The Spiritual Journey

Meditation and concentration are the way to a life of serenity

- Baba Ram Dass

Meditation is simply sitting down, in an upright posture with your eyes closed usually and either focusing on something with your mind or simply watching your mind in action.

Spiritual Practice can be broken down into two categories. One is mainly for generating peace which is why most people get into spirituality and the other is for generating self knowledge. Although the two can overlap.

Generating peace practices usually comes first and can be the foundation for the second generating self knowledge. Generating peace is all about calming down the mind and thoughts, getting into relaxed and peaceful states, where self knowledge is about finding truth and gaining insight.

Generating Peace Practices

We can categorise these practices down further into concentration, letting go and correction:

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Generating Peace Practices

We can categorise these practices down further into concentration, letting go and correction:

Concentration

These practices get the mind to focus on an object like our breath, physical postures, sounds.

Examples include:

Letting go / Expansion

These practices get the meditator not to focus on any particular thing but instead be aware of experience and awareness itself.

Examples include:

Correction

These practices get the meditator to practise a certain thought process to improve an area of their life.

Examples include:

Loving Kindness(Metta)

These are just a few to name but there are many more. Each category ultimately achieves the same goal, namely you being in a more peaceful state of mind but along the way some insight, wisdom and self knowledge will naturally occur. If you are not pursuing enlightenment, then these techniques are ideal if you just want to be more relaxed and receive the benefits of meditation. For the question of what method is best, it is very subjective, my advice would be to choose the one that leads you to generate the most peace and happiness. Your preferences may change as you develop so don’t be afraid to try new ones but I would recommend focusing on one at a time and hitting one habitually every day, don’t be switching every other day. If you're still stuck, I will outline a beginners guide and goals to achieve.

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Generating Self Knowledge Practices

What is self knowledge? It is none other than enlightenment...

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Generating Self Knowledge Practices

What is self knowledge? It is none other than enlightenment, realising who you truly are or are not, dispelling the illusion of a separate self and realising there is no doer. Practices of self knowledge all fall under self enquiry. Self enquiry is difficult to understand as the person doing it is trying to see that the person is an illusion. It can be summarised with the question “Who am I?”.

There is 4 main ways in which this is done:

1) Examining phenomena that we experience: we see that no part, no phenomena shows a self capable of initiating thoughts or actions
2) Analysis cause and effect: every action has a cause and every cause also has a cause, so we can see how everything is interdependent
3) Analysis of the body: we realise that our mind draws invisible conceptual lines around objects and our body, deconstructing these lines can cause a realisation of no separate self
4) Using awareness teachings: we can notice that no experience that arises in our awareness is “I”

All these methods aim the person to see that there is no separate self, you are a wave that is part of the ocean, yet you are still the ocean. In the same sense you are part of the universe but not separate, you are the universe.

Using a combination of peace practices and self knowledge practices is ideal for reaching enlightenment, they compliment each other as you generate peace it is much easier to generate self knowledge. Throughout the journey you may catch glimpses of awakening which can produce great insight but it requires constant progress to fully integrate your wisdom.

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Beginners guide

I would start by building a good meditation habit. I would start with just 10 minutes a day using a guided meditation app...

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Beginners guide

I would start by building a good meditation habit. I would start with just 10 minutes a day using a guided meditation app. This can be done in the morning or at night, I prefer in the morning. What meditation app? I will cover this in the resources section but I recommend Waking Up by Sam Harris.

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So once you can consistently do 10 minutes, after a few weeks increase to 20 minutes still using an app. Then once you find a technique you like you can increase to 30 minutes. The technique I recommend is first concentration practice like body scanning, then transition into concentration on objects like breath, sounds then thoughts, then finish off with letting go practice like do nothing meditation.

You can then increase this practice to 1 hour, still hitting the same practice techniques. After you can consistently practise meditation for 1 hour for 3 - 6 months, you can try doing a meditation retreat. I will talk more about this in the resources section.

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By this point you will be enjoying your meditation practice and have gotten some insight, now you keep practising, experiment with different techniques, come back to guided meditation, and try to increase the amount you meditate. Enlightenment can take years so be patient, think of it like building muscle in the gym and getting fit. To achieve a beautiful body, you need to consistently work it out. The same goes for a beautiful mind. Some recommend you go to a retreat at least once a year but just follow what feels right to you. There are some maps to enlightenment out there but you have to realise that the map is not the territory and to not get stuck down in them. This is a personal journey and is very unique.

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We live in a time where there are so many resources out there to help you along the way but there are also a lot of distractions. Don’t get stuck in thinking about enlightenment and not actually doing the work to become enlightened, remember the map is not the territory, all this information is pointing to something real but you have to do the work and not just theorise about it. Use these valuable resources but also do the hard work necessary for enlightenment.

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