Meditation as a Way of Life
by Daniel Mitel
“Why do we need to meditate?”
One of the most interesting questions I have received after publishing my book “This Now Is Eternity” was, “Why do we need to meditate?” The questions came from all over the world and from people with different backgrounds, not just people who meditate or practice a spiritual technique.
Why do so many renowned spiritual teachers, such as Drunvalo Melchizedek, Gregg Braden, and Neale Donald Walsch, and some highly recognized masters of past century, like Krishnamurti, Osho, and Ramakrishna, recommend and teach people to meditate? It is almost a fashion now. If you meditate, people consider you different.
Why is meditation so important?
Well, the answer is simple: because it keeps you in one of your centers. It can be the navel center, it can be the heart center or it can be the head center. There is no difference, qualitative speaking, regarding these three centers.
The Zen and Tai Chi masters are centered in the navel center. The martial arts masters are centered in the navel center. Buddha was centered in the navel center.
Well-known spiritual masters—Jesus, Ramakrishna, Teresa de Avila, and many others—were centered in their heart center.
Not too many masters used their head center; probably the most acclaimed was Krishnamurti.
As long as you are centered in any of these three centers you are going to be in silence. You are in the center of the hurricane, utterly silent. You become the watcher; you are not a doer anymore.
Now the main question is if we can be in this state, in a meditative state, while we are acting. Of course, we can. As long as we remain in the center, as long as we are a watcher, we are in a meditative state. I mean we can work in our gardens, we can speak with our friends, we can make dinner, and we can still be centered.
Meditation and Mastering the Neutral
How it is possible to be in the middle of the crowd and be centered? How it is possible to be in the middle of the noise and be quiet inside? Well, we need to learn to witness. We need to learn to observe; to be neutral, just to watch it. This is not an easy task.
The ego is always interested in something where it can interfere. Witnessing is not its strong point. Your ego wants you to do difficult things; the more difficult are your tasks, the better your ego will feel. Witnessing is something very easy. Because it is so easy it will never have any appeal to your ego.
How should we meditate? At the beginning, we should get accustomed to do our meditations in a specific place; the same place if it is possible. The Tibetan masters told me that meditating day by day in the same place “charges” the spot with positive energy, you bring prana, life-force energy there, in that place. Basically the place is going to “recognize”you when you will start to meditate. It is like you are going to meet an old, good friend.
Secondly we should be comfortable. Many of my students are trying to keep the lotus posture (Padmasana) but it doesn’t work properly. Forcing our joint-bones (especially the knees) is not the best thing we want to do. I would say that using a chair is enough; or laying down is good too. The most important thing is to keep our spine straight.
Last, but not the least, we should smile and have patience. If life is not fun for us and we are in a hurry, then it is not going to work.
If we do all these three things, sooner or later we will become observers. We will be able to see all things from the center, not from the periphery. We will be able to stop the struggle and achieve total surrender.
Some external devices might help but it doesn’t get us there. If we use earphones and we listen to a specific song, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are meditating. Of course our minds are changing wavelength and a specific sound can help to create calmness and peace inside of you. But if we believe that this is meditation we are wrong. It helps but it is not enough.
Meditation works in a very interesting way: we are in the deepest silence but we are also alert. We are aware, alert, and vigilant.
Reaching Inner Worlds through Meditation
The most pleasant but also the most difficult moment of meditation is when we have the beautiful experiences of our inner world. There is a big trap here; we can get stuck in these experiences and not be able to move further.
The final moment of meditation is the moment when all these beautiful experiences disappear. We are left with nothing, no images, absolutely alone. The journey is beautiful, but we don’t need to stop anywhere. When we pass all the stars, the flowers and mountains, when we pass all the galaxies and rivers of light then, and just then, we are able to be a witness.
In that moment we, ourselves, become the subject of observation. We are witnessing ourselves. That means that our own consciousness can see itself.
At a 1979 spiritual conference held in Brockwood Park, in the U.K., Krishnamurti said that consciousness can be aware of its whole content. In other words, Krishnamurti said that the observer becomes the observed. In that moment we are in silence but we are absolutely alive, filled with energy and life. We are in peace but we are filled with strength and vitality.
This seems to be a very good reason to meditate.
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About the Author
Daniel Mitel is a world-class master of meditation, helping people understand the intimate connection to their inner selves, utilizing the ancient system of Heart Imagery. Interviewed and published around the world, Daniel’s books, “This Now Is Eternity” and “Heart Imagery: A Path To Enlightenment,” are highly regarded as some of the best meditation and spiritual guide books. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter, and discover more at: www.danielmitel.com, www.heartimagery.org, and www.motivate-yourself.org
