Lets clear up some misconceptions about meditation. There has to be clarification between what real meditation is and all sorts of misconceptions like visualization, contemplation, reflection, introspection, deep thought, pondering, daydreaming, musing, self-absorption, self-examination, self-observation, self-questioning, soul-searching, reasoning, speculation, analyzing, doing any of these is not doing true meditation.
There are many paths and scores of teachers with different explanations of meditation and real meditation has nothing in common with the unscientific techniques of breath control taught by a host of ill-advised zealots.
What should be your goal, to meditate? No, but to succeed in finding God. There are those who refuse to meditate without proof of God. To them “God is not proved”. It is irony that a rational man will go in a vicious circle by demanding proof of God before he will believe in Him and give his precious time to meditation. Therefore the unenlightened man, dependent on his senses for all final judgments is denied for that reason proof of the existence of God and to him God must remain non-existent and unknown.
There is a tremendous difference between meditation and concentration. Meditation is complete absorption of the attention in God and the only route to the infinite. The introductory component to meditation is concentration. You switch your attention from all objects of distraction and focus it in on one thing at a time. When untrained beginners try to concentrate or focus on one thing their minds go in countless directions.
Concentration is being entranced in one subject and to absorb the thought totally in one subject at a time. It is impossible for the untrained to think deeply as a busy mind relentlessly jumps from one thought to another. The spiritual master explains there is a simple way to make it easier in the beginning, by concentrating on one subject about God with a assortment of related thoughts rather than to focus on one thought relevant to that topic. If you have the slightest desire to meditate read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.
Most people have no idea how restless their mind and attention is until they try to meditate. The mind is like a truant child but with patience you can gradually rein it in and learn to control it. By right meditation undreamed of possibilities become possible. Everyone wants happiness in their lives but depend upon outer circumstances for it. By right meditation with the source of all power ecstasy comes and as you develop your will you reawaken the intuitive wisdom of your soul intuition and because of the great peace everything you need to know will begin to place itself in front of you. Everyone would want to meditate if they knew what joy lies beyond the screen of the sub consciousness mind and what lies just behind their closed eyes. However there is a mine field of troubles for beginners when they sit and try to meditate.
The mind of the ordinary man is clouded with swarms of restless thoughts flowing into his consciousness. Some beginners are plagued with delusive thoughts about getting quick results and some who when they sit to meditate negative, obscene and disgusting thoughts stream into their minds. How does this happen when a person would sit to do a noble or righteous thing like meditate? This person is not yet actually meditating.
For the first time in their life and many other lives, they are beginning to know themselves by going within. Unfortunately the mind in the past has dwelt on debasing, worldly and negative things, the subconscious mind is chock-full of those thoughts and when you first start to look within of course this is what comes into sight. These dark thoughts will start to vanish or settle down as you quite the mind and discipline yourself.
Still some people stop meditating because they cannot go deep enough to achieve any results and they lose interest. With them their cross is their heavy burden of bad habits. They too have been crucified, through their bad habits and ignorance.
First, you need to comprehend the forces you must contend with because most people have trouble concentrating and think visualization is a form of meditation. Concentration is much more than basic visualization. Concentration is not to use the mind to do imaging or to produce hallucinations. Channeled visualization is but a part of concentration. With concentration you are bringing in the will-force of the soul. In this day and age what is the wisdom in learning such practice? Power, power is the idea. All things in creation required concentrated thought to come into existence.
When looking at a beautiful landscape do you ever speculate who or what made it? Do you think the miraculous creation of mountains, trees, flowers and human beings matter-of-factly dropped from heaven unpretentiously without any difficultly? What made them? The thoughts of God. All things on earth you see are a product of concentration either man’s or God’s. It is totally impossible for inanimate particles to be able to assemble themselves together and create intelligent living beings.
Meaning, God needed some bricks to build this universe; He built His entire universe as cosmic light out of His thoughts but at the same time we have cosmic darkness. Where can you see that light? You can see that light right between the eyebrows to those who meditate. Unfortunately the majority see nothing but complete darkness and that is the Kali Yuga state.
When average or common people attempt to put their thoughts together on achieving or creating something, most are distracted and stop. But great souls are those who utilize the power to concentrate that is within them. The power of concentration is an inherent quality of the soul and is not denied or given to others through heredity but a native gift from God. The strongest form of power is dynamic will power the maximum degree of vibration. Automatic will power is a less significant degree of vibration; the smaller degree of thinking and the opposite pole of dynamic will power which can become semi-paralyzed by wrong activities wrong behaviors and decisions attached to all five senses.
You can be successful depending on the quality and intensity of your thoughts and the amount of your will power. When applying energy and willpower with continuous focused action you have dynamic will power and applying positive thinking together with dynamic will power, you will be successful. When you will something by applying willpower and energy with continuous focused action, your desire will be achieved.
What happens to a thought made by dynamic will power? The atoms are created or rearranged according to the desired mental blueprint you have formed until it develops dynamic force. There is nothing you could not accomplish with the will power within yourself. Unfortunately most people do not develop their true potential expect by normal evolutionary progress. But by right acting and thinking its evolution may be accelerated.
Volition is the key that starts the power of the dynamo that will constantly revolve over a desire until the result is created. Don’t be that person who lives in a state of nervous distraction who never applies the power of concentration to accomplish something.
How do you prove all of this is possible? You have your own laboratory right within your consciousness. When advanced enough in meditation and you can enter a state of super consciousness and when clearing the mind of all thoughts you enter a state of all knowingness, one knows he can do anything through perceptive realization by just ordering it, then that person is in a complete sate of superconsciousness of the soul.
However the grasping power of the average person is currently so limited that most attempts at this will end in failure without the instructions of a mentor or guru to help him through the difficulties to organize his mind. From the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda.
