Meditation Methods & Awareness

If meditation could be summarized in one brief sentence, it would be “rest as awareness.” Meditation is not something that we do, it’s what we are. It allows us to access and enjoy our true nature without the usual distractions of activities, thoughts, sounds, emotions, sensations, etc.

What is awareness? It’s the only aspect of our being that never changes. The very same awareness that is looking through your eyes right now has been peaking through your ever changing body and mind from the day you were born. It has no form, gender, age, social status, religion, position, or beliefs. It has no opinion about your current circumstances, and no interest in categorizing your experiences as good or bad. You won’t find it anywhere inside yourself, yet it seems to be everywhere. It’s spacious and free, unborn and undying.

How do we access awareness? The more we try, the further away we seem to get, so trying to create the experience of awareness is not the answer. Besides, awareness is not an experience – it’s a presence. Since awareness is always present behind and within all of the details of each moment, we simply need to stop giving our attention to the never-ending changing details of each moment, including thought, circumstances, emotions and sensations to access it. It sounds simple enough in theory, but not easy in practice.

Try these approaches in your practice and see if you can get the ‘feel’ of awareness:

• Remind yourself as you sit down to meditate that awareness is already present. No effort is required. In fact, the less effort the better. Any effort to create awareness often takes us in the opposite direction.

• Allow everything to be as it is. Let any thought, sensation, emotion, and sound be. Completely let go of control. When we are trying to control the details that are coming up this moment our focus gets much narrower. When we allow everything to be as it is our perspective gets broader and more expansive which are qualities of awareness.

• Ask yourself: what is a noticing thought? What is noticing sensation or sound? Experience the answer to these questions as a feeling, a spacious presence within which the details are being played out.

Remember that although it would seem very appealing to ‘rest as awareness’, it’s not actually good news for the ego, which is what most of us operate through in the world. The ego is the conditioned self that has been created as a way to make us feel safe (albeit temporarily) in the world and to prevent us from feeling painful emotions. Much mental and physical energy is tied up in maintaining the ego, and it will do all that it can to preserve itself. The ego cannot survive in the light of awareness and this can feel threatening. As the ego dissolves, many of the painful emotions that it has been constructed around will be dislodged, and rise to the surface to be seen and released.

Awareness is the most powerful solvent for emotional energies. It may take some time to develop a tolerance to feeling energies that have been suppressed and avoided over the course of a lifetime. With time, patience and practice, tolerance for the sensations associated with emotion becomes acceptable and even welcoming. Also, many ailments that are caused by the physical effect of these blocked emotional energies will begin to clear. Through awareness we get the gift of knowing our true nature and enjoying a healthy body!