Creating the inner playground

The practice of the first phase of the Simple Way of Meditation daily improves one’s overall wellbeing, making the mind calmer, and able to experience solitude with full awareness. The second phase helps one reap benefits by being able to dive deep and attaining balancing of one’s life with outer activities.

The first stage of ‘Meditation’ is to attain the state of simply ‘being’, of just pure experiencing only consciousness, with no interference from the body or mind. Thoughts can arise and disappear, and settle, as the mud settles and water clears. Initially, in this state where the brain experiences nothingness, by ridding thoughts yet remaining aware gradually self-inquiry takes place.

The Meditative state allows the aware/conscious mind to experience the inner reality within and access potentials of the unconscious. This ability opens up a whole new world of self-discovery and self-empowerment;  Meditation, thus, is a ‘Way’ to access the inner-faculties of the unconscious mind, to access its wealth or reprogram to positively impact the conscious mind.

First Meditation: Clearing the mind

Approximate time required: 20-40 mins

Directions:

Sit in a comfortable posture. During this experience you will have many thoughts coming in. For those who rarely sit idle or going through stress, the steam of thoughts could get overwhelming. The purpose of this meditation is to create and become comfortable with your inner space. Generally, when we close our eyes we usually soon fall asleep. Here we will remain awake, and with no external visual input it will be just you and your thoughts alone. You must allow your thoughts to ‘be’ and become comfortable staying with them. Use the following instruction as guide for your first meditation: –

Phase 1:  Let your thoughts settle and mind clear

• In the beginning, allow the thoughts to appear as they do naturally. Do Not try to control your thoughts. Let them come. Watch them. Let them settle at the bottom. As like the mud is settling in the bottom of the jar on the diagram on the right side, let them settle gently.
• Be patient, as your mud settles, and water clears.
• This is the beginning of being able to create that inner space.

• As you continue to sit in the meditation, thoughts will continue to come in; Some will be big thoughts, some will be smaller.
• Imagine the bigger thoughts to be like soap bubbles and pop the bubbles calmly as they arise.
• Let new thoughts appear and gently keep popping them as they arise. This should be a peaceful interaction with the thought bubbles.

Phase 3: Letting your thoughts go

• As you allow thoughts to settle down, and pop some thought bubbles, you will find that some thoughts will not burst like bubble and cling on to you during your peaceful state of meditating. As they build up in a corner, let them peacefully ‘go’ like falling off of the cliff of a mountain. (see the image on the right.) Imagine your thoughts are like little Lilliputs clinging on to the edge of the mountain (you). As they cling on to the edges, let them go off gently.

 

Living life as a human can be compared with a boat or a ship in the ocean. Depending on the skies and whether there is a storm, it can be a peaceful ride, or a storm can wreak havoc on the ship. Only ‘you’, the one who is dissociated from the body, yet fully in charge and responsible for it, can navigate it in the best possible manner regardless of the weather, and provide it fulfilment of its existence. Allow this observation of consciousness separated from the body to gain deeper and meaningful introspection intuitively and arouse reckonings as it does within yourself naturally.

Beware of common mistakes:

Mistake 1: Controlling the mind to the point of making it frozen stiff, overly fine and subtle.

Mistake 2: Letting go to mindlessly following ignorant indulgent thoughts.

When we begin to practice the mind will either go wandering off, unaware that the mind is thinking, or we will want to be good and practice well and will hold the mind still or suppress it. These are the two directions in which we can falter- total control, or mindlessly following the lure of the defilements. They are the two extremes. One is pulling in too much on controlling too much, the other is letting go too much and following the impurities of mind. As Buddhism also teaches the middle way, it is recommended to find the balanced way, the Simple Way.