Meditation went much better this morning. The usual problem of constant distractions and then, in desperation, I remembered that counting the breaths rather than a mantra is advised by many. It had never appealed to me before, striking me as too cold, methodical and impersonal – the mantra, after all, had meaning although one did not attend to the meaning. The trouble with the mantra is that it is easy to habituate and then you are no better off than before. So I started counting. It worked very well. It kept my attention focused on the breathing and the fact that it was a sequential progression meant that one was less likely to habituate.
Just simply being aware does seem rather a waste of time, especially if what you want to do is pray. Perhaps you want to cry ‘out of the depths’ of anguish, or simply be still in the presence of love, or sing praises filled with awe and wonder. At these times sitting still, leaving thoughts and feelings on one side to simply be aware goes against the grain. But then, on another day there will be no exultant feelings, no tortured anguish, just a dull apathy, heavy with boredom. And you wonder where all the fine thoughts and feelings have gone. Even the pain of suffering almost seems more bearable than this tedium. But you make the effort and you concentrate on counting the breaths and simply being aware.
Later, when you allow yourself to think discursively again, you realise that meditation has distanced you from your thoughts and feelings; that however exhilarating or agonising these feelings were they were not permanent. The only thing you can be absolutely sure of is that they will change and that you have no control over them. Yesterday you may have felt touched by the infinite love at the heart of being, today you may be dull and weepy, tomorrow you may be wracked by suffering. Nothing is fixed, or certain, or permanent. There are no guarantees about the future. It is then that you begin to realise the importance of simple awareness in meditation.
The fact that it distances you from your thoughts and feelings and that it gives you a perspective from which to be aware of them so that you are not caught up in them is immensely valuable. You are no longer their prisoner, one day up, the next day down. You have begun to find the still point.
The various me’s, or selves, are very real. Those of the past – the child of a mother and father, the friend, the lover, the victim etc., are not dead. They reside in memory and it only takes some little trigger – a scent, a sound, a snatch of music – and their powerful feelings and emotions become real and alive again in the present. Once more we are caught up in the world of this former me and the memory is always tinged with sadness. If it was a happy time there is sorrow that it is no more. If it was a sad and bitter time the memory of it floods into the present. Thoughts of, ‘If only…’ and, ‘What if…’ cloud the mind. The past can weigh heavily, a burden that encumbers the present. The secret is to let it go. Only this now is real.