Meditation For Purification, Concentration And Awakening
Cover Photo From Inner Healing
By Bruce Davis, Ph.D.
As more and more people turn to meditation to free themselves from the limiting cubicles of life, they find getting out of the box of their limitations is only the beginning. There is another reality to discover where awareness is without limits, intimately linked in a vastness beyond description, awakening in an original brightness, more brilliant then we could ever imagine. All of this is within us. Our cosmic self is not some abstract idea but the product of receiving the purification, concentration, and awakening meditation offers.
The fearful world in which we live, digs subtly and not so subtly, into our otherwise pure being. Meditation is the great restorer of expansive, trusting innocence as we bring our attention to and practice receiving the pure center of our heart. In meditation our awareness loaded down in worldly issues is washed and purified. Every time we return inside, we are developing a practice of letting go of the world weighing down our awareness while returning to the lightness of simply being. Meditation is receiving the brightness within. It is an important journey from our worldly self to the pure world of no self, the world of heart essence being the home and source of our identity.
Awareness changes through this process of purification. The fruits are quickly noticeable including new openness, trust, understanding, compassion, joy, and simplicity of life itself. Meditation practice gives our awareness an anchor inside ourselves. No longer a drift in the many physical and mental worlds around us, meditation pulls our attention back home. Life has meaning and purpose. Our own heart becomes our source, our base of support and guidance, our teacher, and mentor. Our own heart purifies our awareness until we fall into arms of love beyond anything we ever imagined in this world, no less ever expected to find inside of us.
To get to this space of purification requires concentration. This begins with finding the time and space to practice meditation. This is not so easy in a busy, non meditative world. Silence, nature, the world of the sacred are the home for meditation practice. There is so much noise, distraction, and reason to argue instead of bowing down to sacred presence. Meditation is letting go of the importance of self and everything else for the golden presence within us, nature, and one another. We live in a world concentrated on seemingly everything but our center of being, the heart of life. Yet each of us knows this is where the treasure awaits us. Meditation is the map, the calling, the balance for our worldly life. The search for all we desire is forever limited until it includes the purification that occurs in the heart inside our heart.
Concentration to have a meditation practice and focus in our practice are the keys. It is too easy to fall asleep and let our life and thought wander into endless dramatic but fruitless pursuits. Days pass and before we know years are gone, and we have little idea of who we really are. One day we wake up. Our life is over. Our bodies lay beneath us. Our awareness is surprisingly present. And we have no idea of where or how to proceed.
This is why purification and concentration are important. Meditation leads us to the altar within us where we remember, we see, we are. Every time we meditate the process repeats. We die to this world into another realm, luminous emptiness, free of all thought, unmasked realization. Awareness is the groundless ground of love pouring out of our very center in all directions forever. There are no borders, no effort, no reflection or judgment. There is only more and greater light.
This is awakening. Our meditation practice is restoring our original lightness of being. In the process we reexamine all our choices, relationships, goals, and desires. What is there to worry over, chase after, or attach ourselves to when there is so much light waiting for us within? Where do we chose to place our hearts today, to give our awareness? Each moment is precious. To have this understanding in the world is beauty and poetry and honestly at times depressing and strenuous. Awakening is not a one time, one moment shot of reality which obscures life in the world forever more. Awakening is living with an ever opening heart which includes compassion for all the pain within and around us. The purification, concentration, and awakening itself are our best friends, our tools for survival. Eternity is our inner most core which our meditation practice is absorbing in the midst of everyone and everything offering love the best they can.
Just this moment, being present, a breath into the silence of the heart, life is resonating, connected, and ecstatic in all its diversity. Purification, concentration, and awakening is happening in each of us.
Bruce & Ruth Davis, directors of Silent Stay Retreats near Napa invite SF Yoga readers to join them in pilgrimage into the sacred spirituality of Bali. Learn more here.
