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Hey Everyone!,
How To Start A Meditation Habit?
Einstein was asked how to grasp truth.
Most expected a reply long & sour, but he
kept it short & sweet: “You don’t really understand something unless you
can explain it to your grandmother.”
How to Start a Meditation Habit Explained Simply
I. EXPLAINING
MEDITATION to my GRANDMOTHER
Over the holidays my lovely grandma randomly
asked, “Grandson, what exactly are you thinking about when
you’re doin’ that meditation stuff?”
I wrapped my arm around my lovely mother’s mother.
“Granny,” I said, “while meditating, I’m
not thinking at all . . . well, at least I try not to.”
My grandma shook her head. “Now baby, I may
have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night! Now,
you gotta do better than that for ya ol’ granny, ya hear?”
I chuckled a bit before replying:
Bingo!
Meditation, you see, when stripped down to its DNA—free of all pageantry
such as the cool Lotus Position and the even cooler yoga
studios—boils down to the simplest thing of all: BEING
Yes!
“Meditation” is nothing but a fancy word for being.
In fact, meditation is the simplest
thing of all. …
Ahhh, but here’s the catch:
It is quite easy to simply BE something, but it is quite difficult
to simply BE.
Ask any correction’s officer what’s the severest
punishment he can hand down to an unruly prisoner, and the answer is
astonishing . . . when you really think about it.
No need to get all Draconian and break out
whips or make threats of guillotines. No, no. The severest
punishment in prison simply calls for, chew on this: sending the defiant
inmate to the Hole.
After all, the penal system reckons:
force any mortal to be alone with his or
her own thoughts, and they’ll be scared straight by the
real-life Boogieman!
The Delphic Oracle
crowned
Socrates “the wisest man
in Athens.”
The Socratic One proudly wore the crown and
declared:
Notice, if you will, the peculiar spelling of
the word PREsent.
Given the term’s spelling, it’s no wonder the
Latin root meaning of PREsent is praeesse (from prae ‘before’
+ esse ‘be.’)
Bingo!
Being is in fact sent before the human experience
itself. Hence meditation merely calls for reversing the process:
from human-being to being-human!
Of course, all this sounds good and fine, but
it was a bit too abstract for grandma. So I simplified it by
painting a concrete picture with words.
“Granny,” I said, “whenever referring to YOUR mind
or YOUR body, notice you relate to it as a possession.
… Right?”
She nodded slowly. “Well, I suppose I do say ‘MY body’ and
‘MY mind’.”
“Excellent,” I continued. “Now, picture Mrs.
Esther [her friend] seeing you get out of your car.”
She nodded “Now, what if she were to say,
‘Nannie [grandma’s name], that red paint job on you sure looks pretty, Honey!
And oh, those legs for tires of yours—”
Before I could finish she chimed in, “Now boy,
cut out the non-sense!”
“And that’s my point, Granny!” I laughed.
“It’s non-sense to identify Being, our
true nature, with the mind or the body, our possessions. … You
follow me?”
Ahhh: my
grandmother understands meditation!
II. In CLOSING: The ONLY MEDITATION HABIT
POSSIBLE
Look down at your hands or look straight into a mirror . . . go ahead . . . that bag of skin made of flesh and bones can’t possibly be your real Self.
Don’t believe me. Close your eyes, then (the
“windows” to your soul).
Poof! That bag of flesh and bones glimpsed outside those orbital
windows have all disappeared. Yet you–the Soul . . . the Self that
peeks through those windows–remain.
And so, while the outside world
disappears with the shutting of eyelids, the world inside remains.
In this inner world: YOU are the lone
resident.
And now, without further ado, here lies
the BEST and ONLY meditation therewas,
is and will ever be. …
This habitual meditative practice
I call simply: RESIDE in the ATTENDANT:
·
Step 1: Find a Quiet Place.
Step 1: Find a Quiet Place.
Now, once comfortably
seated, close your eyes. With your bodily eyes shut and your mental eye opened,
choose a one-word mantra to recite.
Step 2: Choose Whatever Word You Like, e.g,
Love or Faith or Peace …
Now, repeat that one-word-mantra 10 times both with your inner-voice and inner-sight. In other words, picture the word each time coupled with sub-vocalizing it. Love, Love, Love . . .
In the course of your
repetition, the “Monkey Mind” is sure to swing your attention to
various thoughts—of past and future. That’s okay! Just gently guide your attention back
to the exercise.
Final step: Keep Repeating the Mantra. Do it
Until You Successfully Reach the Count of 10.
Finished …?
(For maximum results, it’s crucial you don’t
skip this step.)
Excellent!
Ahhh, but are you sure you
were actually successful in carrying out the exercise?
How would you know?
Wasn’t your mind and attention
fixated on repeating the mantra?
The mind, after all, as
psychologists note, is incapable of entertaining more than ONE thought
at a time.
And so, well, if your mind was
preoccupied, then how would YOU know about your involvement in the
exercise?
Who or What was watching the mantra flash across
your mental screen?
Who or What heard the mantra repeated in your
third ear?
Who or What was the Silent Witness …?
Please . . . if you don’t mind . . . explain
to me how YOU could’ve been simultaneously playing on the
court and watching the mantra-match?
Unless . . . dare I say, you’re suggesting
while your mind was separately busy smacking
your thoughts back and forth—YOU, on the other hand, were simply the . .
. WATCHER?
Say it ain’t so?
Bingo!
That’s the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx,
friend.
YOU are the Silent Witness before
which all such happenings on the world’s stage occur.
YOU—the Soul—are the The
Attendant to which the faculty of attention is attributed. After
all, attention simply means “to attend,” and all such
attending presupposes an attendant.
That thou art.
Use the Socratic Method to
uproot the true meaning of GENIUS . . . lo and behold:
the original meaning of genius is Latin:
‘ATTENDANT spirit present from one's birth,
innate ability or inclination’.
Now you know how the self-taught mathematician Ramanujan,
while absorbed in Samādhi சமாதி . . . formulated his
sublime theorems.
Reminisce over every experience of your life
and—tada!—YOU, The Attendant or Self or Soul, are always PREsent!
(Remember: pre + sent to
experience.)
It is the attention faculty, then, which
serves as the key to unlocking The Attendant (Soul, Self, आत्मा, etc.).
Hence the saying:
Think back to your elementary days when the
teacher did “roll call.”
The teacher paced the aisles and called out
names. …
And what does each student answer?
“PREsent!”
In short, throughout the day, make it
a habit of bringing your attention back to its root, aka Reside
in the Attendant.
When that Monkey Mind gets to swinging on
vines made of anxiety and fear(False Evidence Appearing Real),
resort back to Residing in the Attendant.
Remember:
You’re not what you notice, but you are the
noticer of what you notice!
Meditation is just a fancy word for residing in The
Attendant, aka pure being.
Reside in the Attendant! Here lies your refuge whenever
confronted by life’s storms.
Whenever you feel doubt and worry creeping
back into your consciousness—to again ensnare The Attendant—whisper
to yourself: “Hey, stay HERE and NOW!”
After all:
Each time you feel the onset of trouble or
annoyance. Reeelax!
Pause the flow of life’s events with the
mantra—“Hey, stay HERE and NOW!”
Here lies your habitual mediation.
. . hour on the hour: “Hey, stay HERE and NOW!”
The Bhagavad Gita best sums
up the Secret of the Ages:
A person in the divine consciousness,
although engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving about,
sleeping, and breathing, always knows within himself that he actually does
nothing at all. Because while speaking, evacuating, receiving, opening or
closing his eyes, he always knows that only the material senses are
engaged with their objects and that he is aloof from them.
Hope You Enjoyed
Reading This;)
What Do You Think?,Do let me Know or Do you agree or Disagree or Have any other ideas?Please Share your thoughts in the comments below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me!”
What Do You Think?,Do let me Know or Do you agree or Disagree or Have any other ideas?Please Share your thoughts in the comments below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me!”
Bye for Know,
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