Welcome to the sixth issue of Light-Up-Your-Life
Newsletter. The aim of this newsletter is to guide you
as you discover the very source of Happiness and Wisdom.
This source is so deep that it is unaffected by the
conditions of your environment, your body and mind.
This issue was written in Zurich, Switzerland, where my wife
and I went to help bury her mother. This was a meditation for
my wife, feeling out what is beyond life and death. It was also
interesting for my wife to go back to her home country and
meditate on what her real home is. We went to Jungfraujoch,
which is a mountain in the alps. It has the highest train
station in Europe (11,500 feet). We walked to a point that was
even higher and had a wonderful view of snowy mountain
peaks, and we had a wonderful meditation on what's really at
the top of the world.
Click here to see a view from Jungfraujoch
In this issue we will discuss how to meditate. This is in
answer to many of your questions wanting practical instructions
on meditation. The first article will be on how to focus in your
meditation so that you can discover your own Self-Nature.
The second article will talk about other practical details that we
use in our daily meditation. We are not expecting you to imitate
us exactly. Rather we are hoping to provide some ideas that will
help you to set up an environment that will inspire you to continue
and to go deeper in your meditation practice.
If you have questions or comments please send an e-mail to:
michael@light-up-your-life.com.
If you missed an issue of our Newsletter click on:
http://www.light-up-your-life.com/Newsletter/newsletterindex.html.
First, here is a poem:
What can I do to get to where I already am,
Release, release, release
as if I am clinging to a whale when nothing is there,
space fighting through space.
The struggle seems real
like Jacob wrestling with the angel when the angel
turns out to be himself.
Lean back into Consciousness
and float in a cloud of bliss.
Bliss includes the whale, the universe, the cosmos,
and the little me that seems to be at the center of
it all.
Michael, break the knot of ignorance
and let the rope of bondage fall to the ground.
You and I are the same.
What I have done is surely possible for all.
You are the Self
now and can never be anything else.
Throw your worries to the wind,
turn within and find Peace.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
Thus Spake Ramana
by Swami Rajeswarananda
© Sri Ramanasramam
Right from the beginning, I am going to talk about the
potential for meditation. The reason is because techniques
are a set of steps or a recipe. Before you develop a set of steps,
you have to know where you are starting from and where you
hope to end up. If I follow the directions to get to San Jose,
California, I will not arrive in San Francisco, California. Also
if I start from Los Gatos I will have to follow different
directions than if I start from Oakland.
Very few people recognize the full potential of meditation.
To them the undying, ever present, Consciousness and Bliss
seems like a dream. They can't imagine that you can experience
a state of Consciousness that is so vast that it swallows up the
universe; that in this lifetime, you can experience a deep joy
that's totally free from the condition of the mind and body.
Yet this is the promise of sages from just about every religion.
I think this will become clearer as you read the second part of
"Making Your
Wisdom Come Alive". Remember I am not
asking you to take this on faith. I am just asking you to verify this
by your own direct experience.
Now let's assume that you are curious enough, that you want
to try and verify the truth of what I am saying. How would you
do this? First, I want to give you a little more background so
you know what you are looking for. Then I will show you
step by step how you can find this. Finally, I will talk about
where to start.
If you remember from my web-site, www.light-up-your-life.com,
I talked about how knowledge can set you free. The point of this
article is that if what you're looking for is right here and you just
overlooked it, then knowledge alone can set you free. This
knowledge points you to the place that you already experience.
Moreover, whatever you do cannot make you reach infinity. If you
attempt to develop a great body or a peaceful state of mind, or travel
to a great place, these too will pass away. As I said in the book, a
limited person doing a limited action or thinking a limited thought
cannot get to infinity.
Now if, by your very nature, you were unlimited Consciousness
where would you look to find infinity? As I said above, you
cannot create infinity, so it must be right here waiting for you to
discover. So the technique that you use would have to be one
of discovery and not of creation. This discovery would be
like discovering a new land or a new planet; not like creating a
new product or a new program. As the land that an explorer
discovers is already there, so is this unlimited Consciousness.
Furthermore, this Consciousness would have to be your own
Self-Nature. Why? Because if you were separate from infinity,
then you would limit infinity. Thus it would no longer be infinity.
If you think that this Consciousness is everything in the universe,
you are right. When the universe disappears this Consciousness
will remain.
So now that you have a sense of where you want to get with this
meditation, what practical steps can you take to get there. Even
now before you do anything, you already consider yourself to be
the seer. You never mistake yourself to be me. Why? Because
you are aware of me and whatever you are aware of you are not.
Just apply this reasoning as a pointer. Your are naturally aware
of everything that appears to limit you. So you are the awareness
and not the limitation. By your very nature you are beyond these
limitations.
1) You are aware of the world and all of the limitation that
the world seems to put on you. Therefore you are
naturally beyond the boundaries of the world.
2) You are aware of the body and everything that makes it up.
Therefore you are naturally beyond the boundaries of the
body.
3) You are aware of the life force such as breath and digestion,
so you are naturally beyond the limitations of your life force.
4) You are aware of the mind with its maze of feelings and
thinking that seems to box you in. So you are naturally
beyond the mind.
5) You are aware of the state of nothingness like in deep
sleep, so you are even beyond that.
6) Finally, you are aware of the subject, the thought that you take
to be 'I', so you are even beyond that.
7) You don't see the awareness. You know the awareness
because you are the awareness.
In your meditation practice, step by step consider each of
these. For more details on each step see "Making
Your
Wisdom Come Alive".
Just take your time and you will soon find your experience
of meditation and of life changing in ways that you never
would have suspected. The best thing about meditating
like this is the surprise you get when you actually
experience your own Self-Nature; it is a lot better than the
any words could possibly tell.
In the little surprises that you find as you begin to awaken,
you will start to see what the miracle of enlightenment really
is all about.
Finally, I want to touch on where you start. This self is
yourself. So just start exactly where you are. No need to
puff yourself up or put yourself down. Just look honestly
at what situations, or thinking patterns seem to cause
suffering or limitation. Remember, the more you become
aware of, the more you become free of. This is because
you are naturally beyond anything that you see.
Right now you are like a king who, in a dream forgot
who he was and became a beggar. When he finally
woke up, he took his rightful place.
Now you might be begging for scraps of happiness from
the world, when the very source of wisdom and happiness
is right in your heart.
Through your meditation and life, you can stop begging
and discover the joy that's rightfully yours. I wish you the
best in your meditation and in your life.
For more information on tracing your sense of consciousness,
being and joy directly to its source,
click on "Making
Your Wisdom Come Alive".
"Making Your Wisdom Come Alive" is an e Book
that
describes the Wisdom and Knowledge that catapulted Sages
such as Christ, Buddha, Lao Tsu, Moses and Sankara into a
state of indescribable Bliss and Freedom? The good news is
that if you wish, you too can experience this Wisdom directly.
Step by step this book peels away the limitations that appear
to cause suffering —
allowing you to get to the core of your
existence, which is the source of infinite Consciousness and
Bliss.
So don't delay your happiness and freedom. Get to the core of
life itself and live at peace.
For more information click here:
http://www.light-up-your-life.com/wisdom.html
Earn income by joining our new affiliate program and
recommending "Making Your Wisdom
Come Alive" to your
friends. Click here for details:
http://www.mcssl.com/app/afsignup.asp?merchantid=31684
The only technique that you can use, that will work in wellness and
sickness, poverty and richness, life and death, a calm mind or an
agitated mind, etc., is to become changeless consciousness-bliss
and to have that as your support.
That being said, we find that setting up a daily meditation routine
helps us to establish the habit of meditating. Our routine also sets
the mood for our meditation so that we can start our meditation with
fewer mental and physical distractions. We find that as we continue
to meditate our room fills with a peaceful vibration that supports us
as we go deeper and deeper in our exploration of our Self-Nature.
Our regular meditation supports us when we face challenges or
uncertainly in our life. It invites us back to our center where we can
discover a freedom that is unaffected by the ups and downs of our life.
This also helps us to find a good place where we can find solutions
to the problems that we face.
With the hope that you don't just try to imitate our form, but rather
attempt to see what we see, we will describe how we do our
sitting meditation practice.
Before I discovered consciousness I would wake up at 5:30 in
the morning. Now we get up later, around 7:00 in the morning.
We shower and put on clothes and then enter our meditation
room. We sit facing our altar, which has a picture of Atmananda
(Sri Krishna Menon) above it. A statue of the Buddha, and a little
statue of Shiva and Saraswatti (the Goddess of wisdom) are on the
altar.
We light two candles and some sandalwood incense. We sit on
a cushion in the half lotus position and try to keep our backs
reasonably straight. Most important we stay alert. However,
if I have a sore knee I sit on a chair.
We start our meditation by reading from a holy text, including
those in "Making
Your Wisdom Come Alive". Then we sit silently
for about 20 minutes until our incense burns out. We try to discover
and experience what we read. We end our meditation with a chant,
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, Om (which means Om, Peace, Peace,
Peace, Om).
We then try to live our day from the place that we found in
our meditation.
My first experiential meditation was when I noticed that the
boundaries of the body do not define me. Without trying to get
out of the body or do anything with it, I was able to experience
being beyond it.
When I was practicing, at night I looked to see where I fell
into suffering during the day. Right there I attempted to untangle
myself from this suffering by stepping out of my limited views of
the world etc. (see Making
Your Wisdom Come Alive for more
details).
It is amazing how many times when I untangled myself at
night, the next time that situation came up, my response
was totally different and the suffering was gone.
We are both vegetarians and we do Aikido, a martial art, soft style,
about 3 times a week. Our lifestyle provides a nice support for our
meditation.
We both enjoy this daily meditation practice and find that it really
helps our lives and our relationship.
Please do not try to imitate us. Rather set up a meditation
practice, and live a life that inspires you so that you too can
find this indescribable freedom that's right inside. You need
no specific meditation technique to discover that which is
already inside of you. At most, everything said above is
just an aid to make Self-discovery a little easier.
Why should you be honest? Because by being honest you discover
that you are infinite Consciousness without the least deficiency.
Please feel free to contact me with questions or comments
at: Michael@light-up-your-life.com.
Sincerely,
Michael Gluckman