3.7 How do you develop and extend the experience of mind in its natural state?

Committed daily practice of the previous meditative exercise will have introduced you, however remotely and briefly, to the experience of mind in its natural state – serene, still and transcending the thought process. This new exercise develops and strengthens your experience of the mind’s inherent capability for inner stillness. This exercise utilises and combines the techniques learnt in the first two exercises.

These first three exercises are like an athlete’s warm-up exercises. Just as an athlete would bend, stretch and flex the body muscles prior to an exercise session, so, in the same way, these preliminary yogic exercises loosen up and prepare your mind for the advanced training to come. These meditative exercises familiarise you with the limitations of the thought process, while simultaneously preparing you for the state of pure awareness which both transcends and embraces the thought process.

With great effort, you have learnt to cut off thoughts at the root, as they spontaneously and instantaneously come into being. With great patience, you have learnt to allow thoughts to flow uninterruptedly, as they spontaneously shape your experience of conditioned existence. Too much effort put into the first exercise created tiredness, both mental and physical, and only resulted in yet more thoughts; too much relaxation during the second exercise created lethargy, both mental and physical, and only resulted in absorption in the contents of your thought process.

This third exercise teaches you to maintain evenness of mind. The aim is to avoid the pitfalls both of intense straining for results, and of over-relaxing despite the need to remain alert. The goal of this exercise is to attain a middle course which avoids over-straining and over-relaxing and produces a state of relaxed alertness.

Third exercise

Begin your meditation practice: tense your mind to cut off thoughts as they arise; as soon as strain sets in, relax the mind and allow your thoughts to flow uninterruptedly. Continue this practice repeatedly – tense your mind and then relax it; tense your mind and then relax it. As you progress with the meditation, extend the time of practice into your ordinary, everyday activities.

When you can perform this process of tensing and relaxing alternately without giving much attention to the matter, you will have reached the goal of this exercise. Then you will have developed a steady, even awareness of the thought process itself. You will still be subject to thoughts – yet, simultaneously, you will be able to witness your thought process.

Once again you should expect to spend a minimum of 2-4 weeks on this practice. Only through your own experience can you understand the point of these meditations. This understanding will come as your consciousness is expanded over a period of sustained practice.

At each stage, you can gauge, in a natural and easy way, when you are ready to move on to the next exercise. When you find your mind drawn to start the next exercise in the sequence, then you are ready to move on. Trust in your mind’s inherent ability to move through the exercises at its own relaxed pace.