What does meditation do?

WRITTEN BY DR ELENA BACASH, CHIROPRACTOR AND YOGA/MEDITATION TEACHER

 

The Two Most Important Reasons to Meditate

 

The true value of meditation is that it changes our centre of focus. Meditation causes a shift of focus from the personal life of the meditator to the Higher Self. It allows us to stream in the intuition through all of our day-to-day life activities, giving us better guidance on the challenges we all face. This means that we stop seeing life through our triggers, biases and hurts, so the challenging situations and people we encounter don't rattle us as much.

 

The personal self is the centre of our physical plane life, it is everything that concerns the highs and lows of our physical, emotional and mental (lower mind) states.

 

Our Higher Self is also called the Soul, Observer or Spiritual Triad and this focus on it permeates the life of the meditator with a steady knowingness and power. It means that we start to see things as they really are and not as we are (as the old saying goes) or put another way, we engage with Life without our history and stories triggering reactions all day long. 

 

The Higher Self is composed of a triplicity whose components are as follows:

1. Spirit or Atma

2. Buddhi or Intuition

3. Manas or Higher Mind.

 

It is important to note the difference between the personal mind and the Higher Mind – the personal mind is tinged with desire and is often call desire-mind or kama-manas. It is a part of us that can get entangled and embroiled in thoughts of lack or want and the stress that occurs when we want something we don't have or we're scared of losing something we do have. This is In contradistinction to the Higher Mind which is pure and clear and true.

 

Secondly,  Meditation enables us to achieve a state of balance and detachment.

 

The balance we develop during meditation over time then gives the Higher Self the opportunity to disrupt that balance to tune us to a higher vibration and bring us into connection with higher spiritual values. In our everyday lives this means that we become less and less bothered by the turmoil that surrounds us, things take on a bigger perspective and we become less trapped by our challenges, stories and triggers.

 

In fact, eventually it leads to that great state of spiritual detachment where nothing can touch us – physical, emotional or lower mental because the consciousness is no longer polarised or focused there. This is different to the personal-self shutting down or becoming aloof or any emotional detachment that is based on avoidance or any other dysfunction.

 

In spiritual detachment we cease to be controlled by desire and fear as the Third Zen Patriarch describes:

 

‘If you wish to see truth

Then hold no opinions for or against anything

To set up what you like against what you dislike

Is a disease of the mind

When the deep meaning of things is not understood

The mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.’

 

True peace is to achieve this state of spiritual detachment, because we have managed to escape (through hard effort) the long cycles of desire and fear that entrap us to create such challenging lives.  

 

References

Letters on Occult Meditation by Alice Bailey