For me there is one way of worshiping God that seems to be the best way to worship, above techniques, which are usually conditioned by the mind with desires and fears. One way of worshiping that is the ultimate service to God, a way that is not conditioned by any ideology, personality or worldly events, not even the mind, which leaves this way pure, natural, and unconditional, above the rest. One way that shows your ability to surrender, shows your ability to let go of everything which was previously thought of as too important to forgo, but it’s voluntarily relinquished by this type of worshiping. And in the process all is worshiped, and nothing is left out or separated by beliefs or attributes, and through this way it will neutralize everything down into one state of being, leading us directly to the ultimate state of being in Eternity.
There is one way that reveals your earnestness, your persistence, reveals your inner strength, your inner knowledge, your attachments, and your love for God. One way that works in all religions, shows your dedication, a cornerstone for peace and happiness. A way that allows everyone the opportunity to witness the Almighty in the glory of the divinity within. One way that tells God that all else will be deemed flippant in comparison, you will be lead by this way for nothing else will do, no replacement is good enough, and in this way only God’s divine intervention will be acknowledged as reality. A way that tells the Almighty you will stop at nothing, and nothing will get in-between you and your love for the Almighty, including mind inclinations. Your determination in this fashion will not only benefit you immensely but it won’t give any counter reasons to doubt your spiritual earnestness, because your effort in a regular practice indicates your resolve, which in turn steadfastly cultivates liberation.
The way is through the silent mind in meditation which worships God in the purest sense of the word. The way starts as a formless meditation observing the energy within, then that merges into the Samadhi State which is the ultimate state of worship. This is as close as you can get to enlightenment before it happens, your natural state of being, which is before the mind. Your ability to stay in this silent repose will reflect your earnestness, and how persistent you are will show how devoted you are to God, despite worldly attractions. This state of being is a state of pure Awareness, or the Self witnessing different states of existing in consciousness. In this thoughtless state one will naturally bounce around from thoughts to witnessing moving energies in the body (formless meditating), which will take place of thoughts, then onto an Awareness of Awareness, which neutralizes the witnessing states altogether, this is beyond perceiving anything externally but God within. In this state there is no longer any Karma, any preconditions, any religions, any spirituality, any universe, any body, or any mind, just you as One, waiting for the illusion to pass, so you can see and know the One in All. And after realizing your anchor in Reality you now understand what all the great ones were talking about and the many ways they used to express this divine state of being. Your attachments are replaced by your love through the unconditional state in all, your identity now lies with God, which is your natural state of existing, and you talk and think according to “That”, because everything revolves around “That”.
I hope you can see that formless meditating and the “Samadhi state” is the purest form of worshiping and I originally expand on the words of Nisargadatta who said: The silent mind is the purest form of worship.
How much time should one spend a day in Samadhi state ?
How much time does it take to get to Samadhi state if one has good practice ?
The Samadhi state is a delicate state to merge into and relatively hard to achieve, and it comes after getting use to the first state. The good news is as long as your achieving the thoughtless act of observing consciousness (The energies within), the separation from consciousness has already started. This act of formless meditating is hard as well, however as long as your trying daily, even for a short periods (Peaceful Pauses) you’re cultivating it. My teacher said twenty minutes twice a day is a very good start and I’d have to agree with that.
We are looking for the witness state within first, and as we cultivate that you begin to enjoy it and see the benefits thus spending more time meditating, more time in is more opportunities to slip into that divine state. At the same time I started to get use to formless meditating and pursuing it more frequently I started to fall into the Samadhi state more often, getting acquainted to the subtleties of it, and you really don’t have to be there that long, because each time you’re there your open and ready for Self-realization.
If you don’t have the time to meditate then the Pauses combined with the spiritual contemplation you’re doing now keeps the pursuit alive until time frees up.
I have twenty minutes. And I don’t really need to watch television.
Thankyou!
Kurt,
Even though I can see the spirit as indesctructible, I feel the body is vulnerable and has the potential for so much suffering. Even if evil is another side of the same coin, how can one not resist evil ? I’m wondering what Jesus meant by it. Can we really accept or forgive evil in the conditioned state ? especially if it is something we ourselves would never commit.
I also wanted to know where should we focus our attention during meditation, or should it be diffused ? Or does it change over the duration of meditation ?
Many Thanks ~
“Even if evil is
another side of the same coin, how can one not resist evil? I’m wondering what
Jesus meant by it. Can we really accept or forgive evil in the conditioned state?
Especially if it is something we ourselves would never commit.”
I like the saying even though it isn’t a steadfast rule. In
most cases it works well within the mind, and teaches us about how the subtleties
of being detached and how it works to rid the mind of an evil that the mind
would normally hang on to. And it helps in breaking down our conditional state.If evil is resisted
then you’re not accepting it as it is, and this type of evil is something that
can’t be avoided, so acceptance and forgiveness is our only option. If you
resist, then your mind finds conflict with evil, and then it has a home within you,
which is in opposition to your conditional state thus creating an inner
turmoil, a personal and self-imposed sentence that you’ll have to come to terms
with and ride out. The time it takes to ride it out will depend on how much
time and energy was used to build up the wall of resistance and defend it with
anger. Your peace is disrupted due to your resistance. Our conditional state
will put up many walls and defend them with an attitude, when the wall
shouldn’t be there in the first place. This type of evil is uncontrollable but
the wall is controllable.
If you have thoughts that are unwanted and disruptive
towards peace and you try to resist them, then you just dialed up the intensity
of the undesirable thought, and by adding more energy into the problem just
feeds the monster, delaying relief. The energy that arises due to inner
conflicts is the issue here, because when it hits up against the conditional wall
it grows and turns within as a personal disharmony. Do not resist or fight
against these thoughts for then it turns into a bigger problem, better to Self
reflect and surrender judgment then to fight. Then with little energy tied up at
both ends of the rope the knot within will naturally undo itself in short order,
due to the least resistance. With no resistance within then there is no tension
or personal issue with evil, and the knot doesn’t form in the first place.
“I also wanted to know where should we focus our attention
during meditation, or should it be diffused? Or does it change over the
duration of meditation?”
In meditation the act of refocusing your attention within
away from the mind and world is the earnestness that is needed on the path. It
is all about diverting your attention away from the false, which is the Self
looking away from outside and inside distractions, to know the subtle Self
first hand. It’s a hard concentrated effort that in the long run will strengthen
your focus and concentration as you progress, and it will get easier with more time
put in. It’s like your learning a new language, trade, sport, or a new hobby
such as painting, so you have to be patient with a systematic practice until it
happens more naturally. It will seem like a loosing battle for a long time;
however it will be very subtly productive. It may seem like there is little
progress and frustrating at times, but you’re actually working on reclaiming your
own inner power through the control of attention. Throughout life this control
of attention was not worked on because your attention was either focused on
external activities or internal mind chatter. Many, many years of allowing the
outside world control your attention, now with the introduction of meditation the
process of regaining control has started.
In the beginning your attention will be caught up on grosser
levels of consciousness, and as you progress by withdrawing from that you slowly
merge into the subtle levels of consciousness. Until that finally plains out in
a sort of equanimity or unity with being, then you’re in the right place. Keep refocusing your
attention before the mind and body energy by falling back within and observing consciousness
flowing, until it calms and merges. If you are observing energy (or anything) means
you are not that. You are what you cannot observe, and what you are not is what
you observe. The space that is before observing, before feeling and
unnoticeable by you, is You, or closer to real You then the observable and
unobservable energy that’s around you now. Only energy changes and dissolves, you
don’t, which puts you beyond any of this changing phenomenon and deems you
indestructible and everpure.
Nisargadatta use to say: You’re digging a well and rejecting
all impurities that aren’t pure life giving spring water that you’re looking
for.
Kurt, I realise I do get caught up in trying to resolve all unwanted things in and around me and it’s a little ironic since I can see my own reactions are feeding it in some way. I think my own equanimity would benifit me more than trying resolve things superficially. Your answers make a few things clearer as always ~
Back during Jesus time evil was all around and all powerful.
There was not much you could do about it, and if you did revolt your family was
massacred and maybe your village as well, so his saying back then was more absolute
then it is now. But it still holds true and it’s very helpful to those who have a
hard time reconciling the bad things in life that happen. If you give evil a
home within then your peace of mind and peace in the home is disturbed, and God
is seen as unmerciful, or part of the problem. Faith is lost, and peace is only
for those who don’t have evil or traumatic experiences in life, and then the
suffering has no hope of relief. I guess it boils down to another lesson in detachment.
Yes, detachment is easy to get but very difficult to practise! To me detachment is my awareness. Before I started meditating I would not have thought of awareness as real, but it is. And it is quite a challenge to maintain and operate within it but I’m glad to be trying it out when I didn’t even know about it before.
These concepts are very real. For instance, the love of awareness is so different from egoic love, it takes a lot of will power to reason and sustain what is obviously real but not appealing to the ego and certainly not real to it.
Before I came here I thought the pursuit of God was only for the experts. But your blog made me believe that anyone with a head can try it was a surprise and something I’m very happy to be pursuing!
Your right! Detachment is pure Awareness and the opposite of
the ego, or an altogether new way of living and understanding life. The needy ego
starts to loose its grip on the mind and you no longer follow it around with every
thought, so naturally there will be some resistance or conditioning that takes
time to dissolve. But don’t give up! I’ll be here and I’m happy to help.
Self-realization is the most amazing thing in life, and it
surpasses all experiences here. What is really mind-boggling to me, besides liberation,
is that so few people are actually pursuing it or know about it. You would
think that something like this which provides an enormous amount of help in
life, delivering contentment, peace, happiness and is doable by everyone would
be a constant topic of conversation, and universally understood by all. I guess
the ego/mind doesn’t want to believe in it and snubs it, or looks for excuses
to avoid it.
🙂 I absolutely would not give it up. Firstly because I feel a lot of love in my awareness and I feel there is no love like our own awareness. And secondly I’m very eager about meditation. Sometimes I dose off:) but I really enjoy being in the quiet space. Even thinking about it is so peaceful.
I’m also wondering why people are not clamouring on the way to God. Maybe they’re afraid of God:) or maybe they’re afraid of death ? But it is the death of everything that imprisons us. I keep searching not knowing for sure what I’m looking for but I know it when I see it!
The benefits of meditation are too many to mention and I’m grateful to you for suggesting it so emphatically 🙂
Good, and when you dose off you can start working on your
lucid dreaming. By going back and forth from sleep to meditating you get to a
point where you become aware in your dreams. All of a sudden you realize you’re
sleeping and completely aware of being so, in a place where you can control
your dreams, or even remain in that boarder realm between dreaming and waking, which
is a dreamless and mindless state of being. Being afraid is gotta be one of the biggest factors. The
ego/mind has a hard time letting go and face the unknown.
I have to work more on the witness state. My mind is usually out in the name of contemplation and experiences but I know if I try I don’t have to leave ‘home’. I did stumble on the witness state once. It felt a little empty/flat or should it not feel that way ?
I’ve never had lucid dreams. I would like to have no dreams at all and it can’t happen without me stopping pouring unwanted things into my subconscious. But I make small progresses and will keep doing so.
I wanted to ask you if I may, if you’re only using your mind when needed, how are you occupied rest of the time ? Are you in constant witness state or unity consciousness ?
My mind would like to keep busy as well and depending on the
content will determine my next move. If it’s on nonsensical stuff I catch it early
and turn it off, or I direct it onto something worth thinking about. If I’m
doing something active I enjoy being in the witness state, and anytime I turn
the mind off I’m in that state. The witness state is my natural state and I move
away from it to witness thoughts, like it’s always the backdrop. But even when
witnessing I am before witnessing observing the act of witnessing, because
Realization put me one more step back, a sort of distance that wasn’t there before, which
allows more mind control and easy access to the witness. I’m always calm, peaceful
and restful which is the way I like it, but of course I have the ability to act
different if need be.
The witness state may seem empty and flat in the beginning,
but that changes as you get use to it. The power of emptiness starts to take
over as your preferred place to be, a soft cushion in a hard world. It’s like
your mind, energy, or bodily consciousness takes time getting use to this new way
of existing without the constant employment of the mind, which diverts the energy
elsewhere. Now the energy is a little lost and without a purpose, but rest assured
it will eventually fall into rhythm. It’ll feel a little foreign and
indifferent to the mind until it becomes a regular habit.
“But even when witnessing I am before witnessing observing the act of witnessing”
I didn’t think about this but it is easy to get conceptually because I imagine witnessing as stepping back from the ego-mind into the soul. It’s good to know you can work in duality without it controlling you.
The last time I encountered witnessing I wasn’t trying to get there. I was just trying to be in the now as it is a common spiritual exercise and stumbled on it. It was weird and all I wanted was to get back to being ‘myself’. Now that I know there’s a new challenge – my reasoning! It always asks – is this what I want and why. Currently the attractions of the world are as strong as the call of the soul, if not stronger. But I know the wonders outside also have their root in the soul. Only I have to make that complete circle 🙂
My current focus is to be able to meditate for an hour at a stretch. I’m only able to 15 mins now. Also morning is a better time than evening and I’m planning to rise early for this.
Another good habit I’ve formed from this blog is of blessing people. It has a good positive energy. I wish I did these simple things earlier. But better late than never!
I liked blessings too, and it’s especially helpful
towards negative people who for some reason are out to get you. They are
focused on you and you don’t want any part of it. Bless them until your negative
thoughts disappear and it will sever the connection on your part, because if
you return the negativity a connection is established between the two parties. My
teacher use to say that duality works on a positive or negative charge and it
will attract like polarities, so if you bless them positively the negativity
will not find a connection and it will fall back on the sender.