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Understanding Meditation through Models - Part 2
Robert Elias Najemy
The Waves and the Sea Bed
The mind is like the sea. It is in a constant state of movement.
Underneath the sea is the seabed, which is stable, unmoving,
and permanent. This stable, unchanging structure, upon which
the mind is moving, is the spirit. Regardless of whatever
may be happening in the mind, deep in ourselves, our spiritual
being is steady, peaceful, unchanging bliss. Here there is
no fear, no doubt, no effort, and no anxiety. This is the
eternal peaceful witness who is unaffected by the ups and
downs of our emotional life.
When the water is disturbed by waves we cannot see the bottom.
Its appearance is distorted by these movements, particles,
and objects. These movements are our thoughts and feelings
which continuously disturb the peace in the sea of our mind.
As long as there are these thoughts and feelings, we cannot
even sense the existence of this inner spiritual self. When
the waves calm down and there is no movement at all, then
we can see the bottom clearly. In the same way when there
are no thoughts or feelings we can then experience that deep
inner peace of our spiritual self. Meditation is the process
through which we calm the waves and bring the thoughts to
total silence, so that we can experience our real self who,
is usually covered by the incessant waves of thoughts and
feelings.
The Mind Is Like a Piece of Cloth
The mind is like a piece of cloth in which the threads are
our thoughts, emotions, expectations, habits, needs and desires.
Each thread adds its own reality to the mind. If all threads
were removed, the mind would be empty. It has no reality of
its own. Like any cloth, our personal reality is created by
the type of "threads" (thoughts) which make it up.
Meditation and all efforts on the spiritual path are the process
by which we remove, one by one, these various threads from
these weave of the mind. Gradually, as the years pass the
density of the threads is diminished and in this way the cloth
becomes more transparent, more porous. This is important,
because when this cloth is densely woven, very few experiences
can pass through it without getting caught up in it. This
means that very few things that happen to us are able to pass,
through our mind without triggering off some belief or emotion,
which causes that experience to remain in the mind and occupy
it to some degree. When one is totally secure, he does not
need to hold onto experiences, but can let them pass, so that
the next moment he may again be in the present.
We can understand this difference by moving temporarily to
another example. If we drag a knife across a piece of metal
or stone, which are inflexible, then it will leave a mark,
which is, for all practical purposes, permanent.
If we drag the same knife with the same strength over a body
of water, the water will react momentarily in the form of
outflowing waves. It will then return to its natural state
as if nothing had happen. Because of its flexibility, it does
not retain the past but returns to its responsiveness to the
present stimuli.
Returning to our original example of the cloth, the denser
the cloth, the greater the weave of the past, because the
threads are basically the imprint of the past onto the mind.
Through meditation we gradually remove these threads and the
programming of the past. Eventually the weave is quite loose,
which means that we are more open to the moment because there
are less threads of the past to hide and distort the present.
Gradually, after many years of spiritual practice, the mind
becomes an open channel and very few experiences can disturb
our flowing peace, our inner security, which is now based
on our contact with our inner spiritual SELF.
Since few events can now annoy us, we become more open, more
loving and experience more unity with all. When the mind has
become totally freed from all threads, then we experience
the state of enlightenment and become open channels for all
the qualities of the divine.
See related articles:
Understanding Meditation
Through Models - Part 1
Understanding Meditation
Through Models - Part 3
Robert E. Najemy, author of 25 books and life coach
with 30 years of experience, has trained over 300 life coaches
and now does so over the Internet. Become a life coach. Over
600 free article and lectures at www.HolisticHarmony.com
Article Source:
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