The practice of meditation is a practice of Self discovery. It is a relationship we cultivate within that allows us to know, accept, and fall in love with our deepest essence of Self. It can happen spontaneously, as in love at first sight, but for many it happens over a gradual period of time. We first learn to know our true Self as pure unchanging abiding awareness. We don’t learn this from our thinking mind, but from the heart of wisdom itself or what yoga calls the “buddhi mind”. Through this knowing, we learn to trust and accept the Self, and through knowing and trusting, we become infinitely loving, kind and compassionate of the Self.
The Bhagavad Gita says that Yoga is the process of learning to tolerate being ones Self, with ALL our thoughts, feelings and emotions. We are “all that” and yet “not that” at all. We are the perceiver of all that. The unwavering cosmic consciousness, the light through which the lens of the eye sees or senses the experience. As Francis of Assisi so succinctly put it “The one you are looking for is the one who is looking
The Yoga Sutras give us a map to show the way to our hearts deepest desire for union. Yoga Sutra 1.2 says that Yoga is the selective awareness of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that you choose to focus on. So often we choose to focus on thoughts of the ego and its constant comparisons of Self to others. We listen to mind stuff that says we are never good enough, lovable enough, beautiful enough, etc. The true Self has a different message for us. One of pure satya or truth. It is simple, Sat Chit Ananda.
True consciousness is bliss. It is our essential nature. It is the love we are and the love we are looking for at the same time, both subject and object, or the essence that is created when subject and object merge into oneness. The Yoga Sutra 1.41 tells us that, Samayama or samadhi is “a state of absorption wherein the knower, the experience of knowing, and the object of knowledge fuse into one indistinguishable subject-object.” That fusion is the practice of yoga, or union
The practice itself is essential. Just as any relationship requires energy to sustain and nurture itself, so does the practice of meditation. We experience the same ups and downs, doubts, anger and fears, within our relationship to our Self and our meditation practice as we do in our relationships with others. We may lose our hearts way many times.
It’s our meditation practice that calls us home and re-minds us of our true Self. Its our practice that allows us surf the wave of bliss, to be its ebb and flow, to stay seated as a silent witness through peaks and troughs, and know it is all one wave.
My thought to take away today is simple. When the surf is up, riding the wave can be challenging. Affirm your essential nature of Sat Chit Ananda. Use your selective awareness wisely. Focus all your attention on that which honors your true Self. Put your ego away for awhile, rest your mind in your heart and be one with the flow of all creation as it supports you.
Meditation practice….. what’s love got to do with it?
Love and Light Jude