Knowledge can get you to the truth, but absolute knowing can not found in words. It can only be found inside, in silence, in peace..."The peace that Passeth all understanding."
Meditation
Meditating, which entails bringing oneself to a state of inner emptiness through systematically clearing out the clamoring voices of the inferiors.
Meditation requires sitting in a relaxed but alert position so that the nerves of the backbone become quiet. The spinal column is not only the route by which the brain conveys messages to the bodily self, it is also the pathway by which the bodily self conveys its complaints to the brain. By sitting in a self-supporting position (we lean on nothing), we remain awake while our body relaxes. As our blood pressure and energies subside, the inferiors become quiet, as if asleep.
At this point ego-separation occurs: the pretentious, defensive, assuming voice of the self-image separates from our consciousness so that we are able to hear its thoughts separately from ourself.
Its voice is sometimes subtle and tempting, sometimes, strained and harping, sometimes demanding and furious. Ego-separation gives us an opportunity to hear and understand the ego and its pretensions.
Once we understand it, we can liberate ourself from its domination. Once we have heard it in meditation we can recognize its insinuations from the sideline during our everyday activities. Recognition enables us to resist its demands.
Once the ego has separated we may also see and hear the inferiors. In listening to their concerns and complaints we will notice that they are like children. Like children they focus on wanting, wondering, and worrying. Body cells, or organizations of cells, have both verbal and nonverbal ways of telling us we are hungry, tired, or afraid.
During normal conscious activity we would think these things [all the "voices"] to be integral to our makeup; in meditation, however, we hear and see them as separate from our central self. Through contacting them in meditation we find that they have been under the control of the ego; we also find that now we are able to enlist them in working towards the goals of the higher self.
In this way our superior self, the Superior Man, gains the ability to command the inferiors. Once this happens, the personality resumes to its natural true order.
Listening to the needs of the inferiors, and putting their fears to rest, seems to reassure and pacify them, and our heart comes to rest. In a state of true quiet we sit, as it were, in a space of total neutrality and acceptance. We see or hear nothing. Sometimes it becomes possible to hear a new voice and to see new things. The new voice is the quiet, unobtrusive but firm voice of the Sage. We listen and watch, as if we were waiting for a movie to begin. We may also see images which demonstrate the lessons of universal truth. While we may participate in what happens, we do not control it.
Meditation is also the time in which we make the sacrifices called for in various hexagrams such as Contemplation (Hex 20). Sacrifice means to turn over to the Higher Power questions of inner conflict, and emotions such as justifiable anger, the feeling of having rights, indignation due to injustice, impatience with evil, and our tendency to focus on the petty elements in others which tend to bring on the question, "Why are things this way?" We sacrifice these feelings and perception because they obstruct progress and inhibit the general good. Such sacrifices enlarge the spiritual being.
To the serious student of the I Ching, the daily practice of meditation is essential. Through meditation we perform the inner cleansing that returns us to purity and innocence; freed of thoughts which generate restlessness and inner deafness, we return to the alertness and inner attentiveness that makes it possible for us to interact with others in a creative way. Freeing ourself from the preponderating concerns of the inferiors has the effect of cleaning our inner house. Just as our external house becomes dirty through living in it, our inner mental space becomes cluttered with extraneous and unnecessary preoccupation’s.
These may consist of belief systems, concerns, fantasies, and false ideas which make inner peace and harmony impossible to achieve. Inner cleansing implies that we let go of the world and its preponderating concerns, and we let go of all belief systems. We let go of old anger and hostility, and any attachment to injuries people have done us; we discard all philosophies of negation , and petty likes and dislikes. On cleaning our mind in this manner, we become freed of the enormous burden entailed by carrying such mental trash.
If, in trying to meditate, we seek to achieve inner quiet without first performing inner cleansing, clarity and communication with the Sage (Higher Self) will not be possible. To bypass this step is to "force meditation." To practice daily inner-cleansing is the "daily self-renewal" which enable the Superior Man to remain in the height of his power.
Through meditation the Sage [Higher Self] allows us to glimpse our ego as an organized defense-system which we, because we have abdicated leadership of our personality, have allowed our inferiors to construct in defense against the Unknown. We are able to see, one at a time, the fears which give life and power to the ego; we see our fears both in the demonic disguises which enable them to terrorize us, and as the really harmless things they are. To unmask such fears in meditation is like discovering the Wizard of Oz in the act of manipulating his frightening machines from behind the curtain; never again are they able to wield power over us.
Since this sort of mediation seems indispensable to a serious study of the I Ching it is not surprising that Confucius said, "study without meditation is labor wasted; meditation, without study, is perilous."
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