THE NATURE OF MEDITATION(Med 87)

THE NATURE OF MEDITATION(Med 87)
Swami Chidananda

Blessed children of Light and Immortality! Our life is meant to be a constant opening of ourselves unto the Divine. Life is a process of stilling our nature, a constant process of turning away from the perception of non-self, a continuous process of rejecting the call of the non-eternal upon our being, and a resolute, persistent and insistent opening of ourselves to the Eternal. Our entire life is meant to be an attempt to turn away from the unreal and move towards the Real, an attempt to reject rising up from this plane of mortality to the recognition of the immortal nature of the Self within.

And meditation is the same process intensified in a systematic and deliberate way, channelised at a specific time. Meditation is intensified living in the Spirit, and our entire life is a diffused flow of our spiritual quest. Meditation is a recharging of life-battery in an intense manner. Meditation should be the spiritualising force for all our life – for all our thoughts, feelings, ideas, sentiments and aspirations – for all our dealings with the world.

Meditation is not some isolated act that you do in life, and which has no bearing on your life. The desire nature of the mind and the object-ward movement of the senses are the inherent tendencies of lower self. Your true being is as a river rushing towards the ocean. There should be no separation between your meditation and the rest of your day-to-day life living. Where life and meditation go hand in hand, the calmness of meditation flows through the life.

When you sit for meditation, you should allow a certain time for the momentum of the external life to calm down. Let the thoughts subside; then gently lift up the mind. The chanting of Divine Name, of Divine mantras, produce wonderful spiritual vibrations, which help to lift the mind up into a state of subtle awareness of the Divine.

The process of stilling the mind brings you to a state, where the mind is rid of all multifarious objects and is just centered on the God within. And even as from the far horizon of the eastern ocean the orb of sun rises up into that indescribable vastness, your concept of that Being rises in the vastness of the ocean of the ocean of pure Being. And as though the ocean itself has turned into a wave – no different from itself, not separate from it, being the same and yet appear for the time being a wave pattern – you invoke upon this Ocean of pure Being, gently, the appearance of your particular concept of God.