In the past, the term meditation was used to refer to different practices of interiorization, present in almost all cultures and places, mostly confined to the religious realm. Today, things have changed. A growing number of people meditate for purely psychological reasons, seeking to reduce stress or to enhance their mental stability and concentration. However, meditation also continues to be practiced for more transcendent reasons; many hope to experience through it what has come to be called spiritual awakening or enlightenment.
Officially, there is no single set of procedures that can be identified as authentic and genuine, but rather a heterogeneous melting pot of practices that generally seek to improve and specialize different aspects related to the process of paying attention and noticing.
In Europe, different meditation exercises have been used over the centuries by devotees of religions such as the Christian and Jewish faiths. The practice of prayer, regardless of its origin, can be considered as a meditation technique. Very frequently, in Africa, America and Oceania, songs, dances and percussion have been widespread used since ancient times to induce different meditative and trance states. However, without a doubt, the greatest influence on everything related to this discipline today comes from the two Eastern religions responsible for popularizing its practice in the West: Hinduism, through the introduction of yoga in the United States at the end of the 19th century by a monk named Swami Vivekananda, and Buddhism, whose influence increased throughout the 20th century, mainly thanks to the interest awakened towards its ideals and philosophy in certain intellectual fields within some North American universities. Gradually, Eastern religious concepts were combined with a medley of Western ideals and beliefs, giving rise to a veritable potpourri of schools and procedures with traits that can vary between traditional, folkloric, religious, shamanistic, scientific, psychological, philosophical or spiritual. “Meditation” has become a catch-all on which there is not just one consensus, but many visions that converge or diverge.
I am not going to concern myself with making a comparative analysis of the different schools and trends. So, when I say what meditation is or is not, I am referring to its practice within Emoenergetica. In this manner, the practitioner of Emoenergetica will find here a contextual framework in which definitions, objectives and procedures are clearly established to be used on this path.
To begin with, and in this context, meditation can be described as a state of consciousness in which the practitioner concentrates his or her attention on any chosen cognitive object, be it perceived or represented, with the exception of the inner dialogue. When we talk about meditation, we can be pointing to both the technique used and the state that is reached through it.
Central American Nagualism did not use the concept of meditation, but did refer to the practices of inner silence.
In Emoenergetica, the primary goal of meditation is to realize that it is possible to consciously experience inner silence.
For most people, the inner world is tremendously noisy, being almost completely invaded by the internal dialogue. This is a recurrent and often boring succession of thoughts in the form of chatter, storytelling, fantasies, reviews of things we have already done or lived, deliberations, false memories, distortions of reality, as well as trial-runs and anticipations of the future. All this is comprised of emotional and sensory representations coming from a disordered personal inventory. However, living full of noise is not the only option available to us. The mind can be trained to be capable of holding itself in a state of conscious, witnessing for extended periods, without judgment or words. It is then that part of the thoughts, instead of being made of noise, begin to be constructed with pure silence. Silence not only favours looking at the world from a different angle, but also allows us to contemplate ourselves from a new perspective.
The second objective of meditation in Emoenergetica is to realize that we are not what we think.
There is a widespread popular belief that meditation consists in stopping one's thoughts or emptying one's mind. This is altogether wrong. Many people have lost the opportunity to meditate correctly and have given up the practice because of this false belief. As I have already said, meditation is a quiet state of observation in which the attention is placed on anything except the inner dialogue. Trying to stop thoughts directly is often counterproductive; if you do this, what usually happens is that even more noise will be generated. Meditation is about learning to focus attention outside the inner dialogue, not attempting to stop it.
The third objective of meditation in Emoenergetica is to realize that we are able to observe without speaking.
Our noisy part is the egoic mind. It is accustomed to demanding and receiving most of the attention, as it feeds and strengthens itself by making us focus compulsively on the inner dialogue that it creates. Conscious attention nourishes, energizes and gives life to what it focuses on. It works as a vector that always points to that which calls it most strongly. Haven't you ever wondered how it is that you cannot stop the dialogue inside your head? The simplest answer would be to say that this is because the thoughts there are not really yours. They are the product of an uncontrolled, or rather, uncontrollably powerful, automatism. The part that could put an end to the noise is our original mind, our silent side. The problem is that we rarely permit it to be what receives attention. This is why, in ordinary humans, the silent part is usually weak and deteriorated, receiving very little nutrition, while the ego is strong and nourished; as a consequence, it has all that capacity to command attention. Our attention can be noisy, or it can be silent.
The fourth objective of meditation in Emoenergetica is to realize that our silent part has the power to reclaim attention and so begin to nourish and grow properly.
Meditation is often difficult at first. It is necessary to invest time and effort in order to achieve a minimum of concentration, since the noisy part is too strong and misleads the practitioner time and time again. But, if one is patient and persistent, meditation will begin to bear fruit and the practitioner will begin to experience true states of silence, even if only for brief instants.
The fifth objective of meditation in Emoenergetica is to realize the importance of patience and perseverance.
In addition to nourishing the ego, the inner dialogue binds us to our physical selves and to the everyday world. One could also say that this dialogue is conducive to our explanation of the world being conditioned by the predominance, which is natural in all of us, of the left hemisphere of the brain (linguistic, linear, analytical). In recent decades, different scientific studies have highlighted certain beneficial effects of meditation. For example, it appears to protect the cerebral cortex against the thinning caused by aging, in addition to an overall improvement in attention span and in some decision-making processes. Yet all these physiological and psychological effects only represent the very tip of the iceberg in terms of what meditation can offer us. By accumulating enough time of inner silence, it is possible to (momentarily) change the typical dominance of the left side of the brain and experience reality through the right brain (holistic, global, synthetic). If we explain this from a more shamanic point of view, we can say that the absence of dialogue loosens our physical interpretation of the world, managed by the right side of the luminous cocoon (associated with the physical body and the left cerebral hemisphere), while it strengthens an alternative and subtle mode of perception of reality, for which the left side of the luminous cocoon (associated with the energetic body and the right cerebral hemisphere) is responsible. This type of experience can acquire a transcendent and epiphanic character and has the potential to dramatically change our vision of the world, of life and of the concept of self-identity. However, it also hides the danger of being interpreted as experiences of awakening, enlightenment or loss of ego. This is tremendously childish and, paradoxically, typically egoic.
The sixth objective of meditation in Emoenergetica is to realize that our vision of the world is only an interpretation.
I have met far too many people who are under the illusion of having achieved instant personal and spiritual development by having lived a single experience of expanded consciousness. Even if one has had a good number of spiritual experiences, this is not enough. Some have not even used meditation to get there, instead making use of psychedelic drugs, that produce similar and much more immediate results, although with the added danger of their adverse side effects. The time needed to develop the energetic part and transcend the ego generally exceeds that of an entire lifetime. That is why, despite my trials and tribulations over many years advocating for the idea that, if the personal intent is sufficiently impeccable, perhaps the master is unnecessary, I have to surrender to the evidence that, probably, without good guidance, true spiritual advancement is more than improbable. Furthermore, what I have seen, by means of the bioenergetic readings I have carried out, is that the true masters – those who have completely transcended the ego – are incredibly scarce. So, in the absence of masters, many will have to settle for finding a good teacher. In spite of all these difficulties, as long as you do not believe that you have enlightened yourself in the first ecstasy that you reach, meditation, in addition to helping you to recover ownership over your own thoughts, can bring you something truly precious in your life, something that you will not be able to buy or obtain in any other way.
In Emoenergetica, the seventh objective of meditation is to attain the realization that there are no goals in meditation.
There are two basic forms of meditation: active and passive.
Passive meditation:
- This is practised in a comfortable posture, with your eyes closed and sitting or lying down, keeping as still as possible. My preference is to meditate lying down, so that the physical body can relax completely; the only problem with this is that it is easier to fall asleep, so some prefer to sit. It is equally valid to sit in an armchair, or on a cushion, or on the floor with a mat underneath. You should meditate for at least 10-20 minutes every day. Over time you may increase to an hour or more. An attention attractor is always used, that is, something on which we concentrate our attention and to which we return, over and over again, at the very moment we realize that we have lost concentration. The attractor can be the breath, or a mantra, or sounds designed for the occasion, and so on. Don't worry if your thoughts are there in the background, in your peripheral attention, just try to keep your central attention on the attractor.
- Using the breath:
- Simply bring your attention to the nose, to the nostrils, observing how the air enters and exits through them.
- Using a mantra:
- Mentally (not orally) recite a mantra over and over again, as if it were a litany, throughout the meditation. While reciting it, you must try to pay attention, not so much to the process of reciting it, but to the act of listening to it. A mantra is nothing more than a phonetic sound, ideally without meaning. In Eastern schools mantras are used, although they are actually prayers, as they have meaning in their native languages. You can use the Emoenergetica meditation mantra, which I designed specifically for this practice:
FORMINA VIRTULK GUMANE, TERAPON VIRTINEKA VORTO, MI GONAMARA TOR.
A YUSONA FERANU LINABER, FE PICURESA TRASCEDITER MI ASFERIMOR.
(fərˈmɪnɒ bɪrlˈtʊk ɡʊˈmɑːnɛ,
tɛˈrɒpɔːn bɪrtɪˈnɛkɒ ˈbɔːrtə, miː ɡənɒˈmɑːrɒ tɔːr.
ɒ dʒuːˈsənɒ fɛˈrɑːnʊ liːnɑːˈbər,
fɛ pɪkʊˈrɛsɒ trɑːszɛdɪˈtɛr miː ɑːsfɛrɪˈmər).
If you prefer, you can use the short version:
KUO SHOM NIRA.
(Kʊə ʃəm ˈniːrɒ).
- The two mantras are programmed to enhance meditative states.
- These mantras are bioenergetic devices. For the mantras to work properly you need to visit my website and follow the instructions to activate by yourself the basic key. If you do regular sessions of Bioenergetic Resonance with me, then you have already activated the premium key (which opens all the advanced features of the mantras), so you do not need to do anything special because in each session, along with the bioenergetic adjustments, I renew your key. Without the properly activated key, the mantras are no more than any other sounds. The same activation key also allows you to use other devices, such as the Bioenergetic Resonance meditation sounds and the Emoenergetica recapitulation mantra (which will be revealed in the corresponding chapter).
- Using sounds:
- You can use binaural sounds, repetitive noises, wind recordings, rain, percussion sounds and even (though less recommended) instrumental music. It is best to use headphones at a low volume. Simply focus your attention on the sound. At the end of the chapter you have some links to download two one-hour bioenergetic resonances that I have designed to meditate in this way. Keep in mind that if you have a history of epilepsy or heart problems, you should check with your physician before using binaural sounds.
Active meditation:
- This is performed while carrying out everyday activities, as long as these are not dangerous or do not necessitate internal dialogue, such as in the case of intellectual activities. One draws attention to one's own activity and to the experiences that it produces in the different senses. One of the best ways to practice this form of meditation is by walking alone, for half an hour or more. You can close your hands slightly by making your little fingers touch your palms, focusing attention on the sensation that this produces while keeping your gaze forward, slightly raised, without focusing on anything in particular and everything in the general field of vision. It is also possible to focus, meanwhile, on the air entering and exiting the nostrils and on background sounds. It could be said that, generally, in passive meditation the attention is narrowed to a single point, while in active meditation it widens to encompass as many perceptual experiences as possible at the same time.
Active meditation complements passive meditation but does not replace it.
You should practice without expecting or wanting to accomplish anything in particular. However, be careful; this is so difficult that, even if you think you have succeeded, you may find yourself craving not to wish for anything.
Meditation retreats are like holidays, sometimes a living hell, sometimes fantastic and entertaining, but what's really important is the work you do in your normal everyday life.
Meditation is like a delicate and strange garden. One must dedicate time to it every day, otherwise not only does it not blossom, but it is immediately ruined. So, embrace the challenge and make your garden an exquisite one.
Download the meditation resonances by clicking here.
Activate the basic key to access the bioenergetic functions of mantras and meditation sounds by clicking here.
Meditation by Chema Sanz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.