Meditation - Operating from awareness itself

What is the point of meditation, what do we hope to achieve, where do we wish to go? What are those people sitting around apparently doing nothing hoping to accomplish?

The first and simplest answer is that a sustained meditation practice can help us calm down, not just during the period of meditation, but this evenness - called equanimity in the traditions - can begin to generalize to the rest of our lives. This does not mean we never experience strong feelings, or everything become a sort of sameness; rather, it is about not becoming so reactive or feeling destabilized when unexpected events or strong feelings overcome us.

With a regular practice, it is like we have created more inner space for events to arise, then fall away, as they inevitably do, without us getting hooked by whatever is happening, especially our old patterns and triggers. It is important to stress that we are not looking to get rid of our thoughts and feelings, or to "fix" them, and the same is true of pleasurable states, we are not trying to grasp and hold on to these either.

What we are doing is gradually changing our relationship to whatever is arising to us, from judging and then trying to control our inner life, to learning that acceptance (not the same as approval), is a better strategy than to be struggling, or even at war with parts of ourselves that we have learned to dislike, or worse. This is not the same as the need to take action to change external circumstances, where this is called for. For example, if I am crossing the street, I can move to avoid a car coming at me, but I can't do the same with feelings and thoughts that I don't like, such as anxiety, or that otherwise feel threatening, though I may definitely try!

Another way to state the goal over time, is learning to avoid ourselves less, being more in touch with ourselves, and thereby coming into the present moment. Why might this be a good thing? Because being present is more about being in touch with our senses, what is happening right how, what I am seeing, hearing, sensing in my body. The body can only be here in this moment, but if we are lost in the future or past, this is a pretty good sign we're caught in the stream of thoughts in our mind. And its our thoughts that contribute hugely to our mood in the moment: if I'm feeling anxious, I likely just had an anxious thought(s), and conversely if I'm feeling happy, I'm probably having positive thoughts.

Whereas being in the moment is not about taking our thoughts to be reality, its about being fully present from moment to moment, seeing what is actually happening right now with curiosity and hopefully less judgement. While it is true that a car may be coming at us in that moment (and being present means its likely we'll jump out of the way), the truth is that most of the threats we imagine surround us, are exactly that, imagined or exaggerated, usually based on our past experience, and as the saying goes, the generals are usually fighting the last war, which means they may not actually be prepared for what is happening right now,

Over a period of time as we engage in meditation, as a kind of mind training, and learning to remain conscious and less reactive to whatever is arising, we can begin to see that the content of our experience, i.e. this or that thought, event, etc., is always changing, whereas the awareness of what is arising is always "switched on" in the background. We can call this process "letting go," though I prefer the phrase "letting be."

As we progress, we may become aware of fewer thoughts and internal drama, and start to ask ourselves, who or what is aware in between thoughts, or notices that thoughts have changed?

It is said that if we throw a stick for a dog, it will watch where the stick goes, but if we throw a stick for a lion, it will watch us, the thrower. So we're beginning to turn attention back on ourselves to see what is quietly but consistently aware in the background, as events come and go. It not like its hard to find, its our own awareness, or awareness itself, but the truth is we're always so attuned to the outside world that we tend to overlook the obvious.

This is what I mean by starting to operate from awareness itself. There are always two connected things happening, phenomena coming and going, and that which is always there perceiving. Gradually we may feel a shift from going along with everything that is arising in an automatic way, to also including, and then centering ourselves in the one who is looking, who it turns out is always the center of the storm, quietly observing.

So settling in to - operating from - the one who is thinking, feeling, sensing, and so on, is the goal we are working on, rather than identifying with every arising, liking or not liking, and then trying to interfere with our experience by pushing away the unpleasant, or grasping the pleasant, as we do in an exaggerated form with an addiction. Instead, we allow internal events to come and go, which not only allows us to remain in touch with ourselves, but also leads to greater and greater inner freedom as we are tossed around less and less by our biases and preferences.