Steps for Meditation

This will be a brief introduction of the “Eight Steps for Meditation." At the end there will be links that connect you with two profound books that will help further your education.

Each step is just as important as the next. None of the steps should be skipped, there is no rushing the steps, no shortcuts, each step must be lived and experienced.

Let’s begin!

1.Yama: Restraint

Step one relates to ethics. In each spiritual tradition there are cosmic laws, ethical codes of conduct, such as:

1.   Ahimsa – Do no harm

2.   Satyam - Do not lie

3.   Asteya – Do not steal

4.   Brahmacharya – No sexual misconduct/sexual impurity

5.   Aparigraha – No egotistical desires/renunciation

You will find similar ethical codes of conduct in many spiritual traditions. In fact, you should do your own study and find out for yourself.

2.Niyama: Observances

Step two relates to observances/ethics, codes of conduct, such as:

1.   Saucha – Purity, psychologically clean

2.   Santosha – Contentment, gratitude

3.   Tapas – Accepting penance; facing difficulties with gladness, acceptance. Our psychological defects are revealed and discarded.

4.   Svadhyaya – Comprehension; emotional, intellectual, intuitive complete understanding/Conscious knowing, experiential knowledge (Gnosis).

Yama and Niyama are conscious ethics. We need to be consistently watchful of ourselves (self-awareness, self-observation, awareness of observing). We become aware of the causes and effects of our suffering and seek to change unethical behaviors in our hearts, minds, and external actions. Our ego is the cause of our suffering (greed, sloth, lust, pride, anger, envy, gluttony). With Yama and Niyama, we are seeking to transform our vices into virtues, and this is our foundation for meditation. We need to build it!

3.Asana: Relaxed and attentive posture

“As long as there is tension there cannot be relaxation.” Sit with spine straight or lay down on your back with spine straight. Be aware, observe what causes tension; is it your mind, emotion, or posture? “When everything within us becomes still we begin to meditate.” When we are relaxed, we become still. We balance relaxation with attentiveness. We want to be comfortable, spine straight so the energy flowing through your nervous system is not disturbed. We want to be conscious of ourselves, between vigil and asleep. We want to forget the body. Drowsiness helps with imagination. We want to close our eyes and mouth, breathing naturally through our nose. We want our body, heart, and mind to eventually fully rest.

4.Pranayama: Breath – Energy Control

Prana: life force – Yama: Restraint - Vital force or vital energy.

Breathing exercise which transforms the life force, sexual energy within us. Transmuting the sexual, creative, life force helps our body, mind, emotion, etc. “We are seeking to experience our true nature.” No sense of self, no ego, seeking serenity, union with the fundamental nature of reality. Non-identification. If we abuse the sexual, creative energy, through orgasm, or any other sexual misconduct (Bramacharya) we will continue to be slaves to identification (sensations, attachments, vices), and we will have no control over our senses, emotions, thoughts, conditioned consciousness. “Pranayama transmutes the sexual power into a higher form.” All the energy within us comes from our sexual power. We need to stop wasting the greatest source of energy we have, our sexual power. If we learn to harness, transmute and control our sexual power, we begin to live a healthier lifestyle, internally and externally. “Meditation and spiritual development depend upon how we use our creative, sexual power.”

5.Pratyahara: Withdrawal from the senses

“We want a calm and peaceful mind.” This cannot be forced. All the following steps help us enter the natural silencing of the mind. We allow the mind to settle on its own. We never try to force the mind to be silent.

“When the mind follows the wondering senses, then it carries away one’s gnosis, as the wind carries away a ship across the water.” Bhagavad Gita – 2:67-72

From moment to moment, we allow ourselves to be disturbed by external and internal sensory impressions. This is why we are unable to meditate. We have conditioned our consciousness to a continual state of self-forgetting; unconsciousness, mechanical behaviors, craving and aversion. We are used to reacting to whatever we receive through our senses, thoughts and emotions. This means our willpower is somewhat enslaved. “All that is not eternal is illusory.” We are caught up in dualism: pleasure and pain, craving and aversion, pain and pleasure, etc. We must learn to see past duality. There is a middle way. Sensations come and go, pleasure and pain, come and go. Our body is constantly responding to impulses of the senses and mind. Genuine happiness has nothing to do with sensations. We need to become aware of this. We need to take back control of ourselves. Through meditation we will experience our true nature which is happiness and not conditioned by ego. With this step we learn to withdraw within our consciousness, and this helps us experience our natural state. “It is a quality of Being beyond sensations, totally content and happy.” Our true natural state is free from conditioning and sensations.

Step 1: We learn to restrain our desires and reduce the harm they cause. We learn to behave in an upright manner (ethics) by comprehending the causes of our suffering.

Step 2: We learn to utilize our consciousness from moment to moment (mindfulness) to be more aware, more present, more observant.

Step 3: We learn to relax all tension and become totally still by finding the causes of our tension and learning to relax. We lay down face up or sit with our spine straight every day and relax.

Step 4: We harness our preserved sexual energy and use it to deepen our stillness. We work with the life force and stop abusing it.

Step 5: We withdraw attention from the senses, we go inward.

6.Dharana: Concentration

“Concentration is the ability to pay attention (mindfulness) and not to be disturbed. It is the ability to focus the attention without exception and without anything interfering.” We focus on one thing. This step and the one’s before help develop powerful attention. We learn to control our attention and how we pay attention. We call this self-observation and self-remembering. Anyone who’s trying to learn to meditate but is not self-observing at all times of the day will have difficulty with meditation. Step 6 is to concentrate on one thing without distraction. “The purpose of meditation is to acquire information that is inaccessible to the senses and intellect.” We need to be aware of what distracts us, what has power over us and take it back, so that we can learn to concentrate. One of the first things we become aware of is that we lack the ability to concentrate when sitting to meditate. We zone out, fall asleep, have internal chatter, and many distractions. We need to concentrate and be aware of the causes and effects and make changes. Internal chatter is a surging of thoughts, emotions, memories, anxieties, pains and uncertainties. Seeing this in ourselves can be overwhelming, painful and frustrating. So, some people give up. Most people who have an interest in meditation give up before they truly begin. People do not want to face themselves. If we don’t give up and we keep working on steps 1-5 we naturally begin to focus and arrive to step 6, concentration. “Dharana is fixing the consciousness in one place.” This is concentrated and directed attention which is a function of the consciousness. Consciousness is like light; concentration directs the light of consciousness and focuses it. To develop concentration, we take all the power we have and focus on one thing. There are many exercise we can do to develop willpower with concentration. We can focus on the flame of a candle for ten minutes or so daily. We can focus on our breathing in and out of our nose (pranayama).

7.Dhyana: Meditation – Mental Stability

“Meditation is the active conscious contemplation on the nature of any given thing or object. Meditation is conscious stillness, with perfect concentration on the object of meditation. Meditation is the basis from which all conscious realizations are reached.” Meditation is deeper self-observation. It is a profound inner self-observation, but when we truly can concentrate on one thing, when we can truly meditate, we can focus our awareness on many things. We come to know ourselves; we come to know truth through meditation. Step seven is to enter into meditation. “To meditate is to see.” Dhyana refers to a state of consciousness that is free of thoughts, concepts, theories, ideas, yet sees and can deeply understand intuitively what it is directed towards. Dhyana comes from the root word Dhya, “to see, to look.” In the earliest scriptures this became Dhi (imagination), the ability to see internal images, the inner eye. Later the word became Dhyana (meditation). This shows that real meditation is characterized by conscious perception of internal images. “The purpose of meditation is to acquire information that the external senses and the intellect cannot reach.” Meditation is conscious internal perception. There are many levels to perception and meditation helps us access higher levels that are not generated from external physical senses, emotion and intellect. We are describing a level of perception that is not rooted in mechanistic causes but is directed by conscious cognizant efforts. Meditation is a deliberate, internal action taken with full awareness and deep understanding of its purpose. Meditation helps us deeply reflect on a problem or a question. Meditation gives us reliable answers, insights, wisdom, and guidance. This occurs not by thoughts, sensations, or impulses, but by seeing internally. In the state of meditation we can perceive what is hidden from the physical senses. Meditation is a method to solve problems and investigate profound questions. It’s not an intellectual process, but a process of conscious internal perception. With meditation we can investigate anything. In Raja Yoga – Dhyana refers to the actual state of meditation in which the consciousness is very concentrated on its object and becomes so absorbed in its observation that everything else becomes vibrant, clear, and steady. Consciousness is the basis of perception and just like perception, consciousness has many levels. Consciousness is the basis of genuine understanding (comprehension). Once we perceive something we can then begin to understand it. By “understanding,” we mean comprehension; the type of understanding based on facts, repeatable, concreate, and absolutely without doubt. When you’ve experienced being cut by a knife, you’ve observed and understood that the knife can hurt you. That is comprehension, an understanding, genuine knowledge (gnosis) that you will never forget, because you are fully conscious of it at your own level. Through meditation we come to know the facts. Dhyana is the doorway to Samadhi.

8.Samadhi: Union with the Fundamental Nature of Reality

“Samadhi is a state of consciousness.” There are many levels. Samadhi refers to the ultimate goal or stage of meditation or yoga, in which the consciousness is free of the conditioning of the body and mind; experiences its true nature: happiness, insight, joy, freedom, etc. We experience this only through meditation. The eight steps extract our consciousness from conditionings like ego, desire, and sensations. Our consciousness is no longer identified with anything in Samadhi. Instead, it sees them indifferently, without attachment, fear, aversion or craving. We need our consciousness to be aware of itself and not to be identified, forgetting itself. “Concentration plus inner visualization equals Samadhi.” Samadhi is experience of reality. Our aim is to awaken and liberate our consciousness from its prison, the ego. “Through this equation (concentration + inner visualization) we learn how to enter into Samadhi at will.” When we enter into Samadhi we are unbound from any conditioning. Samadhi is not a physical sensation. Samadhi is a state of consciousness characterized by clarity of perception and the absence of the ego. In the state of Samadhi, we experience reality. There are many levels to reality and thus there are many levels to Samadhi. “Samadhi is the consciousness in its natural state, totally unconditioned, we see the truth, the reality. Many of us do not believe in anything beyond the physical world and if those of us who feel and believe this way were to experience Samadhi, everything we thought we knew would fall away like unnecessary baggage. This is the only way to see reality with certainty. If we have a problem, in Samadhi we can see everything about that problem and how to solve it. Experiences in Samadhi are wonderful but fleeting, and on their own do not fundamentally change our circumstances. They can help us experience things that are fundamentally life changing, such as, understanding that the physical world is not all there is, but we should not become attached to Samadhi, and the very desire to experience Samadhi will keep you from it. Our focus should be on changing ourselves and not chasing our desires for spiritual experiences. If you experience Samadhi, it doesn’t mean you have reached enlightenment or that you have made it to the final liberation. After you experience Samadhi, the fleeting experience of the freedom from the ego, you still come back to your conditioning once the experience is over. Samadhi is wonderful but temporary. To reach real liberation we need to use Meditation and Samadhi to eliminate our psychological defects (ego, vice).

There are three stages to the elimination of psychological defects:

1.   Observation of Facts: in our daily life we must consciously observe our patterns of thoughts, emotions and impulses. Impartial self-observation is we gather information about ourselves.

2.   Intuitive Understanding (comprehension): we then meditate daily on what we’ve observed, focusing on our egos, that are the most urgent to eliminate, causing a lot of suffering.

3.   Pray to our Divine Mother for elimination: we beg our own Divine Mother to annihilate our defects, vices and errors to cosmic dust. We must fully comprehend them during meditation before our beloved Divine Mother can reduce them to ash. We know when a defect has been eliminated when it has no power over us anymore. If you have a lot of anger and you meditate on that anger, observing it during meditation, you will come to comprehend bits and pieces of it and your beloved Divine Mother will eliminate what aspects are comprehended and you will feel the power of you anger lessen until one day it is fully gone. This is not fantasy, this is reality. Do not worry about Samadhi, do not seek it, focus on changing yourself, Samadhi will happen on its own, naturally, when the conditions are right. Also meditate on the virtue that is trapped in your anger, which is love, compassion, empathy, selflessness, also on the other egos such as pride, lust, greed, etc. Be patient with yourself, we’ve been creating our egos for many lifetimes.

If any of this inspired you, please click the links and further your education, Inverential Peace!!!

To Meditate is to See

Profound Meditation