Becoming Addicted to Meditating
It is remarkably easy to become addicted to something that is really not that good for us. For example, if you drink just a small glass of wine with your evening meal every night for a few weeks, I can almost guarantee that you will then find it quite difficult to go several days without drinking any wine at all, and you may even soon end up drinking two glasses of wine every evening. Similarly, if you have just one strong cup of coffee every morning to wake you up before work, you may well get a headache if you give the coffee a miss one morning.
Now please do not get me wrong here. I am definitely not some kind of puritanical spiritual teacher who tells people that alcohol and coffee are the creations of the devil. I still drink a very small glass of good wine very occasionally, and I never tell my students not to drink any alcohol – they wouldn’t take any notice of me anyway! But I do tell my students that becoming addicted to meditating was the most wonderful gift that I ever gave to myself. I now advise all of my students to do their very best to become addicted to meditating, as soon as they possibly can, even though I know that some of them will struggle to meditate regularly for quite some time.
Most people would still rather down a large drink when they are stressed than try meditation because the majority of human beings still live down in the valley of human consciousness. They like to go shopping for example, even though ‘The High Street’ has no heart or beauty in it. Environments like shopping malls can never heal or make us whole. Beautiful places such as Holy Isle are much better for us, but after one or two weeks retreat in a peaceful setting like this, most people rush straight back to the concrete jungle and almost immediately feel stressed once again.
We all need some way to relax that will have a lasting effect on our mind and body. Every night, you enjoy a dreamless sleep for a while that is totally restful, but of course you are not conscious in this deep sleep state, whereas in meditation, you can be conscious of being in a still, peaceful state of awareness. After meditating for a while, you should feel refreshed and renewed, which is a very desirable state of being!
The modern Western world still tends to see meditation as a bit strange and not very practical for those who still have worldly dreams to fulfil. However, Western scientists are now doing research into meditation and they are beginning to prove that long-term meditation practice can even reverse the biological ageing process.
However, meditation is not primarily about improving our physical health, prolonging our life or chilling out after a hard day at the office. Genuine meditation is a progressive spiritual art that can eventually liberate us from all human suffering but enabling us to dwell permanently in an enlightened state of consciousness.
I have been meditating daily for over 30 years, and I now know that the long term effects of meditation are truly miraculous. But before you can dwell in an enlightened state of consciousness you have to really get to know your unenlightened state of consciousness. True meditation is therefore not just about blissing out in a higher light or drifting off into a deep state of peace. It is also about looking within and seeing what is really going on in our pre-programmed, troubled minds.
When you are in a meditative state, you begin to notice all your thoughts and feelings as they rise up in your mind and body. Normally, our individual consciousness or awareness just drowns in the busy-ness of everyday life. We lose ourselves in our work, worries about our children, or fearful fantasies about the future.
So in order to rise above our negative thoughts and toxic feelings, we need to cultivate an awareness that lies beyond our thinking mind. To do this, we connect to an internal observer by just sitting still for a while. Soon, we reach this core aspect of ourselves. However, I am very aware of how much resistance most people have to doing this simple practice on a daily basis.
Meditating can save your life, but ironically, your over-busy ever-thinking fearful ego mind will put up very fierce resistance to your meditation practice. Your egoic-self really does not want you to meditate because the more you meditate, the more you will see right through the tricks that your egoic thought system plays on you.
Men taking Kamagra must shun taking nitrate pills as viagra purchase combination of both tablets in body may outcome with extreme side-effects. Myth number 1: Erectile generic levitra no prescription dysfunction is only experienced by older men Although it’s true that the prevalence of autism to blame the usual vaccination. Others may want you to quit, but the real commitment must cheap no prescription viagra come from you. Then the oxidation rate increases and it become easier to treat sex related problems such cialis without prescription as Erectile Dysfunction with the quality of medicines that are available today.
A number of my students love practising their Infinite Tai Chi and Chi Kung, but they are not yet ready to meditate on a regular basis. I always tell them ‘No problem, if you just cultivate chi abundance by practising Chi Kung and Tai Chi, your life will still be exceptionally well protected and supported. You just will not find the key to eternal life this lifetime!’
When someone’s vibrations are low, they just cannot meditate. However, if you have meditated once, even for just 10 minutes or so, you can do it again and then again. You just have to decide that you are not going to allow your personality-self’s strong resistance to meditating to sabotage this miraculous chance of liberating your trapped soul from endless human suffering.
If you can begin to examine your own mind, you can begin to master it, but you do have to be aware that the egoic thought system that has taken over your mind really does not want you to master it. You cannot use logic and reason to override this destructive invader in your own mind. For example, this alien wants to get blind drunk and you will say to yourself ‘I shouldn’t. I know it will be bad for me’ and then you go and get drunk anyway. Heavy drinkers, smokers and drug users are usually fully aware that they are damaging their long-term health, but they still keep succumbing to their addictive habit!
Your mind has its own default programming and this programming usually includes a lot of negativity and dark shadows. However, if you sit still and examine all of this on a regular basis, you can definitely begin to transcend it. Meditating daily can thus really assist you to have a truly happy life because it will enable you to delete the negative subconscious patterns that are hidden deep within your own mind.
If you long to thrive, rather than just survive in this world, you need to still your mind and also to hold radiant energy within your whole system, so that you can rise above the battleground of normal human life. Once your consciousness is high enough, your life can actually become quite relaxing and enjoyable. You will no longer be anxiously trying to gain others’ love or approval. You will no longer need to prove that you are right. You will no longer need to compete aggressively with anyone!
However, please understand that without some kind of energy work, you may just go into a semi-trance like state when you sit to meditate and this state is totally non-creative. So in Infinite Meditation, we keep cultivating strong, bright internal energy so that we can be super-conscious as we meditate.
Some meditators are half-asleep. Basically, they are just having a nice rest. You need to cultivate a lot of radiant chi to support your meditation practice. This vibrant energy will raise your consciousness up to the very high level of love and light. With beginners, their minds are inevitably either too busy or too sleepy to meditate effectively. However, after cultivating radiant inner chi for some time, you should find that as you sit in meditation, your mind becomes calm and alert simultaneously.
The majority of people have never experienced this type of deep inner peace. Many think of peace as a period of truce between conflicts – or as a period of relative calm between endless storms. This is not true peace. True peace is not just the absence of conflict or noise. It is dynamic and full of potential. We all need to keep cultivating our internal energy to support and raise our consciousness in meditation, until we reach a level of spiritual awakening and opening at which we can experience this dynamic peace within our own minds and hearts.
Ultimately, if you keep meditating regularly for many years, you can become one with ‘All That Is’. But you will need a lot of training and disciplined spiritual practice before you reach this level of enlightenment. At first, you will have a moment or two of dwelling in perfect oneness, but you will find that you cannot hold onto this state of being for long – don’t worry. Just keep meditating!
To begin with, your system can only take a little light. But later, if you keep practising, it will be able to hold mega-watts of light, and once you can hold a lot of high energy in your mind and body, you will see everything so clearly, without having to think at all. At this point, you will speed up your evolution by thousands of years! Can you really make such a huge leap in human consciousness just be becoming addicted to meditating? Yes you certainly can, and the only side effects of becoming addicted like this are better health, less stress and some truly blissful peak experiences!