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So many people who come to meditation, myself included, have had a formula by which we've sought peace. Somewhere we've come up with the idea that if only we could quiet our mind, we could find some peace. The formula probably is born out of the distress many of us experience when our mind is running unchecked. Thought upon thought upon painful thought about what's wrong, what should happen, what should have happened, who we should be, who the other should be, what have we forgotten, what we should know that we don't, and an often-times vague sense of unease and impending doom. We take a look at the inside of our minds and, when we try to think of how to handle every problem we can discern there, we find ourselves confronted with a dike that has far too many holes for the number of fingers we have available to plug them. It can be unbearable. And what we end up wanting is just a simple respite from the unceasing noise. So please, pour me a drink, give me a pill, teach me meditation. I hear that it will quiet my mind. Then, perhaps, I will have a moment of peace.
The formula is correct; however, it is backwards. Peace is not the product of a quiet mind; rather, a quiet mind is the product of peace. Of bliss.
When we meditate, we settle down out of the level of activity and into the level of being. The level where we are able to feel ourselves at one with Totality. This level of pure being is also the level of pure bliss. We are dipping into this place of pure bliss. And once we take our mind into this place, it ceases its chatter. Because what the mind has been talking about to us is how to find happiness. What needs to change. Where would things be better than where they are here. So that when we immerse the mind in this place of pure bliss, it naturally quietens, because it cannot imagine any place better than where it is. It cannot imagine feeling better than what it feels. It cannot imagine a place of greater happiness. So it becomes quiet. We have our moment of rest. And when we come out of this place, we have some of that bliss accruing to us and we bring it out into the world with us, helping us to begin to find a bit more of it in our day to day life. And so it goes. Bliss building upon bliss, until happiness actually becomes the order of the day, and a quiet mind becomes our norm.
Today I will be sure to give myself two 20 minute opportunities to experience bliss, morning and evening.
 Carousel Horse on Truck Bed, Soho
All material copyright Jeff Kober
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