Self Awareness Through Meditation

Author(s): Ranjitsingh Kumat
Publisher: Ranjitsingh Kumat

Page 40

SELF AWARENESS-MODERN THINKERS VIS-A-VIS ANCIENT TEACHERS
there as the witnessing presence. Do not judge or condemn what you hear. Listen to it impartially. You will soon realize there is the voice and here I am listening to it, watching it. This realization “I am", this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond mind.”37
'No-mind
When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity—a gap of “nomind” At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with being which is usually obscured by the mind.” As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, you realize the state of pure consciousness in which "you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.” In your everyday life, you can practice by paying full attention to routine activity like eating, walking, sitting, rising, closing the door of the car etc., and become fully aware about the activity as well as the flow of the breath. Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence and feel the peace within."38
Watch the Emotions
"Mind is not just thought, it includes emotions. To watch an emotion is basically the same as watching a thought. The only difference is that, while a thought is in your head, an emotion has a strong physical component and so is primarily felt in the body. You no longer are the emotion; you are the watcher, the observing presence. If you practice this, all that is unconscious is brought into the light of consciousness."39 “Pain is self-created till the unobserved mind runs your life. The greater part of the human pain is avoidable. The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you have identified yourself with your mind.”40
Time and Mind
Why does the mind deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future. Time and mind are in fact inseparable. Imagine the earth devoid of human life, inhabited