Preparing The Ground

In today's active and busy world our minds tend to become cluttered with thoughts, emotions, and things to do. This creates a certain movement and momentum in our stream of mental activity that is hard to slow down. Most of us think it is important and necessary to engage in thinking and doing from the moment we awake till the time our head hits the pillow at night. We then many times still have active mental activity in our dreams as well, only to wake and proceed to pick up the action where we left off the day before. Just as our physical body needs rest and time to re-energize , our mind and spirit need time to rest as well. This is meditation !
Meditation is a vacation for the mind. It is time to clear out all the mental activity and clutter that is sometimes bordering on addiction , and become aware of the space of consciousness without thought that is the essence of who we are. This is the fundamental spiritual identity crisis of humanity. However, meditation is not easy if you are trying to go from the mind of obsessive thinking and doing to a peaceful meditative state in one step. You must first prepare the groung for this transition. This can be done by a number of means which include any kind of physical activity such as yoga, shaking, dancing , jumping followed by stillness either sitting or lying down in complete motionless position. This is called active meditation ! Another type of preparation is through the use of sound such as mantra chanting, Tibetan bells or bowls, the sound of falling rain or other meditative music. These stepping stones can help you transition from the clatter of a noisy mind to the sublime peace and bliss of deep meditation where you can get to know your own being at the essential level !!! It is truly worth the trouble !