Why Concentration?
Why do we do concentration meditation techniques?
One of the keys to deepen our practise is as Mr. Goenka, the vipassana teacher, would tell us, ‘continuity of practise is the secret of success.’
Lets look a little closer at what this statement really means. In reality I don’t know what this meant for Mr. Goenka himself, but from my own practise I have found this statement quite powerful. Genuine ‘continuity’ means that we sustain awareness over sequential moments. This may be awareness of breath, breath and body, breath body and emotions and ultimately breath, body, emotions and the sense doors.
If we are truly able to stay with awareness, moment to moment, then this can become a stable way of shifting ‘up’ through the planes of awareness.
We can have practices that shift our consciousness into the planes in different ways, but this is the base of a solid practise, as we start to learn how to develop continuous awareness. This building of awareness can start simple, like observation of breath, and as it becomes more stable, consciousness can expand to encompass more of the fields of awareness, breath, body, emotions and sense doors.
Of course there is a catch, or maybe ‘a hook’, and that’s ego-mind, as per usual, ego wants to remain center stage. And we are addicted to that soothing vibe of turning through the thoughts in our minds.
As we shift up the planes into subtler states of awareness, the ego’s ways of interjecting, of ‘hooking’ you and reeling you in, get subtler too. Sometimes continuous awareness as percieved by the practioner, is actually awareness with ego interjections.
This may still mean we are surfing at a higher vibration, but to shift planes, we generally need to sustain a short period of total presence to all that arises in any given moment. Then we shift up and are vibrating at a subtler resonance, and the ego will interject here too, but now presence is more able to rest alongside these egoic traits. We feel lest ‘sticky’ ‘drawn to’ this material.
To shift up another plane, we will again need periods of total presence, and as we shift up the planes, the ‘hold’ of the ego lessens.
Yet, if these periods of sustained awareness, are ‘forced’ then while it may still produce similar results, shifting us up in vibration, up a plane, quite often the ego will rebound at some point with even more ferocity than it’s ‘normal’ levels.
Sometimes this is still ‘good practise’ as we get to taste more refined states, and we need to play with our states of awareness. With greater practise, if we can shift into subtler energetic states in more ‘natural’ ways, then the shifts of awareness are more sustainable.
To express this basic form of awareness in the most simple way, is just to say that we knid of need to stop the thinking mind for a moment, this is not to be confused with some forceful technique, but just to redirect our attention to other bases, breath, body, emotions and sense sphere world, not simply to ‘feel’ what is going on at that level in this moment, and nothing more.
The ‘progressions’ to this switch in awareness, are to notice where we have tightness, blockages etc. to see if we can, ‘loosen’ ‘relax’ or ‘let go of’, a certain amount of these tensions, and the more we are aable to become more stable in shifting the attention in this way, the more we can incorporate into the ‘expansion’ of awareness. Can I be aware of my emotions and my physical body at the same time. Am I aware of the natural world or sounds about me at the same time, the breath, and so on.
Just to be aware of the entire mass of phenomena that we are experiencing (or the most that we can) in any given moment through all our capacities of perception.
The longer we can sustain this way of percieving, without forcing, the wider the span of attention can spread, the less the ego will intervene, the higher the vibration/frequency we resonate with.
The higher the frequency, the more we are resonating with the vibration of the natural world all about us.
If that vibration becomes too refined/subtle, then we are entering into the jhanas, the absorption states, which are meditative states only, and not awakened states.
As we approach these subtler states while ‘awake’ the world about us becomes more and more fluid, less solid, concrete, real.
To keep coming back to these spaces of expansive awareness, even as the ego-mind interjects, is the key to practise, a re-training of our neural firings.
Learning to open the heart (the emotional body) to all that is, is key to helping us to rest more deeply within subtler or more refined states.