Mind watching

I was just telling some friends over dinner that no matter how focused I am with the work I do, the amount of work coming at this time of my life just seems to be piling and piling up. And though I try to weed away the unnecessary things that do not help me or aid in my own growth, work just keeps coming at me. Last night, I found myself working in my head while I was asleep. I was clearly not dreaming, but I was experiencing a heightened awareness while asleep, where a part of me was watching my mind which was in a state of continuous mental work. When I woke up, I got up from bed and proceeded to write down everything that my mind, or perhaps my subconscious worked on during the night.

Yet what I am trying to share with my experience is that my body was rested despite the mind going overtime, and when I work up, I was not tired at all. I thought about this for a time and realized that this experience was the fruit of many years that I have been practicing meditation. In the process of learning meditation through the years, one gets to a wonderful place where the higher part (the soul consciousness) can actually witness the mental or emotional going ons.

I am sure I am not alone in experiencing the speed of life. I know many who are overwhelmed. It also becomes more challenging when the speed of life today brings out dramas of emotions and ego issues, of struggles through sickness, heartbreaks and karmic connections with people. All these we need to face and work out just so our souls can be refined.

We find ourselves moving at such speed, while trying to keep pace with the things that are really important: relationships that matter, meaningful work, directions that move us to evolve deeper and higher. Life has become the sum of moments to be cherished if we are to survive the accelerated energies being infused into our physical world from the non-physical realms of the vast Universe.

If we are to successfully navigate through the challenge of these transformative times, we have to arm ourselves with techniques to help us. One way is being still. Not only stillness of the physical body, but stillness of the mind is key. And this is where we come back to the tried, true and ancient wisdom of silence and meditation. I swear by it. I practice it. I espouse it. Only by beginning and returning to silence can we make sense of everything happening around us and in our lives. Only by moving inward to practice some form of centering prayer, meditation or witnessing does the strength of clarity arise from. There is no easy way, just a choice to stop, move inward and be still... Listening to the breath, watching what arises moment per moment with no attachment. Meditation serves as the most basic and simple tool to bring us back to the state of our inner calm.

Novice meditators often think the goal of the meditation practice should be freeing their minds of all thoughts. Rather than eliminate thinking, one of the basic skills to develop in meditation is to be able to just step back from the thoughts. And witness. Just watch. By doing so, we can then learn to bring to whatever pain we may feel, the loving energy of accepting the present moment and what arises.

There is another reason to meditate or be in a present state of awareness. The poet William Butler Yeats once said, “We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even a fiercer life because of our silence.” Just being in present awareness, at ease in our own quiet hearts, can make us a reflecting pool, and those who gather around will tend to see their own images. Without a word, we can transmit our presence — one that is kinder and gentler. Meditation brings us back to the awareness of the inner dimensions within, to this timeless place where the Soul resides. It is from this witnessing perspective that clarity arises.

* * *

This Sunday, Oct. 8, and all the Sundays of November, I will be co-hosting the radio show Inner Mind on radio at 7:30 p.m. at DZMM 630 AM Teleradyo of ABS-CBN. 

(E-mail comments to jeanniejavelosa@gmail.com)