Inner Alchemy, Digging the Present Moment

Sailors of the Mind, Meditation 🧘‍♀️

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Be still and know that I am God. Inner alchemy involves delving deep into the unfathomable depths of our Being to know ourselves through and through and meditation is one of the major ways in which we can do this. Meditation has been practiced since time immemorial, it's been mentioned in the Bible, Hinduism, Shamanism, Buddhism, Islam, Zen Buddhism, Taoism and so many ancient religious and spiritual traditions.

Meditation as part of spiritual and religious practice aims at helping the practitioners be in the present moment and attain a state of samadhi ie. be in Union with the Ground of being referred to as Brahman, Allah, Ancestral spirit, God, Buddha nature in different cultures and societies.

Despite meditation being a familiar name it's meaning and purpose has always been misunderstood especially by the modern society; meditation is all about digging the present moment, cultivating a still and thoughtless mind but this seems to not be apparent to our civilised society as when one says they're meditating they're commonly asked, ‘about what?’ It doesn't occur to us that someone can just sit in stillness and have a thoughtless mind, not thinking about anything at all.

Meditation is a good practice to bring the practitioners to the present moment but it is best practiced when one practices it just for sake of practicing it with no aim, purpose or goal. When one practices it with an ulterior motive in their mind that is with the aim of improving themselves or to attain enlightenment then they're having their eyes on the future and they’re not meditating at all, to meditate is to be with the moment.

When a Buddha meditates he does so because he enjoys it with no aim or purpose just like when we dance we don't aim to reach at a particular location on the dance floor but rather we dance to just enjoy the dance, the purpose of dancing is the dance itself.

Methods of practicing meditation vary from culture to culture with some cultures using mantras, prayer beads, plant medicine (psychedelics) and other ritual to aid in cultivating the meditative state of mind. Sitting meditation or ‘Zazen’ in zen buddhism is the simplest and the most widely used meditation method as it involves just sitting down on a cushion with one's legs crossed and the hands folded together over the belly, the spine is erect but settled. The practitioner may choose for their eyes to remain open or closes them but for beginners practicing with the eyes closed is better to reduce the distraction from what they see.

When in a comfortable meditation posture and sitting in stillness one observes their own thoughts and emotions as they come and go without getting involved with them; let the ears hear what they want to hear without trying to make meaning of the sounds one hears. At the beginning one could have deep breaths and then afterwards let the breathing happen by itself.

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Meditation is best practiced in a silent environment and if possible in nature as the sounds from the natural environment like the sound of the river, the sound of the birds and insects aid in cultivating a meditative mind. At first the thoughts and emotions will go wild but just observe them and with time they will calm down by themselves.

We human beings tend to experience ourselves as something separate from the whole that we call the universe but this is just an optical illusion of our consciousness, it's like a prison for us. Our task is to free ourselves from this prison through expanding our compassion to other creatures and all of nature. The striving to free ourselves from this illusion is the purpose of true religion.~ Albert Einstein.

We're always trying to be in control of everything courtesy of the false image of a separate us that we hold of ourselves hence we get in our own way never allowing our own Being to live through us. Meditation helps us to always remain grounded in the here-and-now, be in sync with all of existence and surrendering to our own Being and letting it take charge bringing us back to a state of flow with the course of nature, the eternal Dao.

We're raised in a society that teaches us to always be on the run, our minds, emotions and bodies are always in a state of motion; we rarely slow down and take deep breaths to remain grounded in our Being, always chasing something in the future to fulfill ourselves but we never seem to get fulfilment even when we get this future because the future can only be enjoyed by those who are capable of living in the present moment.

The main purpose of meditation is to dig the present moment; to realise there's no one to improve, nothing to gain and nothing to lose, no one to impress, and nowhere to be; there's just to be.

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