Meditation Mania? Can Meditation Cause Grandiose Thinking?

Meditative Mania?

So the last couple of days have been well, an explosion into the fourth dimension of reality, perhaps?

I started reading Eknath Eswaran’s book titled “Meditation…yadda yadda” and it has reminded me of and helped me get back to the state of awareness that I had reached in earlier forays into meditation and awareness studies. Studies is a funny word for it but I think it best applies to what I’ve been doing.

Honestly though, I shouldn’t give that much credit to the book, because the meditation practice I’ve slowly grown back into a daily routine has been just as if not more beneficial. It takes many complementary things to grow in awareness and spirituality.

I was talking to Don earlier and expressing my belief that you grow in these things in leaps, but you never know how diligently you must practice or for how long before any certain leap will happen. You never know when a leap is coming and shouldn’t “leave before the miracle happens.” As with my experience in recovery, and the gym, and other good habits and lifestyle changes, meditation and awareness of your conscious thought processes are things that are easier to get back into and achieve competency in when practices and techniques have been used prior to this venture into enlightenment-seeking. A leap can happen when you least expect it, and be seemingly unrelated to whatever you have been doing in your search for spirituality in the most recent past.

Two days ago, on a Saturday, specifically after reading a chapter (I think it was on training the senses) in the aforementioned book and then during the drive following that to an immense extent, I re-entered a state of consciousness (yes, that’s what I’m going to refer to it as) which I have achieved before but probably never to this extent. The state I am referring to is an awareness of your mind and thoughts to the tune of being aware constantly of whether you are thinking or not.

Most of us think without thinking about it. I did, and will do so in the future. When I am meditating and reading about things of this nature, however, I get to a point (that is similar to mania, almost, in its implications and excitement. It is a calm excitement, however, and a patient one) where I am making an effort to stop my thought processes and simply be aware of the moment and what I am doing.

The main benefit of this, besides the fact that living in the present is gratifying in and of itself, is that it gives your mind the opportunity to generate and present intuitive thoughts, which pop up with answers to questions you weren’t consciously asking. You sometimes know what to do without really having to consider it, and know it’s a good idea without asking yourself. Your intuition has grown and your awareness of life and vibes and the nature of things in general.

You can slip back into the primitive state of non-awareness and being controlled by your thoughts whenever you let them take over and make no effort to return your mind to the present. We are in effect trying to meditate constantly, with our focus being the present moment instead of a passage, the breath, a concept, or a guiding voice. Our peers present guiding voices; our books are all meditative passages; life itself is an ever-evolving concept. Everything becomes more interesting in this effort. Life is more vivid, your thoughts are calmer and follow a more logical pattern.

You can see that your emotions popping up left and right can be calmed by a quick perception of where they came from and see the fact that they can assist you in very little. When you realize that these emotions (and I am referring to fear-based, negative emotions) are for the most part useless impediments to a purposeful and constructive frame of mind, you have less of a problem letting them go.

You become more interested in life in general, as opposed to YOUR life. There is a huge difference in contemplating how you could better a portion of life in general (a situation or relationship, perhaps), and how you could best satisfy your impulses and irrational desires (stemming from irrational trains of thought). Indeed the very idea of your life being separate implies an irrational belief in being apart from the world.

The language is for the most part extreme, but so is the difference between my state of mind a month ago, and especially two months ago, and the state of mind I’ve been in for the last three days.

What I am writing now is an example of the inspirational effects of this state of mind. I have not written something like this in a long time; perhaps I never have at all, actually! I am in general, not inspired. In my selfish and oblivious state I am for the most part lazy, inefficient, unconcerned with anything other than my obsession of the moment, and aggravated with and easily irritated by people in general. Someone snubs me, it hurts to an extent it shouldn’t. Someone doesn’t return my call, I will be thinking about it all day, and perhaps be kept up by it at night if the person is of particular interest to me.

For now, I barely even think about the people that are choosing not to be a part of my life. There are so many! Some play minor roles willingly, when asked, but very few pursue my company, advice, or conversation. That is changing already however, as tonight can show by a person asking for my number, and another accepting graciously my number and advice on where to go to further his ambitions to improve his life.

Sometimes I don’t search. Sometimes I do nothing. Most of the times that nothing is really the pursuit of fruitless obsessions that I hope will fill my life with meaning, happiness, and temporary satisfactions. I am finding out, and have been in states of finding out this same thing at times in the past, that selflessness, in terms of being more interested in life in general than your thoughts, plans, past and future, is infinitely more satisfying than any ephemeral joy you might get out of selfish endeavors.

This has been known by successfully religious people throughout the ages, but how much of a revelation it is to me at this moment! Nothing I write here is original, yet it comes through someone who has not read or heard much about the topic, or not as much as the average person who has achieved some level of this kind of awareness. I am not very well read, and I do not seek out much information in other ways, and never have for very long. I have had short spurts of excited and enlightened living, if you can call it that yet, but never been able to maintain it or achieve it at this level. Maintaining is yet to be decided.

I will write more on this topic in the coming days, hopefully.