MEDITATION WITH YOGA

Articles In This Section:

· MEDITATION WITH YOGA

· DOUBTLESS IN YOURSELF

· PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS OF MEDITATION

· CORRECT BREATHING IS ESSENTIAL IN MEDITATION

· MEDITATION IS AN ACQUIRED ART

· PITFALLS IN MEDITATION

· PURPOSE OF MEDITATION

We have seen how Dynamic Concentration becomes the key to mastery of the mind. Consider now the purposes to which such mastery may be put—the many ways in which it can be made to work for you. In the twentieth century, with its preoccupation with the inner man, its constant questing after psychological insights, it becomes especially important and useful to each of us to be able to turn the searchlight of knowledge inward.

Using Concentration as a tool, the next, and final, step toward true self-mastery is Meditation. Yoga teaches that through Meditation the individual learns to be truly and fully conscious of himself as a unit separate and distinct from all other manifestations of life, not merely in the highly personal, individualistic Western sense, which all too often leads to egocentricity and uneasy self-absorption, but in a serene, detached way that makes him immune to superficial influences. The average person, daily subjected to competitive pressures, influenced by the fears and insecurities of others, easily becomes prey to anxiety or even panic while trying to live up to impossible standards artificially set up by his social milieu. But those few who wisely take time to find out who they are, quickly lose the need to play a lifelong game of "follow the leader." They learn to differentiate between what is right for them and what is not, what they really want out of life and what they have been made to believe they want. They learn to be true to themselves and through this awareness are liberated from conformity.

Yet as Freud and Jung and Adler have pointed out, to know one's Self, to be able to take stock without rationalization or self-delusion, is a most difficult and painful process. For in order to be completely honest in our self-appraisal we must learn to admit that we are what we are, not idealized, romanticized versions of ourselves. Often in order to achieve this we are forced to dig deep into memory for things we have allowed our conscious to forget because once they seemed humiliating or shameful to our ego. In fact, to dredge them up is so unpleasant that for most people self-examination sessions generally end up in failure. Another frequent pattern, after superficial self-analysis, is to make fine, sweeping resolutions to change and mend our ways by main force. This, as we all know, never works. Sometimes we bog down first into self-condemnation, then into self-pity. But mostly we escape by permitting our thoughts to wander away from the main problem—to let us drift a hundred dream-miles away.

How, then, are you going to be sure whether the goals you have set for yourself are your own heart's desire or the reflection of what you have been taught to consider desirable? How tell whether your behavior patterns are truly those which suit you or have been foisted on you by circumstance? And just what is the interrelation between your external behavior and the inner problems with which you live? More specifically, what is the particular load you, as a civilized man or woman, are being forced to carry—and what can you do to lighten it?