The Void and Meditation.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Sometimes when I try to meditate I experience a fear of ‘relinquishing’ my consciousness to a void (and that somehow my being will disintegrate), and I don’t know if this has something to do with growing up since childhood praying to a ‘personal’ God or Jesus. In fact, I don’t know who or what it is that I pray to – maybe I think of it as the ‘source of my life’ – but somehow I keep wanting the comfort of ‘personalizing’ the object of my prayers. Similarly, I feel a fear that if I die without having ‘Jesus’ as part of my life, that I will go into nothingness. Could you tell me who or what ‘Jesus’ is in the context of a person’s life, and how I should approach the experience of meditation?
Response:
I’m not sure this issue is connected to your habit of praying to personal God, because most people pray to something, and I haven’t seen this is fear of the void in meditation generally associated with people who pray. It often relates to some past idea that formlessness equates with extinction or annihilation. You need a different context for understanding what is really going on in meditation. You are not losing your consciousness to anything, you are in fact coming into your true nature. So instead of framing your experience in terms of relinquishing your consciousness into a void, see it a process of coming into your essence, your strength. That way as your awareness become more refined it can feel reassured and secure in moving into something that is actually more real and lasting than your object referral life.
Love,
Deepak
I dropped into samadhi in meditation, and didn't know it could happen. It was remarkable and transformed me. I was able to do it a second time. I wasn't trying either time. However, I've never been able to do it again, and 18 years have passed. I've been told I'm doing something wrong, and need to find a teacher to help me. It hasn't been from lack of trying, but I have not found anyone willing to discuss the topic with me. At best I've been told to follow a sadhana, and I wasn't going to be told any mystical secrets. Or, I run into people who tell me I'll never reach a higher state of consciousness until I fix all the things that trouble me and they will be a therapist for me, but it was the higher state of consciousness that fixed the things that troubled me. I exit quickly from both types of "teachers". Other than the fact that I might be doing something wrong, to be honest, as remarkable as those experiences were, the idea of allowing myself to be in that state of being scares me, and I don't know how to do it again.
I dropped into samadhi in meditation, and didn't know it could happen. It was remarkable and transformed me. I was able to do it a second time. I wasn't trying either time. However, I've never been able to do it again, and 18 years have passed. I've been told I'm doing something wrong, and need to find a teacher to help me. It hasn't been from lack of trying, but I have not found anyone willing to discuss the topic with me. At best I've been told to follow a sadhana, and I wasn't going to be told any mystical secrets. Or, I run into people who tell me I'll never reach a higher state of consciousness until I fix all the things that trouble me and they will be a therapist for me, but it was the higher state of consciousness that fixed the things that troubled me. I exit quickly from both types of "teachers". Other than the fact that I might be doing something wrong, to be honest, as remarkable as those experiences were, the idea of allowing myself to be in that state of being scares me, and I don't know how to do it again.
I dropped into samadhi in meditation, and didn't know it could happen. It was remarkable and transformed me. I was able to do it a second time. I wasn't trying either time. However, I've never been able to do it again, and 18 years have passed. I've been told I'm doing something wrong, and need to find a teacher to help me. It hasn't been from lack of trying, but I have not found anyone willing to discuss the topic with me. At best I've been told to follow a sadhana, and I wasn't going to be told any mystical secrets. Or, I run into people who tell me I'll never reach a higher state of consciousness until I fix all the things that trouble me and they will be a therapist for me, but it was the higher state of consciousness that fixed the things that troubled me. I exit quickly from both types of "teachers". Other than the fact that I might be doing something wrong, to be honest, as remarkable as those experiences were, the idea of allowing myself to be in that state of being scares me, and I don't know how to do it again.