Practicing Meditation enhances your brain power for better clarity in life.
The brain just appears more active the more we attempt to not think.
If you are riding a speeding train with the window shades down, you don’t realize the speed. If you are standing on a platform and the train goes past you at full speed you are aware of its movement and power.
If we compare this to a hurricane – our awareness is engaged with the whirling wall of the storm most of the time, except when we are sleeping. We have become very used to the mind racing round and round. We think it is the minds natural state.
If we learn to shift our awareness to the calm eye of the storm we then notice just how powerful that whirl of thought has been.
The mind appears to rebel when we want to calm our thoughts down – like attempting to stop that speeding train with your hands – not going to happen!
Now it is important to realize a couple of things:
- “I” am not my thoughts. I identify with my thoughts, however, there is something in me – let’s call it awareness, that can move from identifying with thought to witnessing thought.
- The easiest way to meditate is not to try to stop thoughts – we simply need to divert our awareness to something other than our thoughts.
As a result of diverting our awareness and placing it elsewhere, our thoughts recede into the background.
In the practice I do, we meditate on the Source of light already present in the heart. We feel it is attracting our attention inwards.
One reason this is so effective is that right from the start we remove our attention from the head, where all our thoughts are whirling around.
At first, our awareness wants to drift back to our thoughts again. Instead of fighting with this tendency, we gently return to the heart.
When we do this gently and repeatedly, we will find that our awareness is much happier resting itself on our heart. We now truly understand for the first time that who we think we are, in other words, our thoughts and opinions, are not at all “me.”
This is a liberating feeling. You feel like you have arrived home after being swept away for so long.
With extended practice, you become clearer and a feeling of being unified is felt. This is the true meaning of the word yoga. Yoga means union.
So, this is, in brief, an outline of the problem and the solution. It is not at all difficult to understand but just like any endeavor, it takes practice to become good at it. Soon you will find your meditation will be the very best part of your day.
My gratitude to Mr.Brian Jones for his valuable tips.