WHAT SHOULD BE YOUR EXPERIENCE IN MEDITATION?

When people come to know that you meditate, first question that strikes in their mind is “what happens when you meditate?”

People every now and then come to me asking whether what they experienced during meditation is right or wrong. They want to know how do I feel during meditation. I have been meditating since last 2 years and beginners assume that I am doing right meditation as I am experienced and they might be doing it wrong way.

Yes there are right and wrong way of doing meditation but there is nothing to worry if you have found right master.

The myth of meditation: meditation is concentrating on something.
This is so wrong, meditation is not concentration but concentration is the outcome of meditation. Meditation is simple process of observing thoughts and meditation cannot happen by trying to stop some thoughts or flowing with some thoughts. I don’t know if I’m going little bit deeper but this post is not aimed to teach you how to meditate.

Now answering the question from the topic, what should be your experience in meditation? The answer is: each and everyone who meditates has his/her own experience and every time s/he meditates it is a unique experience. So asking someone, what should be the experience in meditation is just illegal question. One who is not foolish will never start essay of his/her experience but s/he will just say everyone has their own experience every time they sit for meditation.

However 3 golden rules of meditation are always applicable:

1. I am no one.
2. I do nothing.
3. I want nothing.

One should follow these three rules while sitting for meditation.

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Do we really love others? (Yagyavalkya's explanation)

Once maitreyi asked Yagyavalkya "You want to take sannyas(renunciate) and leave all worldly pleasures because they hinder your strive to immortality, but is love of me and kattayeni is also a bondage that you want to leave?"

Then Yagyavalkya replied "Husband is dear to wife not because she loves him or wife is not dear to husband because he loves her, they are dear because they love themselves. Human loves everything that gives him happiness. He does not love something that gives pain. Human wants wealth not because he loves wealth but because wealth can make his living easier."

"I love myself so I love whatever can give me happiness. I love myself thus my nature is bliss(ananda). This soul(atma) is bliss. That's why I want to renunciate. I am going beyond happiness and non-happiness.Now my sole purpose is to understand soul. This soul is only able to see, hear and meditate."

This was conversation between yagyavalkya and his wife maitreyi when Yagyavalkya expressed his desire to take sannyas.I wrote it here so that I could let readers know that we only love ourselves and none others. So trying to say 'you should love me because i love you' or trying to claim love is futile exercise. We just need to realise our love is for us only and no other. :D

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what does meditation do?

“Once there was a man who worked hard at a well-paying job. He had plenty of money, a nice house and a good life. But, there was one problem…
He never knew what time it was!
Even stranger, he wore a watch on his wrist all the time. But unfortunately, he didn’t realize that it was a watch! He just thought it was some sort of lucky bracelet. So he never used it, and could never keep track of time.”
Unable to perform tasks on time, his boss had to fire him.  Soon after losing his job, without any money, he lost his house as well, and soon sank into a deep depression…all because he could never figure out what time it was.

One day he met his best friend for coffee, and after a few minutes he broke down in tears sobbing, “I’m completely desperate, could you please tell me what time it is?” His friend looked at him completely surprised.
“I don’t need to tell you the time!” he exclaimed with a laugh, “you’re wearing a watch on your own wrist! You can tell the time all by your self.”
“But I’m not wearing a watch,” protested the man.
“Of course you are!” said the friend, ”just look!” and he pointed to the watch on the man’s wrist. Sure enough, there it was. With a shock, the man realized he’d been wearing a watch all along.”

That's the end of story. What happened here? a guy was wearing a watch and he was not aware of it and he suffered, this story won't make any sense if it is seen as it is but if we try to understand it on the basis of awareness the  lots of mysteries will be solved.

Watch has a simple purpose of giving time but if we don't have awareness about watch then watch cannot be used to its full potential. It is same with everything, we can utilise anything fully only if we are aware of it. So can we increase our efficiency by raising our awareness? Yes.

But how can awareness be raised, it can be raised through meditation. There are so many types of meditation and no matter what one follows the ultimate goal is raise in awareness. People say their concentration increased, confidence increased, and they got many more benefits from meditation. This is all actually the outcome of raised awareness.

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