5.3 What is the meditation on serenity and harmony?

There are many, many possible confirmatory experiences to be had after attaining the first stage of enlightenment, which may seem strange, simple, wonderful, even frightening. What you will experience will be a function of your own nature and individual gifts. Remember, everything you experience is karmically configured to lead you towards understanding your own nature.

To realise that a thing is so is to confirm it through experience. As this phase of the meditation unfolds, you will have many experiences which are real to you, but very difficult to articulate to others. The reason for this is that they are too simple to be expressed in words. Yet they are profoundly satisfying to experience.

To practice any of the meditations taught in this chapter you need to make one slight and difficult change in your daily meditation. Count the breaths and think only of the subject of your meditation; cut off all other trains of thought or fantasies. Remember, the goal is attained by living in meditation.

After the first stage of enlightenment, as your experience in meditation unfolds, the practice of counting the breaths may become an irrelevant distraction for you. Provided you are able to concentrate your thoughts on the subject of your meditation, there is no harm in gradually dropping the practice of counting breaths. The purpose of all meditative practices is to develop the ability to concentrate your attention on one thing at a time.

The aim of the meditation on serenity and harmony is to analyse your current condition. Become aware of your detachment, its benefits and how you arrive at this inner calm. Above all, learn how to sustain it for longer and longer periods.

The key to a full unfolding of your awareness, in the face of reality, lies in expanding your capacity to experience serenity and harmony in the midst of conditions. By attaining the first stage of enlightenment, you have broken free of the emotional and intellectual conditions constraining your personality. You will rapidly learn through experience that you have to work hard to sustain your new detachment – some days are warmer, some days are cooler.

Serenity is based on the capacity to remain detached from emotional conditions. You will still experience your own emotions and those of others; only, now, you need no longer be driven by these forces. Through serenity, you can transcend your habitual emotional behaviour patterns.

With practice at this meditation you will become increasingly free to choose your response to each set of conditions you experience. To operate in harmony, simply Live and Act throughout your life. Your karmic task is to benefit yourself and others through your actions.

Do not think that because you can sustain this state of serenity and harmony, you possess any inherent or acquired superiority over others. In reality, there is only one path for us all, and you are simply further along that path than others. You convey your understanding of these teachings primarily through your behaviour. Words are secondary to this.