Meditation Essentials: Preparation for Serenity

As people who are interested in meditation, we want serenity. In most cases, when someone is attracted to studying meditation or spirituality, it is because some suffering afflicts them and they want relief. Meditation is a known solution, a proven science that directly changes our suffering and gives us an opportunity to discover what is serenity really is.

Serenity cannot be given as a gift. It is not something that we receive from the gods. It is not something that can be bought. If you have had some experience in this world, you may have encountered very poor people and very rich people, and you may have seen for yourself that serenity is unknown to them all. Wealth does not solve the problems of suffering or discontentment, since you can find poor people and rich people who are equally unhappy. You can also find poor and rich who are equally content. The difference between them is not their material possessions or their social status, it is their attitude. The difference is not material, it is psychological.

Our attitude is really significant in spirituality.

Serenity is a Result of Action
When we use this word serenity, we are using it in a very technical way. We are describing a very specific state of mind, a state of being.

Serenity is something that one experiences and lives. Serenity is not in the future or the past; it is something that can only be known in the present.

Serenity refers to a mind that is at peace, stable, and calm, not in chaos or surging with thoughts, emotions, cravings, or fears.

centers male 2015This image illustrates our five centers, also called three brains. These are psychological tools, machines that we are using all the time. However, we are not aware of them. We do not pay much attention to them.

The quality of energy that passes through these psychological machines is what determines our experience of living in the moment.

Your experience of life is the result of your psychological actions.

The state of the energy that is flowing through the intellect is what we experience as mind or thought, and it has a range of qualities, yet one dominant characteristic: our state of mind is out of our control. It is a chaos that we seem unable or unwilling to control.

We all know how our mind can be in constant movement, thinking, full of voices, thoughts, demands, questions, over which we seem to have no control. Anyone who has tried to learn to meditate knows this for a fact. Your meditation instructor tells you to sit and empty your mind of thoughts, and you cannot do it because thoughts just keep happening. That demonstrates a lack of serenity, and that is the result of not using conscious will to control the mind throughout our daily life.

There is also a state of mind that we can call dullness or laxity. This is a state in which the mind is very dark, dull, and heavy, like molasses, like mud. It is like something thick and impenetrable. We can also experience that in our daily lives or in our attempts to meditate, when our mind just seems sluggish. In this type of state, we cannot think clearly. Usually, when we feel that, we run for coffee or we run to bed. This state of dullness is also a consequence of our psychological attitude, the way we use out mind from moment to moment.

The extreme of excitement, agitation, stress, and high energy oppose the other extreme of dullness, obscurity, mental fatigue or mental laziness.

That same pendulum swing between extremes happens in the other centers.

Emotionally, the dominant characteristic is here as well: our emotions are out of our control, too. Our emotions just keep happening, and we cannot or will not control them or how they control us.

We swing from one emotional extreme to another. We get emotionally excited, attracted, interested, wound up, with stress, anxiety, fear, excitement, and lust. This includes all forms of desires, where we become very fixated on something and our emotional craving and urge to have that is overwhelming. Why do we binge on tv shows or music? Because of the emotional states they provoke; we want to provoke those emotional states in order to avoid others. Why do we binge on Facebook or texting? Because we want to constantly feel the “emotion” of feeling like we are loved, included, valued, wanted. We do not realize that those emotions are illusions. Each of us has emotional addictions, emotional habits, and we do not seem to have any control over them.

Worse is that our emotions — as chaotic and out of control as they may be, or as cold and lifeless as we may feel in our heart — do not correspond to reality. What we feel emotionally is subjective. How do we know this? Observe yourself. When a tragedy happens, notice the cold heart you have. When something wonderful happens to someone, notice the cold heart you have, or the anger or envy you feel. We can go to a party, everybody is happy, but we are depressed and miserable. We may even not know why. We just feel bad. If you pay attention to yourself, you will see that it is very common that your inner state does not match your external circumstances.