We seek out meditation for many reasons: to become happier, to be less anxious, to run faster, jump higher, create more freely. All of these are absolutely legitimate reasons to learn meditation, Vedic meditation or otherwise. I think, though, that we seek answers in meditation to our perceived problems because each of us knows at some level that there is some place within that we are not able to contact on our own. This is the place of Being. The place where we are connected to the field of Being, the field of all possibilities. This is a place of pure bliss, the source of creativity, the place from which all love flows. You can't have something like that within you and not know it. Maybe we can't name it, but we can feel at least the potential for it.
We may try all sorts of things to contact this limitless field within, and some things may work, some of the time, but consistent access to it is tricky. It's counter-intuitive, at least from the point of view of me as a non-meditator, looking for help. As we learn more about it, our way into it begins to make much more sense. The reason we can't find it on our own with any kind of dependability is because we are "doers." Before we learn how to meditate, we have no idea how to Be. Only how to do. We get this idea of a place to get to, a thing to accomplish, a treasure to uncover, and we go to work. Especially here, in our culture. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing perfectly. The problem here is that the more I do, the further I move away from this place of Being. Activity, regardless of how spiritual or profound it may be, is going to take me precisely in the direction away from this field of pure Being. So what are we to do? When we learn meditation, we are given permission simply to Be. In some practices, this is enough to begin. In our practice, there is something added in, which is our mantra. Having the mantra, we much more easily are able to let ourselves Be, because we have been told, and then soon discover for ourselves, that the mantra is going to do the work for us. As we stop all of our doing, effortlessly entertaining our mantra quietly within, the mantra begins to settle down, begins to disappear into the Unboundedness that is this place of pure Being. And our mind, attracted to this mantra, follows it in. Ahhhh... bliss. Quiet. Peace. Comfort. We have learned how to de-excite. We have learned how to Be. Now it makes sense we couldn't find this place before. So very busy with all our thinking, thinking, thinking. And now we've found a bit of respite from it and already we've begun to change, to become more of what we truly are. We sit in meditation. We de-excite. We contact this place of Being. Then our mind returns from this place and we bring some of this bliss back with us and out into the world of doing, into our eyes-open state, but we have made connection with the place within. We have begun to know ourselves truly. This connection is ours, forever. For all time. We may continue to meditate and open the passage more and more so that we may know ourselves as this place of Being as well as this place of doing; or we may never meditate again and do everything we can to forget we ever found this other place. In either case, it's a part of us now, never more to leave us. All we need do is to ask where it might be, what it might feel like, how would I be if I could feel it right now? And we can begin to feel it there, subtly, just beneath our thoughts and perceptions. If I were the field of all possibilities, how would I behave? What would I say? What would I do? And as we continue to meditate, day by day by day, we begin to know the answers to these questions more and more clearly. We begin to know ourselves as the Bliss itself. It's a good life. Today, when I am having a moment of angst, I will ask myself what I might do or say or think if I could feel my connection to Unboundedness. 
Sidewalk and Fountain, Studio City, CA
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Kober
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