What does the mind do when there is state of meditation?
I do not know what people mean by mind. Maybe people think that the mind is that which thinks and has thoughts and is where thoughts are stored and retrieved?
If we think very carefully about mind, identity, it can get very confusing. Do we have a mind? Is that what we think with? Or are we a mind? With attachments, such as a physical body?
What do we know? Ultimately most of what we know is simply memory, that is habit or patterns. What we “know” right now in this moment is simply what we are aware of – and if we are asleep we are not aware of anything. Even memory is experienced now. So there really is no way to go back or forward. There is only now.
So what is our experience now. It is ever changing. There is no permanency in experience. From birth to death “now” is in continual flux.
If we sit down and decide to control our thoughts what will we use? Our thoughts? Maybe we can decide not to think at all. To just be still. And what happens? Do we really think that “I” the “thinking I” can be still? Try it and experience for yourself. You will discover that our mind has a mind of its own. Just like the weather. We can wish for sunshine but we may get rain. The lesson is that we are NOT in control.
This may sound terrible news. It is. However we can pay attention. Literally for each of us our currency, our money is “attention” and that is what we pay with. Every waking moment of our lives we pay with “attention” until we run out of attention and die.
The pattern that constitutes who we are, what the universe is doing which we call “I” is made up of what we have, do and will pay attention to. And thinking, thoughts, are the most important aspect as emotions are derived from thinking and emotions and thoughts determine how we respond and act in the physical world. All of this we can separate out using thought but that does not mean that everything is separate. It just appears to be.
The challenge is that by the time we start to feel individual, to have a sense of self the patterns that will persist and define us are already laid down from conception. We cannot go back and choose a different starting point and direction. In English, we say the “the die is cast”.
There are many different types of meditation. In other words there are many different things we can pay attention to. In this case the question relates to meditation on spiritual Light and Sound.
Often the mistake is to try and meditate. To try to pay attention the way we normally and habitually pay attention. That is by exclusion. If we read a book we exclude things around us and just read. However, in spiritual meditation the goal is to expand our identity or put another way, to realise our essential nature, the core of our being.
If we pay attention completely then we are absorbed by what we are paying attention to. We forget or become unaware of our separate identity. This can be good or it can be bad. Not morally of course. It just depends on what we want to achieve. Paying attention by exclusion is concentration.
Some things we can pay attention to make us smaller. If we pay attention to a small problem the small problem becomes bigger, huge, enormous and we can become engulfed by something very small. For example – an itchy bum when we are sitting.
Conversely we can pay attention to something that expands us. Thinking philosophically expands us mentally as the things we think about are bigger than our individual sense of individuality and are common to everyone. For example. Does the universe have a cause? That is a big question that not just a human being but an alien from the other side of the universe could be asking themselves – right now. Their now of course. Not our now.
However, philosophy is a mental activity and thinking, mentation is a very slow energy and our intention is to realise by meditating that we exist before and beyond intellect and mind.
Therefore we need to pay attention to spiritual Light and Sound if we have received this revelation. This is because the Light and Sound is a much bigger and faster energy than anything in our current or previous experience. But how? If we pay attention by exclusion we are simply using our existing sense of individuality. This is the very aspect of ourselves to be transcended in order to realise a bigger greater sense of self.
So in meditation we just need to pay attention. This may seem very difficult if there appears to be no Light and Sound present. But there is. It doesn’t matter where we live on the planet Earth the sun shines all the time. And Light and Sound is there all the time once revealed. Yet just as we cannot dictate to the sun or the rotations of the Earth we cannot dictate to the Light and Sound.
Imagine sitting waiting for dawn to arrive. Getting impatient and jumping in the car and driving to the airport to quickly board a plane to the “event horizon”. How silly. Even sillier is trying to make the Light and Sound manifest in our awareness because the very act of trying, of using our sense of individuality is what blocks or gets in the way. All we can do is wait, pay attention and relax.
So the question was. What does the mind do. What it always does. It moves from thought to thought. No matter how quiet our mind may be if we are still enough we can detect the movement of the mind. Only if we pay attention. But why look down when we want to look up? So when Light and Sound manifest to us all we need to do is relax and be present. Even to use the words “pay attention” implies too much effort. The mind can still be there. Yet the more absorbed we become in paying attention to Light and Sound the less aware we are aware of the mind and thought. This is not because we are excluding. It is because we are transcending.