Frank M. Wanderer | ZenGardner.com
In your present, isolated state of consciousness, based upon your identification with your illusionary self, spatial consciousness is not present in your life, so you are unable to experience Consciousness free of forms. But you have read a lot about this subject, so you wish to bring things beyond forms and shapes under the control of your Ego, in order to stabilize the Ego and make it permanent. You have read or heard somewhere that meditation is the best method to that end, so you have began to meditate diligently.
The Active Meditation
But you are approaching meditation the way you do with other objects of the outside world. You believe that meditation is also an activity of the mind, a concentration on an objects (e. g. a burning candle), or your own respiration or a mantra.
Meditation is therefore something that you perform yourself. Through active meditation you wish to reach a higher state of the Mind, which is expected to give you happiness, satisfaction and enlightenment.
You start to practice meditation as an individual self, as an Ego. You make efforts to tranquilize your mind. This activity may be successful up to a certain level, when you suppress your thoughts and emotions with your willpower, reaching transitory peace in you. That state will be lost immediately, when you stop concentrating, meditating, and no longer sustain the effort, as your mind returns to its usual activities, the old pre-conditioned patterns.
Your personal identity is rooted in your actions and the results of those actions. Your personal history is the chronicle of your actions and achievements.
The idea of being active is therefore a product of your conditioned mind, your Ego. Ambitions to acquire, to achieve something all work as motivations for action in the Ego-dominated mind. The desire to control, to manage are also powerful urges to act.
As you have seen, these very same forces are the ones that spur you to meditate. It is, nevertheless, not a bad phenomenon, as active meditation is the first step towards real meditation. Active meditation consolidates the outermost dimension of Alertness, that, is attention, in you.
The True Meditation
Your attempts at meditation are futile because real meditation is, by nature, effortless. It does not create an artificial quiet, but allows the deeper dimensions of Alertness to surface. This is the deep internal Silence that constitutes the real core of man…
