What is Meditation?
By Sherrie Wade, M.A.
Meditation is the process of experiencing a state of pure awareness. Through
calming the mind and emotions you can experience a state of peace and
tranquility. Meditation is a simple technique that can be learned in a few
minutes. To master it requires continued practice, guidance and mature
knowledge of the process.
According to the science of meditation, optimum existence is experienced
when even the most subtle aspect of your thought leads you to the
experience of peace or harmony. Subtle forms of thought are called waves of
perception. Through the practice of meditation you can train yourself to deidentify
with the passing thoughts or waves of perception that lead the
attention towards identifying with stressful situations. Instead, you focus on
the pure awareness state, also called the Knower or experiencer of thoughts.
When you no longer identify or become mixed in any particular thought or
physical sensation, then the space behind the thought, which is always
peaceful, is experienced. This is termed by psychologists as a peak
experience, the transpersonal self, and by yogic practitioners as the fourth
state of consciousness.
Through the practice of meditation and the observation of your thoughts,
you develop the power to discriminate between those thoughts that are useful
and those that are not. The mind is seen as an instrument that is used to
perceive the world. You can develop the power to observe your mental
functioning and maintain the awareness that you are the observer of your
mind. You can then choose which thoughts to identify with and which ones
to act on, de-identifying with irrational or destructive thoughts or beliefs.
These negative thoughts or waves of perception can be allowed to pass
without holding on to them, or they can be observed as if watching them on
a screen. As you focus on the consciousness out of which these thoughts or
waves are arising, you are led to experience the peace that is at the back of
the thought.
Thoughts have certain qualities. Some thoughts produce more stress by
leading the attention towards worries, doubts, fears and skepticism.
Thoughts that are positive can be retained; those that are negative can be
released. You do not need to stop the flow of these thoughts; they do not
create any problem unless you, the Self, identifies with them. The natural
function of the mind is to think, and no thought is destructive if there is no
effect from it.
Meditation allows you to spend time aware of yourself as the Self, or the
Knower of all the thoughts and phenomena. From this state you can
experience both negative and positive emotions and maintain the knowledge
of the peaceful Self. The Knower state is always peaceful as it is the Pure
Consciousness or life itself. Suffering occurs only when the Knower,
forgetting its true nature, identifies with the thought of the mind and feelings
of the physical body.
Meditation is known to relax the physiology and reverse the damaging
effects of stress. So many people are feeling uneasy, isolated and lonely.
These feelings can create tension, weaken the immune system and cause
disease. The immune system is strengthened and healing is accelerated by
developing a positive attitude and visualization of health. Using the
Transformation Meditation system of meditation, the mind is trained to
continuously focus on the life force or Pure Consciousness, even before the
thought arises. In this way, the problem of having a negative attitude or
belief system is taken care of at its source. This can save a lot of time and
the effort of sorting through and trying to change an infinite number of
negative thoughts and beliefs. In fact, it takes care of the problem before it
even arises by focusing the attention at the source of the thought, or the Pure
Consciousness state.
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