There’s a movie I recently watched called ‘Choice’ and it caught my attention because it is about meditation and people promoting its use because it has assisted them so much in their lives. So, the following is going to be my perspective based on the understanding and self-awareness that I’ve walked – meaning tested and proven – when it comes to meditation as a source to achieve some form of lasting and sustainable support in one’s life.
In the movie there were various cases where meditation was implemented by deeply troubled people, including prisoners in Mexico, homeless kids in another state here in Mexico and patients with terminal illnesses like Cancer creating supportive outcomes for them. The way it is presented it makes one totally believe that this is really ‘the key’ – and a particularly easy one – to just ‘breathe oneself’ into stability or calmness and making it look as if it is a cure to one’s problems, which I can only partly agree on.
Here I’d like to focus on what I have become aware of in my previous practice and experience with meditation where there was a part of me that also wanted such peace of mind through simply focusing on breathing or stilling my mind during my everyday reality. Over time I found that there were inevitable moments where I did create reactions toward people; I tried to every single time keep my cool and ‘meditate’ myself into stilling my mind and reactions, which only worsened the points and it all accumulated into moments of ‘exploding’ in front of that person or situation in a very, shall I say, bad way because I was only trying to suppress my experience with just breathing and calming myself down, while not dealing with the actual cause and source of such experience.
As with most practices and applications I’ve tested throughout my life, I was very keen on focusing on meditation and trying to achieve some ‘higher state of consciousness’ which with my understanding now, it only means getting oneself even more suppressed into the mind which is a system, a consciousness system that is representing in fact not the best part of ourselves, it is in fact a system that exists based on relationships of friction and conflict generating emotions and feelings – in essence energy – that we have accepted and allowed to exist as it does, which is essentially feeding off from the body itself to generate such experiences which means, it exists in ourselves, it’s a part of us that we have to directly face/confront and directly change.
Yet one common mistake we make is trying to ‘shut the mind off’ and dissociate ourselves from our thoughts and calling them off as if they were not a part of ourselves that we have in fact accepted and allowed and Created in our minds! Including as well all of the experiences that we have in our bodies – whether we are aware or not – they are all indicating to us that they are a part of us, our creation, they are here to be recognized, understood to then walk them through a process of acknowledging self-responsibility for experiencing them. We by now all can agree how there are many experiences in our minds that are not supportive to our actual physical living. Because any experience at an energy level – whether positive or negative –will destabilize ourselves, it will cause consequences whenever we are moved by energy and not making effective living decisions based on common sense.
But, what happens when one tries to simply keep the mind shut and focus only on breathing? All of the mind’s information as thoughts, emotions, feelings will only get suppressed through ONLY doing the breathing process. Here what I’ve seen is how there’s really no encouragement of walking a process of developing self-awareness, self-recognition of acknowledging this as a part of ourselves, as something we can actually take direction on and physically change.
Focusing on breathing is I’d say an initial step in being able to develop a physical awareness in relation to ‘seeing the mind’ and not being moved by it or so immersed/lost into it. Though what I found in the documentary/movie is that there was no talk about understanding what those thoughts or emotional experiences expose or signify as a part of ourselves, how we are the creators of such aspects of ourselves and so how we have the responsibility and power/ability to change that through a process of direct self-awareness, using writing and the application of self-forgiveness to recognize who we are as those parts of ourselves that is bothering us, that is causing a consequence in our physical living, that is keeping us bounded and limited to a particular destructive behavior – we all know in ourselves which ones those are, we all have something to improve in our lives, that’s what we can in fact take a more directive role in re-designing if you will.
Because what happens when we only focus on ‘breathing’ and stopping the mind, is that we create a huge void, a huge disconnect when it comes to not actually doing the necessary investigation of those aspects of our minds that we are trying to stop, we are not actively directing ourselves to recognize those experiences as a part of ourselves to understand, acknowledge it so as to redirect or transform that experience into a word that we can live and so assist ourselves with in Creating ourselves – or ‘recreating’ ourselves – into the person, the being, the life that we actually want for ourselves.
What I found through actually taking the time and walking the process to investigate, get to know and deconstruct my mind is that for example, I had in fact anger in me that I had suppressed entirely, in layers and layers of believing that ‘everything is fine’ and believing that I was always ‘ok and fine’ in which I kept myself hiding from what I was in fact experiencing, which I was only to open up and confront through developing self-honesty which means in a nutshell, allowing myself to investigate, see, recognize and day by day work on self-forgiving/taking responsibility for those experiences in me, understanding their ‘reasoning’ behind it and so making direct and self-aware decisions to change those aspects in me, one by one, day by day.
What have been the results of me walking this process? Let’s put it this way, breathing becomes a constant point of self-awareness wherein I can still go observing who I am in my mind, become aware of the movements that emerge in myself based on particular situations I am in – however, based on having walked this process of self forgiveness for some years now, it is easier to embrace those aspects of myself, take responsibility for it and so directively change myself in relation to that. This means that I have become more stable and grounded in my body, in myself, I now know I can be the directive principle of what comes up in my mind and have tools/ways to understand it, sort it out as in creating a solution to change myself in the moment. This is a very active and self-aware process, in which breathing plays a role yes, but only as a constant reference of ‘being physical’ of reminding ourselves to ‘slow down’ – but only slowing down, only focusing on breath does not mean that we are actively changing who we are in thought, word and deed, but mostly only create a quietness that feels good, sure, but is not essentially us stepping in and taking responsibility for ourselves.
The principle behind this is very simple: when trying to only meditate, the effort is only one breath away, one can just ‘plug out’ with breathing and keep ourselves quiet in our bodies and minds for a while – but this becomes a way to avoid actually and genuinely facing Our creation which is what we’ve become in our minds, our experiences, our bodies and all of its illnesses. What happens when using ONLY meditation is that we are prone to recreate the same problems and origins of what caused us to seek meditation in the first place. Because in physical existence, nothing that we create is ever ‘gone by itself’ or ‘gotten rid of’ just by breathing it – there is a process, a self-aware and conscious process involved in doing this and that’s what I’ve walked through in the Desteni I Process for several years, which is actually a real process of effort, diligence, perseverance, drive and motivation to investigate oneself, all the corners and ‘dark corridors’ as the aspects of ourselves that we are reluctant to see and become aware of – and so take responsibility for. Because we usually want quick fixes, nice fixes, feel good fixes such as it happens when using only meditation in an attempt to achieve real ‘peace of mind’ or ‘stability’ or ‘enlightenment’ or its various forms in which it is promoted.
Here, I am not saying that breathing is wrong or that it is useless or meditation is bad – nope, I’m being quite specific in saying that ONLY doing meditation in an attempt to genuinely correct/realign oneself to live in a supportive manner is most likely not the best way to go doing so, because of this effect of compounding energies that one suppressed only through breathing, yet one is not actively taking self-responsibility for oneself to deliberately change ‘that nature’ of ourselves that we can recognize is our creation, we have given it power/time/breaths through ourselves, therefore we can change that of ourselves and transform it into a living word, a new behavior, a new way of ‘thinking’ if you will that is instead supportive for ourselves in our lives.
At Desteni it’s been always explained how breath is essential when it comes to that moment of becoming aware of having an experience, to then BREATHE so as to slow down, come back to our physical body – but this in itself is not the solution, one has to deliberately also investigate what came up within oneself, what did that thought, emotion or feeling represents as a part of oneself that we haven’t looked at/understood and so taken responsibility for, because we are still going to have to face what we have caused in our bodies, the reactions that we’ve triggered and actively deal with them. Like this quote from a Kryon interview on Eqafe.com explains:
“For example one can do this breathing, and move all of what one is experiencing within oneself into the chest area, and in the out-breath move it out… but what happens in that is that nothing will move because self is not making the decision to actually in fact move it. So you have to make that decision to move all that is existent within you that is overwhelming. Just breathe it in, into the chest area, make the decision from that moment to really let it go as you breathe out, and just physically move it out. It is like giving yourself an internal beingness-physical massage as the overwhelmingness moves out. This does not mean that the things are gone. Meaning that you are still gonna have to face what it is that created that overwhelmingness in the first place. All that this assists and supports with is to stabilize your beingness in your body so you can have a stable starting point again to face your mind. Because if it is that this in fact released everything, we could have just had all of humanity breathe their minds out. That would have been fantastic but unfortunately we have to face consequence, understand consequence and learn from it. So this is simply a practical physical assistance and support to get yourself to a stable physical point whenever your mind gets overwhelming, and then get back to how it is you got to that overwhelmingness in the first place. This is a similar process with regards to my beingness relationship to movement in terms of actually moving my beingness.” – Kryon – My Existential History – Part 5+6
This means that we usually tend to see our consequence – our experiences, our overwhelming emotions and feelings – as something that we want to get away from, ‘heal from’ through various healing and energy therapies, through meditation, through wanting to ‘remove’ our past lives or heal stuff somehow with all kinds of technologies and deceiving mechanisms really, because everything that we are, do and create in this world is etched in our bodies, in our environment and we can’t really get ‘rid of it’ through some external means, it has to be a personal self-aware/conscious process to do so, otherwise we are prone to create quick fixes and seemingly comforting experiences, only to then go back to the same reasons and experiences that led us to seek for those healings and therapies, wherein we then make ourselves dependent on an external source to ‘get rid of our consequence’ – which means here: we are once again abdicating our responsibility in seeking ‘external means and ways’ to have others or something ‘take the burden away from us’/make something ‘heal’ for us…. Isn’t that contradictory?
The bottom line of this process within Desteni is that one realizes one is the creator of it ALL, nothing and no one is really ‘separate’ from ourselves, nothing is really ‘out of our realm of responsibility’ – which means that the least we can do and start with is taking the actual time, dedication and responsibility it takes to walk our minds which means to get to know ourselves, to understand our relationships to energy, to understand why do we react in a ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ manner to certain things in our reality, to actively recognize this that we ‘dislike’ of ourselves or get discomforted by – including illnesses – as Our creation.
So, surely, breathing can be a point of support, it can feel great for a moment to focus on breathing, some 5 minutes a day – without having to ‘seat’ in a particular way or focus on any spiritual imagery – simply breathing and being with the body is definitely one challenge I can share with anyone here because then we will start realizing to what extent we are ‘hooked’ on our minds and experiences that ‘live for us’ instead of us understanding and directing ourselves to live physically, to live ourselves, to decide what to live instead of being moved by energies, fears, experiences of all kinds ‘up there’ in our minds.
Therefore as a complement to what people in this documentary propose and practice, which is breathing/meditation, is to focus on understanding such personal consequence that exists in all that our minds show us exists within ourselves, from the ‘minutest thought’ to the biggest of behavioral patterns and overwhelming experiences – it’s important to understand the ‘mind mechanics’ behind it all so as to not spiritualize or create a belief about what energy is, but physically understand what it is, its source and purpose and the role we have in relation to it: it’s all our creation and taking that responsibility for ourselves is surely one first and primary step to understand who we are, our creation and so recognize the actual power to change ourselves, in a self-aware manner, in a responsible manner, in an act of self-forgiveness which at the same time is a process of recognizing ourselves as the creators of our experiences, our reality, and so consciously and willingly make a decision to create/build/construct the kind of person and life that we want to live and lead as an example of.
Thanks for reading.
If you’d like some support in preventing and being 1+ person that stands up for life in a practical day to day living manner, check out:
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