Self Awareness Through Meditation

Author(s): Ranjitsingh Kumat
Publisher: Ranjitsingh Kumat

Page 46

14
ENLIGTENMENT AND BLISS THROUGH MEDITATION
only to our health but also to attainment of peace and bliss. Yet in our daily behavior we are overtaken by our passions and feel helpless. We do not want to indulge in drinking and yet we feel powerless when the situation arises. We do not want, at the rational level, to accumulate wealth but cannot give up the greed of getting that extra money. We never wanted to hurt by being angry with someone who came in the morning but we lost all control and were driven by some inner urge of which we were not conscious at all. The psychologists say that our conscious mind, which thinks and rationalizes, is only one tenth of the total mind, the rest of the nine-tenth is what they call unconscious or subconscious mind, of which we are hardly aware. Though the conscious mind is off to sleep when we are asleep but the unconscious mind never sleeps. Our unfulfilled desires, habits, passions, instincts, beliefs, notions, impressions etc., and suppressed dreams all remain buried in this unconscious mind and they pop up when we are totally off guard. As we are not aware, it comes like a bolt from the blue and we feel powerless about it.
Meditation helps us in becoming aware of the unconscious, the involuntary thoughts or passions arising and once we become aware of it, the power of the unconscious dissolves. When we are aware, the unconscious cannot overpower us as we are aware of all our thoughts, passions, and actions. Any action or thought that comes through our body or mind and done in full awareness, makes us fully master of ourselves. This is the true freedom-freedom from our own thoughts, beliefs, notions, ideas, pleasures and pain perceptions of sense organs, and thus going beyond body and mind. We are not free because we are engrossed with our body. We identify ourselves with the body and mind and are always guided by that. However, we are neither the body nor the mind; we are beyond that. To realize that is the true goal and meditation helps us in attaining that.
Meditation helps us to control our wanderings in the material world and thus put a break on our insatiable desires—the mirage of fulfilling the ambitions. This itself reduces tension and puts an end to the untiring effort of amassing wealth and worldly possessions. This is the beginning of the dawn of peace. Energy is conserved, which makes us the master and not the slave of our body and mind. It is the source of our inner strength. Desirelessness and not the fulfilment of desires is the key to enlightenment, peace and bliss. Meditation helps us in becoming a witness to all that is happening inside and outside. We become witness to events, which are merely registered, and no labelling is done as to whether they are good or bad, or give pain or pleasure. Once the labelling for any experience, inside or outside the body, has been abandoned and the mind has been trained to receive all experiences as the