In today’s day and age, in the pace of life that tries to keep up with the modern system of living, where almost everything revolves around making money and survival, many have started questioning if this is the true way to be, if this is our true nature, and are turning towards silence. This can then eventually lead them to meditation.

There are also those, however, that the prompting guide for meditation is not only to ‘slow down’, but also to search for answers within themselves, for the mysteries of their Being.

Whatever the case may be, meditation comes to be almost as something that saves from falling into a dark pit. Many have said that without this tool they would still be stuck in the repetitive mechanical ways of life that mercilessly squeeze out the energy out of them.

What is meditation in the first place?

It seems people are using this word loosely today, but overall we could say that it is a technique with which a person quite down their mind and reaches a tranquility of thoughts and emotions. But there others who say that meditation is not a practice, but a state that is achieved when the mind is silenced. For example, Samael Aun Weor says that there are four main stages:

-Relaxation
-Concentration
-Meditation
-Samadhi (Ecstacy)

I find this to be a good way to describe the process of what happens when someone sits down to go and meditate. So first they need to relax their body, then they proceed by concentrating on a technique. This can be anything from focusing on breathing, visualization, mantra etc. With good concentration, the mind gets more and more silenced and serene, to eventually becomes like a tranquil lake. This is the state of meditation. The state when consciousness is everything, and subconsciousness (I’s, myself, egos)  is reduced to ‘nothing’. In that state we are internally awake, absorbed in the silence.

Silence that comes from meditation is very important. Everyone who reached certain stages with this practice has realized that this silence is not nothing, but everything. It is the beingness, timeless, that which nourishes and gives answers. It gives us comfort, support, and fills us with what our soul needs and yearns for. It gives spiritual food to our consciousness, and it heals the body. Because of this silence, the voice of our conscience becomes stronger as well as our intuition. It can become part of our daily life and can guide us when we need answers.

„When the mind is still, in profound silence and completely empty, inner enlightenment, the marvelous ecstasy, comes.”
~ Samael Aun Weor

Samael Aun Weor and other gnostic masters have said time and again that only when we reached the state of silence (meditation), that that which is outside of time can show itself to us and illuminate our consciousness. This state is known as Samadhi or Ecstasy. In it the consciousness realizes its true nature and through a direct experience access knowledge of various kind, relating to itself, or the nature of Being, Universe, etc. In Hinduism the ultimate form of Samadhi is called Nirvi Kalpa Samadhi, also known as the Illuminated Void, in which the consciousness is said to enter and merges with it, in order to experience “the nature of life free in its movement.“

The “inner enlightenment” though, mentioned by Samael, is not referring to the end of the inner work, but to temporary illumination achieved by accessing the highest meditational state mentioned above, through which the consciousness is given knowledge and inspiration. Once the ecstasy is over, the consciousness returns back to its normal state. The true enlightenment is a different matter and is done by a hard inner work carried out over many years – it is not something that happens in an instant. Nevertheless, achieving high meditational states would certainly be a great inspiration in moving towards that goal.

By practicing meditation one can access not only the benefits of healing the body on physical, emotional, and mental levels, but it also includes many other factors that contribute towards inner transformation; a change in how we function in daily life, how we respond to life’s events and circumstances. It gives us more control over ourselves and our lives, it creates connection with environment and people around us through consciousness, and this then gives us opportunity to relate to others in a better way, because we created capacity for greater understanding and compassion.

The more we persevere with meditation, the greater are rewards – the things such as inner peace,  intelligence, deep understanding and knowledge of various things, easier way to find solutions, understanding our own defects and extracting consciousness from them, the development of inner senses (psychic faculties), and much more.

Everything comes down to silence, to that essential point that will heal us and give us what we need. This silence is who we are, and one of the essential ways to develop it is through meditation.

H.D.P. August 2019