We are all familiar with the feeling of being small and constricted in our heart. When we feel insecure, inadequate, angry, sad, frustrated, blaming, hateful, greedy, jealous, rejected, isolated, craving, what we do experience is a the sense of smallness or constriction of our sense of being and that is what we are calling as the sense of apoornata.
When we are experiencing a sense of apoornata, naturally our responses to life will come from that sense of Apurnata. In fact our whole life is run under the spell of apoornata. Apoornata is characterized by the basic sense that I am separate from, different from, distinct from everything else and therefore naturally I am incomplete. With apoornata there is a sense of dissatisfaction, a sense of all not being well with me.
This sense of apoornata comes from ignorance of my real nature being Poorna, complete, whole. As we have been studying now the consciousness that one is is totally Poorna. Purna means that there is no form of limitation whatsoever in the consciousness that one is. Infact consciousness is the illumining presence because of which even the sense of apoornata Is revealed.
In the presence of self revealing consciousness pleasant thoughts, pleasant sensations, pleasant feelings as well as unpleasant thoughts unpleasant sensation unpleasant feelings are revealed. We can use an analogy of the sky, the blue wide open sky, in whose presence the clouds are floating around. These clouds keep changing their shape. They come and go. Our consciousness is like that wide open blue sky, in whose ever-presence, thoughts both pleasant and unpleasant, feelings both pleasant and unpleasant, sensations in the body both pleasant and unpleasant come to go.
As we meditate over a. of time we become aware that we are an unconditional presence, in whose illumining presence, different types of thoughts, feelings, sensations, come, mark their presence, only to go away. The consciousness that we are, we realise is clear. It is not affected or tainted by the quality of thoughts, feelings, sensations, objects that are revealed in its presence.
This is why meditation becomes so important. This topic of samadhi which is coming up now is meant to show you in what will become the truth for you, when you take to a practice of meditation. Naturally when I say a practice of meditation it means a consistent practice of meditation.
Meditation is a training of your mind. Therefore it requires consistent practice. The nature of the mind is to be restless and to wander. So our first job is to train the mind for ekagrata, for being focused. We can adopt very simple practices for training our mind to be focused at a particular point of attention. We don't really need guided meditation for training our mind to develop focus. Guided vedantic meditation comes after that and then comes meditation without guidance where you are simply there and you can guide yourself and finally meditation in which you find that you do not really require thoughts to be there - you just are.
So these simple practices of focusing your attention, to develop ekagrata, are undertaken by just sitting quietly in a very relaxed manner and fixing your attention and observing either on your breath or the sensations in your body or the sounds around you or a mantra or the image of a deity or a picture. In these kinds of meditation, you are training your mind to come back to a constant point which you have chosen. So whenever the mind wanders away you simply notice it and in a very non-judgemental manner you bring back your attention to wherever you have chosen to fix it, either your breath or the sensations in your body or the external sounds or your mantra. The attitude is one of friendliness, openess, receptiveness to whatever is your experience now.
And in one particular meditation you can even alternate between all of these - for sometime you focus on your breath, the for sometime you can focus on the sensations of your body, then you can listen to the sounds around you and finally you can come to mantra. The point is that whatever you have chosen to focus your attention on, when your mind wanders you bring it back as soon as you notice it.
These practices themselves are very fruitful because after a while you become aware that thoughts come and go, feelings come and go, sensations come and go, in the conscious witnessing presence that you are. The conscious presence that you are is not really tainted by any of these. Then it becomes very clear that you are the drg, and these are all drshya - they are mithya because they depend on your conscious presence to reveal themselves, because though they are imbued with consciousness thru and thru they are all impermanent.
You must become familiar with yourself as being the self-revealing conscious witnessing, illumining presence untainted by whatever is revealed in your presence.
Om Tat Sat
