Meditation is perhaps the most misunderstood concept within the realm of spiritual practice. There are many who "teach" meditation as a powerful process that enlightens conscious awareness and can lead us into a more peaceful and compassionate society.
Many methods are proposed that teach the principles or the methods of meditation.
Meditation techniques taught by the experts require a great deal of effort:
Ajahn Brahmavamso, in the popular pamphlet, "The Basic Method of Meditation" writes the following quotes:
"Often with meditation there will be some hard work at the beginning..."
"The goal of meditation..."
"Meditation is the way to achieve letting go."
This pamphlet is full of these kinds of assertions and statements. Goals, achievements, effort, are all the opposite of the character of meditative thought.
The truth is that effort is the antithesis of meditation. Meditation is a character of thought; the state of meditation requires an open and empty conscious awareness. Any effort to empty the consciousness requires a method and any method requires learning and knowledge, which clutters the consciousness with even more content.
The masters, the mystics, and the gurus exist in a state of meditative thought. The commentary, judgments, categorizations, justifications, identifications, and the rest of the constant chatter of the mind are absent from their thought processes. This is actually the natural state of the mind, the most natural state of thought.
Meditative thought is open, receiving, embracing, and creatively intelligent. This is also the character of thought experienced when we were children, prior to the conditioning that initiated the development of the unconscious mind that produces all the ceaseless chatter.
When perceived stimuli are received in this state of meditation a creative and intelligent response is possible. The meditative state precludes judgment, categorizations, past knowledge and experience, future expectations, and a host of other mental noise.
No one can teach another how to “achieve” this state of mind, as it is much more like opening doors. Doors that are naturally open and require energy and effort to close them.
In William Blake's poem, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” he wrote:
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
As William Blake suggests, this state of mind now referred to as “meditation” is an opening of the doors of perception. The natural state of these doors is open; we actually expend energy to close them. Stepping put of the "cavern" may be all that is needed.
How do you learn anything without further cluttering the mind with more of the basis of this clutter of content? The simple answer is that you do not. Meditation is not something you learn, nor "practice" nor exert any effort toward. Anything learned or practiced tends to reinforce the programmed awareness, closing the doors that must be resolved and dissolved before a meditative state of consciousness is possible.
In order to enter into a meditative state, you must first realize that there is absolutely nothing to achieve, any striving to achieve anything misses the point entirely.
There is a "way" to "enter" the state of meditative thought. That "way" is to focus thought and being on the present moment. There is only one "way" to focus thought on the present moment and that is to realize when you are not. The more you are aware of when you are not in the present moment, the less you disperse your energy into the past and future.
The conditioning of the mind hampers the natural, meditative character of thought. This conditioning occurs through parents, teachers, religious instruction, the media, past experience, and language. The conditioned mind tends to be in conflict with the beingness or body of the individual. This conflict manifests in many ways, like when we are angry and we think we "should not" be angry, or when we feel like dancing or singing but believe it to be inappropriate. The conflict also manifests as desire for some future happiness or avoidance of some past trauma, or future undesirable events.
This conditioning "splits" the mind from the body or beingness of the individual. The split mind must create its own identity, one that many of us identify with, and it loses the natural association with the integrated body of the individual. The tendency to think of our selves as a body and mind is also a manifestation of this split.
Tao Te Ching
Chapter 13
One’s true self is eternal
And yet one thinks, “I am this body, I will soon die”
This false sense of self
Is the cause of all problems
In order to further complicate things, we also tend to construct other entities such as a spirit or a soul. In fact these segregations do not add to the enlightened conscious awareness that we all would benefit from, both individually and in our society.
The "method" to achieve the meditative state is often one in which the split mind is seen as a pseudo identity. When we re-integrate our beingness there is no need for the otherwise threatened mind to keep up the constant stream of chatter. When the mind and body are re-united the clutter of content is no longer necessary.
Enhanced awareness is the key to spiritual growth. Observation of self is the process by which we enhance our awareness. When you observe the programming and conditioning of the mind and the conflict it causes, the split mind pseudo identity loses its power over your being. Then the "spell" is broken.
