“Being must be felt. It cannot be thought”
– Eckhart Tolle
Being is another word for meditation. Meditation is staying present in and as the moment without taking or following after thought.
How do you stay in the moment? How do you stay in meditation? How and why do you stay in any situation? You love it - you love the moment, and you love being in meditation. That's how you stay in it. Without that love, the conscious mind will not anchor itself in either meditation or mindfulness. How long would you stay in a place you don't love or even like? Exactly. So, one learns to love the moment. This is done by simply becoming familiar with it. That’s how the mind works. It loves familiarity - it loves family.
To be fair, the mind does not like keeping still. Particularly when it’s breaking a habit and its habit is to never stop moving. It loves to rise upon itself in one thought after another because this is its most familiar way of being, so do not be disheartened with the experience of not loving mediation or of having the desire to escape it is there for a while. This is natural to begin with. Meditation and mindfulness, for the egoic mind, will seem torturous initially. Only initially, however. Once the mind relaxes, and relaxation is absolutely key, into a heartfelt awareness and familiarity of the Now, it is another story entirely. The Now is the vessel for Soul and Soul is by nature Love. It is also your true body, so developing a familiarity with it will not be as hard as you would imagine.
How long do you stay in a relationship if your heart is not there? Not very long, right? It is the same regarding your relationship with the moment which is your true body. It is never found in thought. Thinking takes you out of the present moment and the truth of your eternal Self. If you are present in thought, then you are absent in the moment. It is that simple. If you are present in the moment, then you are absent in thought. Therefore, your choice either giving attention to your thoughts, thereby giving them life, or giving attention and life to the present moment where your true Self abides.
The Present Moment is where your true Self abides your true Self as Spirit flows through the Soul in order to reach the conscious mind aka thought. The subconscious, which is your part of the Soul always sits in the moment, therefore if you as thought or as the Conscious Mind, sit in it, then you are sitting in Present (I) Moment (Am) Awareness ready to receive intuition. The conscious and subconscious minds when they come together form a channel that intuits oneself Spiritually, but the conscious mind has to sit in the Awareness of the subconscious - its Temple. This means staying present in the Now, hence why meditation and mindfulness are so important to Self-Realization. If the mind rises in thought, it rises outside of its Temple and into self-made illusion or maya.
Understand the subconscious of everyone collectively is the vessel for the Soul. The subconscious of everyone collectively IS therefore, the Present Moment. Everything is mind. If you want to be led by Thy Self Spiritually as opposed to egoically, then you must stay in the moment and outside of thinking.
If you do not love the present moment and want to, then take heart, there is a way to learn too. You learn too in the same way you learn to love another in any kind of relationship. You develop a connection. You become familiar with the present moment through being mindful of it. Through being present not just with your thoughts but with your emotions also. This is Meditation. This is mindfulness which is moving meditation. You know as well as I do, the mind adores familiarity while abhorring and fearing that which it knows nothing about or feels disconnected too.
So, learn to love the moment by being present in it, by becoming familiar with 'being' again rather than 'thinking'. Be like a small child that loves the moment more than its own thoughts. Relax into it. If you cannot be relaxed while meditating, then you will not be successful, and love will not develop, when one is tense or forcing anything.
Note also, that if the thought, I am meditating comes up, you are not meditating. You goal is to fully relax, love the moment and forget yourself in it. You want to be so into the moment, that you stop being IN it and become the moment itself. Children do this. They completely forget themselves and become a part of the moment, joyfully flowing with it. So no need to put time aside to meditate or be mindful. Do it while doing the dishes, do it while doing anything. Just be as deeply present as you can be while rigorously rejecting any thoughts that come to mind, wanting to take you out of the Present Moment.
Meditation is being as deeply present in the moment as you can be. Fall in love with the moment, which is your Soul in its entirety, a Soul whose nature is love.
Trust me when I tell you, the mind will follow the heart anywhere. Let the heart lead you home to yourself in stillness, silence & love.
~ Tracy Pierce
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