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Meditation, the ancient practice of focused concentration, offers profound benefits, including heightened control over awareness and a deeper understanding of existence. Those who seek to explore the hidden dimensions of reality will find meditation to be an invaluable tool.
Foundational Practices
The core of meditation lies in stilling the mind. Testimony suggests several fundamental steps:
- Eliminate External Stimuli: Seek a quiet, dark space to minimize distractions.
- Immobility: Sit completely still to reduce sensory input.
- Muscle Relaxation: Release tension in your body.
- Breath Control: Practice slow, deep, and relaxed breathing.
- Thought Rejection: Gently dismiss intruding thoughts.
- Attentive Stillness: Remain alert without straining.
The Breath as a Gateway
The breath is a central element in meditation. It is more than just a physical act; it is a metaphor for thinking itself. By controlling the breath, you can learn to control your thoughts.
Anapanasati, or mindfulness of breathing, involves focusing on the breath to refine it, reducing neurological stimulation and harmonizing bodily motions. This practice aims to achieve quiescence, allowing you to perceive just how much energy the senses consume.
- Inhale: Should be long, deep, and relaxed
- Exhale: Aim for a calm and relaxed exhale, avoiding harsh transitions.
When refining the breath, the sensations in the torso are more important than the sensations in the nose or upper lip. Focus on the abdomen, from the diaphragm to the perineum. This is where the lower field resides, and building it up will increase your energy potential. Moving bones requires more energy than moving the guts, so focus on the latter for efficiency.
The Role of Awareness
As the breath becomes refined, awareness takes precedence. It becomes a game of maintaining unbroken attention to the present moment.
Mindfulness, cultivated through practices like observing the breath, becomes essential for sustaining Samadhi, a state of profound concentration. Mindfulness ensures that mental activity, which consumes energy, does not disrupt the meditative state.
Ancient Wisdom
To maximize efficiency in meditation, it’s crucial to cultivate the seven factors of awakening before achieving Samadhi. These include:
- Right View: Understanding actions have consequences, and death is not the end.
- Right Resolve: Striving toward non-violence and renouncing worldly life.
- Right Speech: Avoiding lies, abusive language, and idle chatter.
- Right Conduct: Refraining from harming living beings and avoiding misconduct.
- Right Livelihood: Abstaining from trading in harmful substances and weapons.
- Right Effort: Preventing unwholesome states and generating wholesome ones.
- Right Mindfulness: Guarding the mind and weakening unwholesome states.
Lineage vs. Personal Exploration
While some advocate for learning from established lineages to ensure the effectiveness of the meditation technique, others suggest that personal exploration is key. While lineages can provide a measure of comfort and guidance, especially in complex practices like internal alchemy, individuals should ultimately develop their own maps and rule sets for exploring consciousness.
Once experienced, it’s crucial to explore consciousness without relying on other people’s maps or rule sets. Develop your own map and rule set, or you’re just going to be playing somebody else’s game.
Unlocking the Source Code
Through meditation, you can disconnect from the distractions of thoughts, emotions, and memories, honing your ability to avoid these attention-draining elements. Once mastered, you become prepared to explore the very source code of existence.
The Benefits of Stillness
Even the minimum benefit of meditation is that your body will have time to recuperate and more efficiently heal itself.
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