What is experienced during meditation?

·      The experience and acceptance of aloneness

The truth is that “you” are all alone. Your sense of selfhood and the complexities of all you have felt and gone through cannot and will never be duplicated or identically shared in another being. The way that you were born, and the way that you will die is uniquely yours. 

·      The one to the many

Although individually conceived, ultimately one’s private commitment leads to the experience of uniting with everything. Because you gain clarity. And clarity leads you to truth.  

·      The ability to discern impermanence

Any sense of “you” or “me” or “I” you maintain, that is not one with everything, is impermanent. As you will know more and more, your increasing sensitivity to the subtle dynamics of your own bodies. All of these parts of you were born and formed; and they will all change and die.  

Any inseparable, unchangeable essence is not your thoughts, your feelings or your body. All of those will change. They have already changed in the course of reading this sentence. You’ve had a new idea or feeling because of it. Your heart rate has changed. You are re-defining the course your body will take and altering your cellular structure with every breath and decision.

·      An understanding of the eternal

The only part of the supposed “you” or “me” or “I” that continues is that which is also part of everything else. It is the essential core, or more aptly the very same ‘essence’ of your lovers, your enemies, the trees, and every potential particle.

·      Recognizing what you always knew

“Recognition” refers to using your mind and sense organs to “re-cognize,” to think again, to feel, and even communicate what you knew before. You recognize someone or something, or even yourself, because you’ve seen it or experienced it before. Such revelation usually arrives unanticipated and mysteriously bound. 

·      Emotional intelligence (root of health)

Recognition is not the end of suffering. For it may bring sadness and grief for your fading illusions and the time you may feel you have wasted chasing constructs that have now lost their meaning.  

But so too will spontaneous joy arise without external provocation. It may be your first experience of innocence in many years. Finding lightness and hope exists in its purest form in your solitary being.

·      The tools for realization

We refer to stable recognitions achieved through meditation as “realization” because you realize what is already there. It feels like it has just dawned on you as epiphany. But now you see clearly that it’s always been there. And was only buried. Realizations cannot be lost. They so profoundly alter your being and saturate your perception, as if they had burst out of each of your cells; that the parts of you too that are most real begin to become realized as well.  

·      Liberation

But realization is the beginning of liberation. With the opening of your compassion reserves, there comes a heightened sensitivity which arises from the true compassion you have been practicing with yourself. When love permeates every experience, there can be no fear.

What actually happens during meditation?

·      Calming of body, breath and systems (neuro, endocrine, hormonal, muscular, heart rate, blood pressure, autonomic nervous system, blinking, etc)

·      Balancing (homeostasis, evening of energies, stabilized breath, stillness coexisting with constant energy movement)

·      Heightened awareness (physical sensations, thoughts, feelings, increasingly subtle physiological processes)

·      Stimulation of body, breath and systems (digestive, oxygenation, arousal, lung capacity, salivation, lacrimation (tears), parasympathetic nervous system)

·      Concentration (increased mental focus, all body systems focused into one system of flow, simultaneous attention to the stillness of the body with enhanced awareness of internal movement, one-pointedness becoming all-pointedness)

·      Disciplining of self, body and mind – if you can discipline yourself in your most private time for nothing outside yourself, in order to fulfill no authority or outside structure with nothing watching you, for no necessary goal- carries great promise for your life.