The State of Meditation

Meditation has enormous power. It helps focus the mind and thereby allows the mental energies to be concentrated when engaged even in simple everyday thinking.

You can understand how important it is when trying to solve a problem – complicated or not – to be able to concentrate on the matter at hand until a solution is found. Nothing is more of a hindrance to success in any venture if the mind keeps losing the train of thought and veers uncontrollably off the path.

Meditation is concentration on an inner center, a center that is not of the mind, but that is beyond the mind.

You might ask: How can I concentrate the mind on a center that is beyond the mind? Wouldn’t that center have to be in the mind? How can the mind go beyond the mind?

The answer to these questions is this: When I use the word mind, I refer to the thinking and feeling mind. Beyond this thinking and feeling mind is the purely aware mind. This aware mind is like the ocean, while the thinking and feeling mind is like the waves on the surface of the ocean.

The waves of this ocean generally do not reach to a great depth. Sometimes, there is a powerful storm that really stirs up the water, but even that force can’t reach the bottom of the ocean, where all is still, forever so still.

Meditation works from the inside out. In meditation, your intention is to concentrate on the still aspect of the ocean. You are the entire ocean, active waves and restful depth.

Every heavy object thrown into the ocean will break through the waves and will slowly sink through stiller and stiller layers toward the eternally still bottom of the sea.

What pulls the heavy object toward the bottom is natural gravity, the intention to concentrate all matter in one place.

In your mind, the same force of gravity exists. You simply need to drop a thought colored with the intention to concentrate and you will find yourself in the stillness of the bottom of your being.

The journey within takes just a moment. Meditation is not a process, it is a state that get’s attained through your intent. You are in control of your mind. You have always been in control of your mind, and will always be in control. (Development and condition of your physical brain are other matters).

It is important to learn meditation while you are are still in full possession of your mental faculties. Once you begin losing brain capacity through the influence of old age or a deteriorating body, the subtleties of concentrated meditation may escape you.

Allow the natural gravity of intention to pull your attention toward the place of eternal stillness. Bliss awaits you where you are beyond the waves of the thinking and feeling mind in the state of pure being.