The I have practiced meditation of various sorts for 35 years. What began as a spontaneous event in my teens as I perched on a cliff staring out to the sea, later came to be a regular part of my day. I discovered Transcendental Meditation (TM) when I was living in New York City and came to rely on it.
As it was a profoundly stressful time in my life, I took to TM like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood. I needed it, 20 minutes, twice a day. It was no sacrifice; it was a necessity.
One of the basic tenets of most meditation techniques is to watch your thoughts and rather than fight the mind, to gently allow the thoughts to subside and then return to the mantra or the observation of the breath. In so doing, you create an observer, an objective reference point, a non-judgmental witness.
Then, the moment you notice that you have veered off into a pattern of thought in your meditation, you can inhabit the observer perspective to direct yourself back to the observation of the breath. There, by witnessing your breath and its regularity and letting ‘thought’ ebb, you can slip into deeper states of consciousness. It may seem dreamlike, but it is not sleep.
At times in my waking life, I will ask myself, “what am I thinking?” I use this question to change my state of consciousness. It is in the moment I ask that question that I step into the observer perspective and into the non-judgemental, neutral position of my soul’s perspective. This allows me to view my mental process from that wonderfully wise and calm vantage point.
In my book, THE MESSAGE: A Guide to Being Human, the difference between the soul’s perspective and the perspective of the “altered ego” — the identity that is derived from our conditioning, judgments and limitations is discussed. The altered ego is our limited self that is identified with the body and with our mortality. The soul’s perspective, on the other hand, is based in immortality and the profound nature of simple beingness — being essential in the universe — unique and timeless…
Read More: LD Thompson, huffingtonpost.com
