Meditation – Meditation

Awakening from stress – Meditation

To let go of stress is a little bit like awakening from the past. Also, what it means to be free from anxiety is in some way like awakening from the future. In both ways is the thinking that continues to distract us from being here and now. But, it’s not like I have to hide in the present moment, for what we truly have is the only present moment.

A struggle to meditate tells me how much I am distracted by the thoughts of the past and future.

We know exactly what stress is and how it feels and how damaging it can be if we stay exposed to it for longer than we can take it. Do not get me wrong, we all react but the question is how long we will stay in this survival mode; minutes, hours, days months, or years?

Just to mention briefly, maybe you have heard about telomeres that are often described as being like a shoelace cap that protects DNA from unraveling and being exposed. Studying show, that our emotions and lifestyle can significantly shorten or slow down telomeres and consequently affect aging. I encourage you to read more about it.

We can talk about meditation all day long, read stories of great meditators, and contemplate texts of dharma, different traditions, and the science behind it. On the one hand, knowledge about it is inspiring and points in a direction, on the other hand, practice is essential.

So how meditation can help me to manage my stress?

Below is a sample of one way to approach stress.

Let’s say that I’ve found myself in a stressful moment, whatever it is. My thoughts are clinging to something obsessively again and again. My emotions are stronger than ever, it could be anger, fear, sadness, etc.

I put my hand on my chest, heart center. I want to be in the present moment, here and now. The moment I touch the heart center my attention goes there. I take a note of my breath – in and out. Longer I keep my attention on breathing, the more I see that it is not ”I am breathing” but “breathing is happening”. My hand is resting on the heart center. I feel merged with “breathing is happening”. The thoughts and emotions are there and I let them be like clouds in the sky, just passing through. My attention is on the heart center. In this instance, I invite the space that is around me, inside me. Space and consciousness are reflections of themself. It is open, I am open. I embrace my stressful thoughts with the consciousness of space like a mother welcomes her child. I want to abide in the space of the non-dual consciousness. Here and now. It is only now. Peace and love in my heart remain.

Let me comment on it.

As a beginner, we think that we need to stop thinking completely in order to meditate. Just let the mind go blank, no thoughts, darkness, and I can rest. So we think about how it should be. Notice the fact that we still think of not thinking which is still thinking. This has nothing to do with meditation. To help you to visualise it, imagine the traffic on a busy road, lots of cars, one after another. Thinking is like constant traffic and the thinker is in each and every car. Now, imagine yourself pulling off the road, you get out and sit on the side of the road. Then, you watch the traffic, car after car passing through, coming and going. There is nothing to hold to, except the space that surrounds the busy road of thoughts. The present moment is that space which is the consciousness, alive like your beating heart.

Also, we need thoughts to think, to picture ideas, creativity, and dreams. So thoughts are the product of our fears and dreams like an inner private cinema, which is not who we really are. It’s just one layer of consciousness but not mindfulness.

Another detail about meditation in relation to our personal stories. Someone might think that to meditate, is not to have stories because they are not real and only distract me from true happiness. Again. It is not about that. You can have as many stories in your life as you want but the awakening of the consciousness of empty space behind those stories makes them original and sets you free.

Therefore, to recognise your-own nature, buddha, consciousness, higher self, holy spirit, quantum field, or whatever you call it. It has nothing to do with thinking, thoughts, and your beautiful or bad life story. In the same way, the clothes we wear every day are not our true skin.

Meditation is an experimental discovery.

So you see, meditation has nothing to do with thinking or not thinking. Therefore, be courageous to talk to authentic experienced people of meditation for clarity and guidance.

This would be a good start to having an idea about what meditation is, and remember, this is still an intellectual concept.

Imagine a world where there is no need for a meditation teacher, sessions to book, and unfamiliarity with consciousness – meditation. Instead, every parent, class teacher, and stranger on the street is a living knowledge of the experience. Learning meditation would be to observe and absorb the full consciousness from the early years.

So, if you feel stressed, take a break and sit down on the side of the road for a minute or two and observe your thoughts without judging. Let them come and go. Keep your attention on the specious consciousness of the here and now. Easy to say, huh!

Bear in mind that, many ways can help with stress and anxiety. The real question we need to ask ourselves is, do I want just to cope with emotions or to be free from their suffering?

Consciousness, Meditation, Life

Coherence – Meditation

Leave a Comment / Meditation / By Mariusz

Coherence - Meditation.

Nothing that happened in the past can prevent us from being present here and now.

Here I am, meditating feeling good, happy and stress-free but what next. At first, it may look scary because who I thought I was in the past was only a shell of limited, rigid habits and patterns. Quite the opposite, I’m very influential in creating new links between neurons in my brain. Hence, a new identity able to adapt, gain new skills and most importantly a deep understanding of the power of elevated emotions and thoughts.

Once there is an experience of oneness by being connected to the unified field then, love and joy are spontaneously triggered without effort. So, changing limiting patterns into healthy habits becomes a matter of “I can so I do”.

What do I mean by that?

As I mentioned in my previous posts, the space we discover through meditation is the same space of the mind that opens a potential of how we see and experience ourselves. We are no longer an actor playing a role but a writer and a director at the same time.

We know the missing link between, I want to change a habit but I can’t. We lack motivation which is the power of the heart. Some people spend years travelling around the world to get inspired, not knowing how to connect and open the heart.

Through meditation, we gain a tremendous ability to self-regulate from damading emotions, on a level that is equal to a metaphor of a snowflake landning on a warmth hand just to melt instantly. Imagine yourself reacting to an event or person with anger or stress, which can be absolutely normal, but the question is how long you want to stay with those emotions, an hour, days, weeks, or years.

Loosely speaking, various practices of tantra in Buddhism aim to connect to different qualities embodied by deities, like love and wrath. But this is elevating and self-regulating.

How often do you find yourself in survival mode which can be necessary at a time but it’s damaging in the long run?

To be able to come back to the heart of peace and the creative mode we need skills to self-regulate on demand. Life is too short to wait for things to happen, and when we’re stressed it’s even shorter. Hence, meditation. If you leave things to heal and settle by themselves it may take a long time.

Self-regulating is not forcing, it’s a formula.

Science indicates that feelings and thoughts influence our brain-body chemistry. If it wasn’t true then stress wouldn’t cause obesity, heart problems, depression, and so on. For this reason in reverse, if we elevate the feeling of love reinforced by loving-kind thoughts, wonderful things happen to our body and environment.

Most people only know the outer environment as a source of happiness and love and as a primordial cause of suffering. On the other hand, our inner environment is as responsible as the outer environment for everything that happens to us, more than we think.

Meditation is a key to our inner environment to be able to elevate and experience the quality of emotions that promote health, creativity and consequently influence the outer environment.

Through meditation at its core, I find silence, stillness and space so alive. The energy of being nobody and everybody. This is where I regulate my emotions, and thoughts, that is my well-being. Life becomes less determined by the random winds of emotions and thought but more in control of your owm dreams and passions.

How many times do we find ourselves tired of playing many roles from being a sister, wife, husband, coworker, leader, friend, and ourselves, to name a few? We take on many roles which require different types of energy to be coherent. So if I’m given a role to be a leader I need to recognise it first and then elevate the right energy, which most of the time happens to us spontaneously. Then, I go to see my sister to be a brother, to my wife to be a husband etc. It goes even deeper, to recognise and manage our female and male energies which shape the quality of relationships, especially between a couple.

Many of us have experienced cultural differences which are again, different ways of thinking and habits that have their reflection in the brain as neuron pathways and therefore energies. After that, we have spirituality, philosophies, beliefs, psychology, science, various education systems and so on. All of it creates unique identities.

Isn’t it astonishing? The plasticity and multidimensional properties of our brain. I like to think of ourselves as having this inner technology that enable us to self-regulate and create on demand.

Lack of coherence creates friction between who we are and who we want to be.

It comes down to the ability to self-regulate. This is where meditation comes in very handy. So, I stop and connect to the inner space to become a nobody. Then, I connect myself to a role at work, my family member, a friend, spouse. That’s why some people need more time than others (transitions) to shift their energy between different roles, especially if they find it difficult to quiet the mind of thoughts and emotions.

Other times we may find ourselves with no energy because it’s too much so I may feel like changing roles or being alone. I can try to change my environment and connect to something or someone, but still, it’s not enough to rest. However, if I sit for meditation to become nobody, space, no role, neutral, I can rest, and recharge like a vacation and it happens within the space of my flat. Yes, sometimes I only need a nap.

So the struggle with adaptability, being here and now may have its roots in sending our attention to the wrong place. The energy goes where our attention goes.

There is another thing to bear in mind. Stress promotes stress, gratitude promotes gratitude. So we deserve what we promote.

Self-regulating allows us to manage our energy, emotions and thoughts, which is a healthy and creative future.

Sometimes we need to elevate different emotions like compassion, kindness, calmness and wrathful depending on circumstances and needs.

Take a moment and look at your thoughts, emotions, and habits from a distance like an observer. This is you! Acknowledge it and know that only you have the power to be the way you want to be and more.

Next, as you observe yourself from a distance, then take a moment to observe the observer. What do you experience? You may discover that it’s still you but yet another dimension of you without habits, past or future. Now you’re on a ledge of a cliff to experience oneness. The source of all you are and a potential of who you could be.

Maybe tomorrow you’ll have to face difficulty, for instance, a job interview, health problems, an uncomfortable conversation with a partner etc. Right now I would like you to become aware of the habit of emotions that accompany these events. Take it to your meditation to self-regulate. Do you need more space? Give yourself space. Do you need self-esteem? Give yourself self-esteem. Do you need …? Give yourself ….

So, tomorrow morning when you wake up, gently touch your heart, breathe slowly, and elevate gratitude. Acknowledge goodness in you, feel it, see it. Give yourself 3min or more, before checking social media on a smartphone. This is a good habit.

Good habits give a better chance to make a better choice.

One more thing. If a habit, which we don’t particularly like, is left unchecked, we always go to the past, and we create the same future.

I talked about how I apply meditation in my life in terms of coherence and self-regulation. The next time I hope to talk more about the power of meditation in terms of manifesting, and creating.

The nature of meditation

1 Comment / Meditation / By Mariusz

The nature of meditation.

In this post, I’ll focus on the nature of meditation and its similar characteristics found in other meditations.

To clarify, every time I mention words like non-duality, space, oneness, unified field, God or emptiness, I talk about one and the same experience.

The translation of the Tibetan word meditation means to be familiar with. You can think of it as a process of recognising a hidden aspect of yourself.

Meditation is a tricky one, so first, let’s talk about possible difficulties.

There are two significant points during the course of gaining familiarity with the space of the unified field.

The first significant point is when we have decided to meditate and then, after two minutes, we’re ready to give up. At this point there is no real experience of meditation, the mind is full of thoughts taking over, and it’s even impossible to imagine what it is like to feel space inside and outside of oneself. It’s a complete unknown. Hence, it’s difficult to expect anything because we don’t know. It follows, that the beginning seems to be based on a belief, fate and supported science about meditation. It’s a pickle. Therefore, you have to know why you have chosen to meditate. The reason is your own. Some people do it for knowledge, health, spirituality, love, power, to be free from the past, unknown, etc., and all of it.

The second crucial point is when we get an experience of oneness and we may think that there is nothing more to it, so we stop.

To each end, there is a beginning. To each beginning, there is an end. Then, rest your mind in the space and all merge into one.

There are many types of meditation. For instance, mindfulness, body scan, walking, loving-kindness, transcendental meditation, chakras meditation, guided meditation, Dzogchen meditation, more. Every single meditation shares the same attributes which underpin the meditative mind.

Those are, on purpose, maintaining attention.

The above qualities always bring the present moment and the longer you practice the more natural it becomes, hence, a greater level of self-awareness emerges. Consequently, this leads to the discovery of space.

That’s why, while developing a skill to meditate, it gets a lot easier if we can find a safe and peaceful place with minimum distractions from the environment.

If we think about it, meditation could be sweeping a floor everyday with the right attention and focus. What I want to say, is that there isn’t a right or wrong meditation technique as long as we apply the necessary mindset.

Dzogchen meditation though requires a special commentary since it begins when there is already gained experience of space, oneness. This meditation is applied to the second crucial point I’ve mentioned above. More about it later.

Meditation is a pathway

Let’s talk more about the present moment from a different angle.

There is another way to think about the past, present and future in terms of thoughts and experience. Let’s take a look.

It feels that memories take us to the past, planning takes us to the future and the ongoing situations remind us about the present moment. If we think more about it, it becomes very clear that the motion of time depends on what we think here and now and all of it happens in the mind. For the mind, there is no difference in what we think in terms of time. The moment we think about the past or future, the mind recognises it as now, and it gets reinforced with feelings. What does it have to do with meditation? Well, everything.

Meditation goes beyond the present moment but the reason why we encourage people to focus on the present moment is that this is the closest to explaining what meditation is about. Teachers say “stay in the present moment, just be, feel the space, let it goes, etc.” The truth is that a thought is a thought regardless of the time. The moment we think about the past or future, the mind experiences it as the present moment anyway. There is no difference. The heart of meditation lies in recognition of the unified field before a thought arises in the mind while it lasts and the moment it goes away. It’s the timeless space where the thoughts play their dance from the three directions of time.

Our minds aren’t the thinking mind only but also a dimension of the infinite space connected to every corner in the universe beyond time.

So, lots of people experience the present moment when they are relaxed, calm and focused on a task at hand, and they can argue that they don’t need to meditate. They’re absolutely right. It’s just, they don’t meditate but get caught in a stream of constant thoughts.

So where do I start, Mariusz?

Well, learn to direct and maintain your attention on the present moment, but do not follow your thoughts. Use your body to connect to the here and now by feeling the space around you. Start with a few minutes every day and grow this way. Choose a technique of meditation. In time the practice of meditation becomes as natural and effortless as the thinking mind.

Keep practising.

What do I mean by feeling the space around you? Our physical body experiences the connection to space, not just the mind. The experience of love, anxiety happens inside and mostly around the chest and stomach area, you know it very well. So our physical body is a doorway as well to get the experience of oneness. We just need to recognise it.

The whole body experiences the unified field, space.

Another way to practice attention and focus is to intentionally maintain the experience of gratitude, love, as long as you can throughout the day. Observe your mind and be aware of how other feelings and thoughts try to take over. Then, be aware of it and bring it back.

A traditional way to meditate is to find an attribute that is internal or external, to practice attention and focus. So it’s about finding one object, a thought, an idea, a feeling to hold on to and let everything else come and go without grasping.

The above is a good beginning.

I advise you to find an experienced teacher to talk about your experience, to reassure and guide you. Be humble.

The most humble thing we can do in this world is to see beyond and outside of the limitation of our ego mind.

Most people think that meditation is something extra to do in their lives. One more chore on the to-do list. Therefore, one would ask. Do you need meditation to be happy, successful, have a dream job, to have and solve life problems including all human activities? The answer would probably be, I don’t. But then, I would feel terribly poor, disconnected and alone.

Moreover, I would have realised that meditation is essential first to be, in order to have anything else.

The magic of being connected to the space of the unified field is that all you have been looking for is there. Love, happiness, wholeness, sense of purpose, power of placebo effect to heal yourself, mental stability and fast recovery from stress and anxiety, creativity and adaptability, potential.

The universe of abundance lives in you. You are the universe.

The Beginning – Meditation

2 Comments / Meditation / By Mariusz

The Beginning - Meditation.

It has been more than 31 years of discovering and mastering my meditation. Let’s rewind back to when I was about twelve.

I remember this train of thoughts:

“I’m here and now going to school, then high school, an uni, job, marriage, children, getting older and older and finally dying!”

The moment I said dying! I experienced myself without me. I felt free, emerged with the space around me, no time, no me, just pure consciousness. It didn’t last long, maybe a few minutes so I went through this process of thinking again and again. I didn’t know what I had experienced at that time.

Few years later, I was doing homework, writing something. I remember being calm and focused at that moment. Suddenly I realised that the pen felt as thin as the hair in my hand. It was a brief experience but it happened a couple of times.

I would like to mention an episode when one day I felt completely lost. I couldn’t see what I should do with my life, I didn’t feel passion for anything, completely lost. I was pushed into a corner, isolated, disconnected. Since all attempts failed to find inspiration from the outside world my only hope was to go inwards – meditation.

At the age of 17, I started to practice martial arts. Soon after, I read a book about ninja but what was most interesting, there was a short chapter about meditation. Very simple instructions: sit down, focus on one point on the floor in front of you, and don’t let your mind wander off. That’s it! It had become my daily routine which I loved to do straight after school.

The next event has changed everything.

During my studies, my psychology teacher asked us to write down in one column feelings, emotions I was accepting and the ones I wasn’t, in the other column., After a while, I realised that whether I was accepting them or not it didn’t matter because I would feel those feelings anyway. I visualised feelings as clouds passing through and never stopping. Suddenly I felt empty and spacious inside. Then, a motion of awareness raised to the top of my head culminating in a blissful opening, letting it all out. For a moment I thought that I got completely crazy, it was a feeling of rapture.

After a few minutes when I was a bit more settled I described it all to my psychology teacher. He looked at me, said congratulations and mentioned that I should meet a Tibetan master on an upcoming retreat to confirm my insight.

The next morning I went for a walk in the mountains. I took the same path as before but something was different. The perception and sensation of my eyeballs were filled with space. My eyes felt as if they were suspended in an infinite space, truly opened. Consequently, when I looked at the far distanced mountains it felt to me that there wasn’t any gap between me and them. All of it was inside my mind or I was outside of my bubble-like mind. The mind and the environment were united in the same field of reality. The outcome is bliss, peace, wholeness, happiness, love, just to name a few.

If you think that this is all you can experience in terms of self awareness, then you’re still asleep.

The next night I had a dream of walking in a corridor and, in front of me, I could see a beam of energy like a cord of light. I could hear a buzz of pure energy running between the walls about my high. So, as I walked through, the top of my head touched the beam and I felt a powerful electric shock on top of my head that ran through my body. I literally fell off the bed.

My first meditation retreat took place in Poland with lama Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche in 1997. Everything I was experiencing became very clear to me but I also realised that it was only the beginning.

I remember my conversation with the lama when I wanted to confirm my experience. It was a very short one. It took a minute to recognise when Rinpoche eventually said “There is nothing to talk about Dzogchen” Words can not describe the dimension of oneness. That was it.

After that, once a year I participated in summer retreats regularly while in the meantime organising my own individual retreats and integrating the experience of the unified field with everyday activities.

Now, going back to my experience of the pen as thin as hair. As an experienced practitioner, now it’s the experience of the whole body empty inside but my skin transparent, paper-thin and light like a feather. But even then, this disappears and what is left is pure self-aware consciousness.

Over the next years, the familiarity of experience became stronger and natural. Every practice, different types of meditation felt like pouring water into water.

Then when I was 29 years old, I had an idea to travel to Tibet to study Yungdrung Bön – the native pre-Buddhist religious tradition of Tibet. So I went to the UK to study English for a couple of years to prepare myself and get ready. In the meantime, my meditation experience deepened and gradually there were fewer and fewer reasons to go anywhere. In the process I’ve discovered a passion for mathematics among many other things but also, I’ve met my partner I want to spend my life with.

When I look back to my first experience of the unified field, it’s interesting to see how the child’s mind is open and fresh to connect with reality, living in the moment as if everything is possible and infinite.

Meditation brings it back.

Introduction – Meditation

Leave a Comment / Meditation / By Mariusz

Introduction - Meditation.

^{I dedicate this blog to those who may find my thoughts and experience inspirational, practical, reassuring.}

I believe that personal stories have a lot in common with who we are, our dreams, and our feelings. That first-hand experience makes a difference and gives a sense of authenticity, but also shows that we are all humans with our flaws, desires, the past and problems. Everyone can meditate and it’s up to you what you want to do with your life.

I will mostly focus on a non-dual experience of the mind, so-called a mystical experience or what is referred to as enlightenment, emptiness, divine, unified field, etc. I want to take you beyond the “ordinary mind” of object and subject into a realm of quantum field of the “natural mind“. The terminology of the ordinary and natural mind comes from the Tibetan teaching of Dzogchen which I will expand in the following posts. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about science.

There is no requirement of being special or a chosen one to meditate like it was believed in the past. To have some kind of destiny or waiting for a sign for something to happen. We have a choice to create our own destiny. If you can learn, dare to look inwards and if you are alive then the door to the unknown and human potential is open.

If you would ask me, Mariusz, what concept of meditation you hold and what you suggest. Well, my meditation view is based on the past discoveries somewhere in Tibet, India, etc. up to modern science. I don’t stop on mysticism but embrace it with new revelations in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, biology, quantum physics, etc.

In the biginning, it is always better to learn meditation from an experienced, authentic teacher with the attitude in mind that I’m a student and I’m ready to absorb. It means that I need to leave behind, (during practice) my role of being a husband, a wife, banker, cleaner… name a job or role. Also, to be a bit of a scientist, an explorer with a curious mind, an open mind to learn.

When we read about meditation and its reasons to practice it, we can find lots of hints that something has been lost, that we have been disconnected from ourselves and now we have to stop, wake up, go back to nature or origin to retrieve our true self. This is one way to think. My opinion is that meditation has unimaginable possibilities we learn, develop and master.

What do I mean by that?

Meditation is a process, our inner evolution of consciousness. The potential is already there and always has been, but it has to be learned, discovered, and to be familiar with. Therefore, when we meditate we move our awareness from duality towards the experience of oneness, being connected, etc. The outcome might feel as if we have come back home after a long journey. Something like in Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

So what I’m trying to say is that there is nothing we have lost, nothing to reconnect but to work towards this connection, understanding, shifting ourselves in the direction of non-dual consciousness. It’s about intentionally directing our awareness towards the quantum field. Although, once it’s experienced the only thing that matters is how far I can go. The laws of nature had already existed long before we were born. Meditation is not a process of inventing but recognising. Well, once it’s discovered then we can use it to create a life we want.

It’s there waiting for you hidden yet in front of you.

Meditation can be challenging at the start for many reasons but the most noticeable is unfamiliarity with the experience. By nature, we don’t like changes. It’s easier to take a pill, easier to stay in the past even though it’s painful, yet at least familiar. Then it’s become a habit and this turns into an identity. Our mind and body are one so when the mind wants to move forward the body pulls it back. A purpose and meaning are the directions. Love and passion are the fuels. Be your own hero.

The reasons why people meditate are many. It could be a health issue, to be more aware in general to cope better with emotions and feelings, a spiritual path, be more creative and successful, to overcome limits or simply to find peace. Whatever the motives are to meditate is all about getting happier without waiting for external circumstances to make us feel so.

Further, meditation opens the door to far more than we can imagine.

When we talk about inner and outer space, we don’t mean an intelectual thinking! It’s an experiece.

We are lucky to live at this point in time where meditation is accessible in so many ways and forms. Nowadays if I want to start meditating I only need to google a teacher, buy a guided meditation or drop in for a free meditation session, just around the corner. Not always it was so easy. There was a time when someone wanted to learn a meditation he had to travel to Tibet or India, and even then, advanced techniques were only possible for those who reached a sophisticated understanding of the spiritual practice. Science and psychology about meditation didn’t exist at that time.

My teacher once said. While in the past it was wise to keep the teachings secret, now it’s essential to have them open, otherwise, there is a possibility it all would be lost.

After this short opening, I would like to continue in my next post with my first steps towards meditation and how things have cascaded and continue to do so.