Find the key to the door of knowledge. “How?”, you say. By practicing your meditation regularly. By going within and understanding the processes that you live with and by. That is a satisfactory result for meditation. Enlightenment is a by product………… Your mood is enhanced. Your breathing is gentled. Your system calms. Your eyes close as you move inwards to see who you really are. What do you find? A dark landscape with thoughts scurrying hither and thither, back and forth, in ever increasing circles? Do not become these thoughts but be aware of them. Watch them and step away from them. Watch them as they move like flightless birds across the Serengeti, unable to rise, fat with their own importance. These thoughts and words are not you. They mask the real you. So leave them alone. Allow them to continue because they will never cease entirely, but turn your focus to the space between the thoughts, between the words. Observe the gaps. Gradually the gaps will become longer and allow you to enter the incredible quietude that is you, the essence of you. Do not work hard at it but observe the gaps in the words lightly, slowing down the torrent of thought. No longer being in the thoughts or of the thoughts. This is a pathway to the real you, where you can meditate on the silence, or the colour of the silence, or its depth and vastness or maybe even its sound. It will be different for everyone, never the same, as it is your silence that you enter. The endless being, that has an egoic name, that is you. The words and thoughts are meaningless chatter that you observe. The quiet depths between the words are where you dive in to experience the stillness and quietude of the soul. This is beneficial to your body in every way as your physical system calms and regulates, balances and reinvigorates its terrain.

Thirty minutes is a good amount of time for a daily meditation. If you can manage two separate sittings, that is also desirable. Sitting for hours is not. Your body will need to move and your mind will lose its way. Meditating your way to enlightenment is not for everyone. Enlightenment can happen at any time, anywhere, if the ego is banished for ever and the being in the human body becomes aware of its spiritual self. You could be climbing a mountain and pause for the view, come into contact with the grace of God as you feel your soul expand, then realise that expansion has not contracted back into human shape and you are now permanently aware of this physical ism and your place within and without it. It may happen as you cross the road and narrowly be missed by a vehicle which brings your mortality into question in a sudden strong egoic moment or you could be sitting on a bench watching a tree grow. What doesn’t matter is the where or when. What does matter is that you are ready and ripe to just lean back and fall into the now of nothingness and find everything……..all knowledge, all answers, all understanding. The complete beingness of the moment is eclipsed by your understanding that there is no moment…….only is.

These rarified results happen to a few but more and more are finding their way. However the vast majority are best accepting the benefits of a gentle daily meditation to enhance their daily life. Do not work at it. Just be…….in the moment…….in the meditation.

A guided meditation is fun but is not quite where you will find your peace, but it is good for beginners who have difficulty quieting their mind. It allows them to play in their mind and discover that, like a rock pool, it has unforseen depth. Though the clear waters are muddied as you stir up its contents when you enter the pool. It takes a while for the sediment to reach the bottom, for the waters to once again become crystal clear. And then a clear view of its inhabitants can be seen in all their egoic glory. So there is plenty for the beginner to observe and understand. Many may not realise that they do not have to feel and enter the pool to understand it. It can be observed and understood. Only if you want to catch the inhabitants, collate them, examine them, take them apart, do you need to enter the pool. There is no need for this inquisition. Your mind can remain still and calm like the pool. You can observe the actions of everything within the pool and realise the pool is not of the sea. It is one pool existing on a beach where one day the sea will come to absorb it. So feel the air around the pool, know there is so much more to be and to experience. Do not be contained by the mind, it only knows of the teeming activity of a rock pool. Step outside and enjoy the vastness of the beach. You have the choice of the rock pool of the mind or the vastness of your soul to meditate, exist, be within. Your choice as always.