Awareness Meditation

By Richard Shelmerdine

The general aim of meditation is awareness, so I made a meditation called Awareness Meditation. The problem though with a beginning meditator is that their mind is focused on objects (form). It is a pretty tough habit to break too. At the start, you will have to learn how to focus your mind on objects. This is why a lot of spiritual masters recommend focusing on your breathing in the beginning before moving up to higher levels of awareness.

Gautama Buddha began by bringing conscious awareness to his breath but he did not stay at this level for his whole life. He transcended it and moved to a new level after this. If you tell a beginner spiritual seeker that you just have to focus your attention on inner stillness they will just give you a motionless stare of try and make some kind of belief or sense out of it. The mind has to be coaxed slowly and taken by the hand.

When meditation is upon things that are in form, you are not completely aware of your formless dimension but you are getting there and it is a start. It will concentrate your mind and it stops the idea that you are a body or a thought or anything else in the physical or mental dimension. When you are totally focused, your mind is still because its not running around with thought.

When you get used to this state and you become a master of it you will start to experience the beauty which cannot be described in words. It is infinitely times deeper and more beautiful than anything physical. It is connection to the source of what you are. The origin of creation. You can see this is somebodies eyes who has recently bought a child into the world and they become more alive and childish looking. Everything else becomes less serious.


Removing The Crutches

Now that you have got to the place of a still mind, you are ready to put your crutch down of concentration on objects and experience it as your natural state. What you have to do is switch your concentration from external views to awareness of being aware itself. This seems really complicated but it is actually the natural state under mental noise.

My technique to get there is to sit cross-legged in a dark room. I sit in a dark room because I want to stop my mind from focusing on external objects and I close my eyes so that I can gain as much focus and keep all my energy inside me. What I do is sit at the gate of my mind which is where things come in and go and just be aware intensely. At the start my mind is usually pretty busy with on-goings from the day and I have to just become aware of thoughts as they come and go. I aim to stay focused on awareness and the inner stillness though but do not get angry or unsettled if thoughts pop up. When you realize that a thought has took your attention somewhere else on a little trip then just look at it, forgive it until it goes back to the silence from where it came.

Eventually you will get to the point where you are just timeless awareness purely. You are not even able to access thoughts or feelings or body. Your mind is silent and your body can just be sensed as invisible energy. It is an amazing experience. You can tell how close you are to full awareness by the inner peace that you can feel. When you get to that state, every time you connect with it the longer you stay there it multiplies deeper and deeper. IT is a little scary at first but only to your mind. Dip your toes in initially and go into it with degrees.

If you feel like your mind is too active then just accept your state silently inside. Move from that point. I cannot tell you how long to get to this state because it is essential that you acknowledge timelessness and forgetting time and transcending time which is a thought form is necessary.


The Stateless State

When you learn how to get this state, the feelings will come up more and more in your life. You will feel inner solitude and silence wherever you go to and you can make the state bigger and amplify it at any time. If you are struggling to find an answer then go to this place through meditation and you will get an answer. God will speak his truth to a silent mind through feelings.


Your Minds Resistance

Your mind is always going to resist getting in this stateless state. ALWAYS! It will make up stupid and not logical excuses to stop you and to distract you from getting there. It is doing this because it is fighting for its life and existence like everything else on this planet. It has control of you now and wants to maintain the current status If you want to control your mind like nature intended then you will have to see through these silly games and illusions and put yourself into this deep meditative state. This is the hardest part.

One night before I went to bed after getting a lot of the control back from my mind I was imagining and visualizing that I was inside my body looking out of my eyes. I was getting up the following day turning off my alarm and getting into the shower. Simple. I stopped meditation and then went to sleep. I woke up in the morning and was aware that my mind was telling me "Richard, you have reset your alarm for an earlier time so go to bed for a little longer". It was not anything like the "just close your eyes for a little longer" thought that most people get. It was scary and I got straight up. This all happened after just one hour of deep meditation each day for 4 days in a row. Amazing results in such a short time.

Your mind is and always will be full of illusions that come out as concepts. Reality is consistently shifting and changing, we all know this. The problem with concepts is that they are solid and do not shift with reality. Something has to change. Reality is not going to stop shifting so you will always experience disillusion if you see life through concepts. I once read that when Buddha was sat in the Lotus position under the tree shortly before he reached enlightenment, he saw men on horse running towards him fast. His mind was trying to trick him but he saw through the illusionary concept.


Appreciation

I found that without conscious effort, after my meditations I just started appreciating things. My fears all went because I no longer feared death. It fell to the side in place of gratitude and love. My sleep became incredibly deep and restoring. It felt as if I went to some other dimension and came back to this physical body after years totally energized. I would awaken extremely alert. I started to gain the knowing that life lived through me rather than I was living through life. I touched immortality in the human spirit and it' is breathtaking.

A few days ago I bought myself a new matching winter coat and hat and it made me feel fantastic. It felt like I just had everything I ever wanted. I felt like millionaires think they will feel beforehand. It was like love and gratitude just burst through my chest. I felt like a child again, limitless. when the furore died down I had the aura or gratitude for days. Go to this place, it is beautiful, all answers are found there and it is the most natural thing in the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I've recently quit my boring day job and am living off savings to follow my dream of blogging on spirituality and personal development for a living. It's gonna be fun!! Read about how I started my brilliant journey over at Spiritual Awakening

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“The Earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.” --Baha’u’llah