Self Awareness Through Meditation

Author(s): Ranjitsingh Kumat
Publisher: Ranjitsingh Kumat

Page 39

SELF AWARENESS THROUGH MEDITATION
The dialogues between Eckhart and the participants in meditation classes alternate between two different levels. On one level the author draws attention to what is false in us leading to delusion and conflict. “Unless you learn to recognize the false as false, there can be no lasting transformation, and you would always end up being drawn back into illusion and into some form of pain.” On another level the author speaks of a profound transformation of human consciousnessnot as a distant future possibility, but available right now. One can see how to free oneself from enslavement to the mind, enter into the enlightened state of consciousness and sustain it in everyday life.”34
Difficulty in experiencing the reality
The greatest difficulty in experiencing reality (or having self-awareness) is “the identification with mind.” The incessant mental noise “prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from being (the self). It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering ... Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. Identification with mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your
w man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate “other”. You can no longer feel this oneness as self evident reality. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.”35
Freedom from mind
“Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. The mind is a superb instrument, if used rightly.” When it is out of our control, it is a disease. “You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.”36 “The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker”, which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be