Meditation For Self Realization / Enlightenment

[Astra]

Hey all, I’m just sharing my condensed note on adyashanti’s books and meditation course. It’s mostly related to his teaching on meditation. I am still awakening as formless being so the other awakenings in his book “the direct path” are not in here. 

I made this so that I can read it rather than re read his different books and course.

 

THE FOUNDATION: MEDITATION

 

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

 

Meditation is neither a means to an end nor something to perfect. Meditation done correctly is an expression of Reality, not a path to it. 

 

Meditation is the art of allowing everything to simply be as it is in the deepest possible way. In order to let everything be, we must let go of the effort to control and manipulate our experience. This cuts right to the heart of the egoic make-up, which seeks happiness through control, seeking, striving, and manipulation.

 

Many forms of meditation are based on learning to control one's experience as a means of attaining peace. Such methods often lead to a dead end, where one only attains peace of mind as long as the ego is being constrained by meditative technique. 

 

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it’s about letting go of control and allowing everything to be as it. Anything else is actually a form of concentration. 

 

True meditation is abiding in non-abiding. Not clinging or grasping anything. You can’t grasp at awareness because there is literally nothing to grasp. Awareness has no location or particular point of view. Let go of trying to abide in anything particular. Because you can only abide in something you can focus on. Abide in the state of letting go and letting everything be

 

 

The silence and stillness of meditation is the bedrock upon which this teaching rests. It fosters an inward stability, objectivity, non-attachment, and depth of understanding unknown to the conceptual mind. The attitude conducive to meditation is one of surrender, effortlessness, and openness. Meditation is not something restricted to times of formal seated meditation; it is most fundamentally an attitude of being— a resting in and as being or awareness . Meditation is an aligning with awareness itself. Once you get the feel of it, you will be able to tune into it more and more often during your daily life. Eventually, in the state of liberation, meditation will simply become your natural condition.

 

 

True Meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving acertain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned.

Fascination with states leads only to bondage and dependency. True Meditation is effortless stillness, abidance as primordial being. True Meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not being manipulated or controlled. 

 

 

In True Meditation all objects (thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, etc.) are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to focus on, manipulate, control, or suppress any object of awareness. Meditation is the art of not being distracted from your true nature by the endless content / form. In True Meditation the emphasis is on being awareness not on being aware of objects, but on resting as conscious being itself. 

 

 

As you effortlessly rest into stillness more profoundly, awareness becomes free of the mind's compulsive habit of control, contraction, and identification. Awareness returns to its natural condition of conscious being, absolute un manifest potential- the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

 

 

 

THE CENTERING TECHNIQUES 

 

Breath of context 

Be aware of the breath

Link the exhale to the pure space, stillness, silence by feeling that you exhale into pure space 

Mantra Pointer

Hold or repeat a thought or phrase instead of being caught up in other thoughts.

Then let go of that thought and rest in silence.

Repeat the thought just enough so that you don’t get lost in thought. 

 

 

 

 

MEDITATIVE INVESTIGATION METHODS

 

FOR AWAKENING AS THE FORMLESS BEING OF AWARENESS 

 

1. Comes, Goes, Remains

Center yourself if needed 

Notice the context (silence, space, stillness, etc) of awareness

Notice that all things come and go yet you remain

Notice that when izjeon (your name) fades you remain

2. Open Sky

Center yourself if needed

Experience awareness as a spacious and open sky within which thoughts and feelings come and go

Let yourself rest as this spacious and open sky-like nature of awareness as it clings to nothing yet pushes nothing away

3. I AM

Center yourself if needed

Think the words “I AM” to yourself

Notice your silent true self

Rest as your true self

           (Repeat steps if needed)

4. I AM ALL

Center yourself if needed 

Rest as your true self

Sense this same self / awareness in “others”

5. Resting as awareness

Be the now-and-already-existing presence of awareness

Relax and abide as concept free, naturally clear, and unborn being

 

 

 

 

TOP REALIZATION QUOTES

 

“the unborn omnipresent base dissolves your impulses and delusions. Rest in the unborn essence and let all conceptions of yourself and the universe melt away” - Tilopa

“The ego is like a Halloween costume you put on, wear for a couple of hours at a party and then somehow you all a sudden identify with the costume entirely” - Adyashanti 

“A state we call realization is simply being oneself. Not knowing anything, not becoming anything” - Ramana Maharshi

“Bring the light in and the darkness is no more. When you are aware things will start changing on their own accord” - Osho

“Center yourself in the Tao. Then trust your natural responses and everything will fall into place.” - Lao Tzu

“Look at yourself steadily, that is enough.” - Nisargadatta 

[Breakingthewall]

Very interesting. For me meditation is openess.  As humans, we have many energetic shut-off mechanisms. Meditation involves first looking at them directly, then allowing them to deactivate, to dissolve. This takes time. Then, allowing total opening to the limitless, to our true nature. It's not nothingness, silence, or emptiness; it's total.