Meditation Handbook : Part Four

Sweeping House

This easy technique is designed to quickly sweep the clutter of thoughts from your mind. It is one of my most favorite and enduring techniques and I am continually amazed at how much it helps with so little effort. It can be used just at the start of formal sitting meditation sessions or you can continue repeating the method every ten minutes during the meditation session itself to help keep yourself properly focused.

Begin by placing both hands behind your head with fingers interlocked. Rest your hands at the point where the neck and head meet. Then quickly sweep your hands over the top of your head. Imagine that your hands are gathering up all your thoughts as they move across the top of your skull. When your hands reach just below your forehead, use a flicking motion as you simultaneously unlock your fingers and throw your hands away from your face. Feel as if all of your thoughts are being swept out of your head and thrown out into empty space. Do this between ten and thirty times as needed. While accomplishing the sweeping motion, feel that your center of consciousness is dropping down from your head to the hara center in your belly. Rest in your hara center as you continue to meditate.

Sweeping House with a Kicker

A variation of the sweeping house technique is to add a breathing stage after the sweeping stage is complete. Place your right palm (reverse hands if you are lefthanded) on your forehead and place your left palm on the back of the right hand. Now take 4 to 7 deep breaths through the nose and feel as if you are drawing the air all the way down to your belly. Fully exhale in a normal and relaxed fashion after each breath. This breathing technique is not yoga bastrika. It is ordinary deep breathing done with intensity and fullness. After exhaling the last breath, sit motionless a few moments with your hands still on your forehead. Cooperate with any upward flow of energy you may feel. This energetic method can be done every 10 minutes during an hour long sitting meditation session to create a safe and effective kundalini technique.

You can be creative

After you have become comfortable with the meditation techniques individually you can learn to incorporate them simultaneously to multiply their effectiveness. For example, combining mirror gazing, hara awareness, the soul awareness technique, and the use of the self-inquiry incantation can be an extremely powerful super-method. There are no rigid one size fits all meditation techniques. Follow your intuition and let the methods evolve to fit your own individuality. Don't take the time suggestions for methods as rigid limits. If you desire to extend your meditation sessions then go with the flow.

The wanting mechanism

What is one of the most important factors in keeping us diverted from meditation in the here and now? Look inside your mind and find the wanting mechanism. The wanting mechanism continuously constructs images of new experiences the mind desires, derived from memories of the past. The mind becomes enamored with these new fantasy images and is diverted from what actually is, here and now. The eternal cosmic consciousness exists here and now, never in the future and never in the past. Future and past are illusory and do not exist in any real physical form outside of projections of the mind. What exists now is everything, and you already have it. You only need to become conscious of your own wealth.

Wanting is part of life, creativity, family building, wealth creation, and the survival instinct. In the sense of preserving the human race on planet earth, wanting is a very good thing. In the sense of an individual becoming an awakened Buddha, wanting is a hindrance. Wanting creates duality, the wanter and that which is desired.

Not wanting means not wanting anything, not just dropping the desire for sex, money, and power, but also dropping the desire for truth, justice, family, and nation. It is not what you want that matters, it is the wanting mechanism itself that is the barrier. Deep meditation is a giant leap beyond logic and the norms of society. It is dissolving into infinity and oblivion and not coming back. Very few humans have been able to manage that radical transformation totally and that is why enlightenment will always be an extremely rare phenomena.

If everyone in the world suddenly became enlightened, in my opinion, the human race would come to an end. There would be a lack of sufficient desire to keep people motivated enough to have families, raise children, grow crops, and protect society from all the natural threats, from disease to ecological disaster. That said, I certainly believe that enlightenment is a desirable goal for those who really want it. But you can see the impossibility of the situation. When you "want" enlightenment your wanting mechanism is still active and enlightenment will not happen to you. So we can breathe easy that everyone in the world will not become enlightened, all at the same time, anytime soon.

The need for meditation many people feel is beyond normal logic and beyond the scope of words to fully express. I can tell you that a key to experiencing superconsciousness, from the moment you wake up in the morning until the moment you fall asleep at night, is to step back from the wanting mechanism. This stepping back is only possible for those who have reached at least the fourth stage. Otherwise you will not have the energy and clarity to see the wanting mechanism and realize what is involved in turning it off. You will suppress desires and live a false life because you have not yet found the inner key, which is an intense form of self-observation, not suppression. Therefore, in a way, I am stating publicly that which should remain unspoken. If you try to artificially stop wanting when you are in the first body you will never reach the second body. Even in the third body this method of not wanting will only slow your progress because it will be a false effort.

I do not know how long it takes for this process of stepping back from the wanting mechanism to become 100% effective. As an ordinary student, I am only now, after decades of effort, beginning to make any real progress with it. I felt obligated to mention this esoteric topic because this Web page was constructed to convey all of the best methods and the most usable of the secret teachings. Ending the wanting mechanism had to be mentioned and those who are ready for that step will find that it brings time to a halt, annihilates the future and the past, and expands consciousness to the far reaches of the universe. It is a silent, inner explosion.

Ask yourself these questions.

1) If you want something, how can you stop thinking about it?

2) If you don't want anything, what is there to think about?

3) If you don't want anything, is there anything to be angry about?

4) If you don't want anything, is there anything to make you unhappy?

5) Rocks and other inanimate objects do not want and do not suffer, but they are unconscious and dead. How does a living human being enter a no-wanting state while fully conscious and filled to the brim with life energy? That is the incredible contradiction and difficulty in becoming enlightened.

At some point on your own noble path you will see very clearly that wanting is a barrier. That realization may hit you suddenly like a freight train (my blood is still on the tracks) or gradually creep into your consciousness over time. Only when you see it clearly on your own should you try to step back from the wanting mechanism. Until that right time occurs you will be needed to save this beautiful planet earth, to raise families, and to be good citizens. Take meditation one step at a time. Do not try to imitate the final steps into the abyss while you are still at the foot of the mountain.

Source: http://www.inspirationzone.cjb.net