So now, in our series of videos about meditation, we’ve been slowly working toward accepting ourselves more fully. This requires an awakened state, sitting silently.
If you’re really busy all the time you’ll miss seeing yourself. If you’re watching TV, or you’re reading a book, or you’re talking with friends, or you’re going somewhere, or you’re at work, then you are filling up your existence with doing. If you are filled up with busyness all the time there’s no space to contemplate. No opportunity to deeply look at yourself while you’re busy doing.
Emotions and Thoughts
You’ll find that when you’re really busy, emotions seem to take over you easily. Negative thoughts will take over you very easily because you are not giving yourself time to absorb.
Once you sit still, though, you can’t escape yourself any longer. So the more you sit still, and the longer you sit still, the more powerful this moment will become. That’s why meditation is so healthy to do.
Let’s look at some of the things that we can explore while we’re sitting there quietly.
First of all, understand that your brain is full of synapses that are constantly firing and doing all sorts of different things. The loud, yacky, yacky talking of your brain is a very small part of that.
When you shut your eyes and you first start meditating, it feels like your talking brain is very loud. Pay attention to it. Slowly it’s going to run out of things to say. You’re not going to be feeding it any juice, you’re going to be just caring for it and being interested in it. That part of your brain will slow down.
The more that happens, then, you can start noticing everything else that is going on inside of you. Just sit there. You’ll probably notice that your eyes are kind of stressed and they’re blinking. Watch your breath as it moves. One thingthat’s really cool about watching your breath is that it’s almost impossible to not control it. You’re sitting there watching your breath and all of a sudden you find that you have too much air. Then the next thing you know you’re not getting enough air, because your thoughts are controlling it and not doing such a good job. Breath works normally on its own and can get messed up if controlled.
This is the way the mind and body works.
Now pay attention to your heartbeat. You don’t have a whole lot of control over that. That just goes by itself. Think about it. Your brain is there. The synopsis are running along and coming out of your brain and shooting through your whole body and making the heart go.
If you’re just sitting still you’ll notice that you start getting aches and pains in your body. Your muscles are sending messages to your brains like, “Oh, I hurt. Pay attention to me.”
Pay close attention to those things and you will start noticing how much is going on and how little of it is actually under your control. Most important, notice how little it needs to be under your control. It doesn’t need you at all.
Almost everything that the brain is shooting out is an automatic response, and you don’t need to be in charge of it.
The mind
It’s almost the same thing about your mind, about your thinking mind. It’s a reflex. It’s going to be repeating things that happened in the past, and dreaming about things in the future. It will be having conversations with people and doing all sorts of imaginary things. But the mind is very much like your heartbeat. It simply goes on and on by itself.
So, the biggest thing we’re trying to do in meditation is to sit there and really enjoy yourself. Don’t fight yourself at all. Just think how rare that is to simply spend time with yourself on purpose, enjoying yourself.
It’s a treat.