On Meditation
Stillness at Heart is not about self-improvement, religion, or spirituality. It’s beyond all that. Stillness at Heart encourages self-discovery and being true to what you are, and learning to see yourself beneath the personality, beneath layers of habits and conditioning.
If you’re drawn to finding out the truth about yourself, the discovery is endless. It’s the most exciting, rewarding, and liberating journey you could ever embark on. You are the captain. Stillness at Heart can offer guidance.
Bon Voyage! Or rather: Welcome Home!
Stillness at Heart was created to give people an opportunity, tools and space, to start exploring what they are. The best way to self-discovery is meditation. In this essay, I will explain a little how it works and how I approach it. Many of you probably have some experience with meditation already but let me start from the beginning anyway.
Meditation is an ancient method to still the mind and attain self-knowledge. Self-knowledge in this sense means the ability to distinguish between what you are and what you are not. There are many different meditation techniques but only one meditative state – abiding in one’s inner Self, or true being. With Stillness of Heart, we focus on the most essential: to simply be, as you naturally are.
This of course sounds extremely easy and in one sense it is. What could be easier than being what you are? But it can be a little difficult when you first start to meditate because our mind is a like wild horse that resists being tamed. That’s why we need to practice taming the mind a little so that it allows us to remain in our true being; the goal of meditation.
When I guide people in meditation, I usually start with a body scan to anchor the person in their body. It’s a powerful way to quickly become grounded and centered in the now. After that, we focus on the breath which is like a bridge taking us directly to stillness. Everyone I have ever worked with immediately recognizes this place as a peaceful, quiet beingness, or knowingness, that has always been with them without ever changing. It’s felt as the most familiar place but it’s also elusive due to its quietness. It’s easy to overlook because the world, our thoughts, and feelings are so loud.
Thoughts or feelings are usually what challenges our meditation practice. Perhaps our thoughts are racing and make it hard to focus on the stillness, or our feelings demand attention like the drama queens they are! Since we have been trained to identify with our thoughts and feelings rather than our beingness, it can be tricky to remain silent. We feel “I am thinking” and “I am feeling” and immediately our attention on the still inner being is lost. It is so much easier to claim the thoughts and feelings as ours than the inner stillness. It takes practice to start recognizing stillness as our main defining factor.
I see thoughts and feelings as useful tools to engage with the world around us, but they are not what we ultimately are. Our thoughts don’t define us. Our beingness is what really defines us. It’s what we are! We could have any thought or feeling and still exist but without your inner being there would be no existence, or at least we wouldn’t know about it. It can be very useful to create a little distance between yourself and the thoughts and feelings that occur in you. That way you make some room for discovery and insight.
I came to meditation through yoga. I had been interested in yoga since the age of 14 but this was a time when yoga wasn’t popular and there were no yoga studios around. I tried to do it from a book! It wasn’t easy. In my twenties I took my first yoga class, and I was immediately drawn to the sublime peace I felt during meditation. Later, the yoga practice fell away but meditation remained. Then the distinction between meditation and non-meditation in my life disappeared and I remained as simple conscious, harmonious being. I never really leave meditation. It’s always there in the background, like a camera that zooms in or out depending on the image it wants to capture. Meditation isn’t what I do anymore. It’s what I am.
What is that inner presence or beingness we all experience? It seems both personal and impersonal. Or rather beyond personal and impersonal. Perhaps this sounds abstract but that is only because we never talk about it. We have never learned to pay attention to this part of ourselves and so we don’t really have a good vocabulary for it. We are taught to put our attention outward, away from our inner presence. Perhaps because the outer world seems more tangible, easier to describe and understand, but the inner silence is the most intimate and familiar aspect of us.
Meditation as a means to access one’s inner silence is very easy. It’s simply sitting with yourself, as you are. It’s not grand or difficult. It’s very, very simple. It’s not something alien to you that you can achieve, rather it’s something to discover; to feel into. In fact, you are not the one meditating, meditation is meditating. That’s why I tell my students that they don’t have to remember anything I say. The only thing to remember is themselves. Not that hard. How could you ever truly forget yourself? Not for long. The trick is coming back to yourself over and over again until you are naturally able to remain as you are at all times. All it takes is practice, a little taming of the mind.
When I guide you to the point of stillness you will immediately recognize yourself. Although the knowledge is instantaneous, it can be a process that takes time to complete itself. It’s a process in which you learn to loosen your identification with thought and emotion and identify more as your innermost being, the one free of any defining thought. This doesn’t mean that you will lose human emotion. Rather it means you will have full access to your whole range of emotion and be able to express yourself naturally and accurately. Meditation is a practice to get to know yourself. You simply observe what’s going on inside. This discovery is endless.
Meditation is learning to sense what you naturally are. It is learning to listen to yourself, your natural voice, your stillness, your beingness and your knowingness. From there joy arises. This is because happiness is a byproduct of knowing yourself as you are. The priceless gift is remaining as you are.
I want to leave you with some words to take with you. If you remember only one thing from this essay, remember this: Nothing is better for you than what you naturally are.
Feel into this. Sense what this could mean for you.
Nothing is better for you than what you naturally, and already, are.