Life and Meditation — a beautiful rhythmic dance

Life and meditation go hand in hand.But if the purpose and ideal of life is not clear then meditation becomes an opposing force to the normal current of life. This happened with me for a long time. I was torn between the desirous & outward nature of my mind, which was always in lookout for a state of “becoming”, and the inner quietude of my heart brought forth by meditation, where I just wanted to “be”. I kept rejecting that state of being by telling myself that I was not being practical in life. And to that end meditation just became something to cling to when I was anxious and restless.

However, that idea of complete freedom never left me, and with Divine’s grace I persisted with my meditation practice. With time, it dawned upon me that the process of life and meditation are not at opposing ends. As the purpose of life became more clear, the conflict started to resolve and meditation deepened.

Our life is meant to be an inner journey, an endeavour to turn away from the unreal and move towards the real, an attempt to reject the pull of darkness and seek light and light alone, a constant opening of ourselves to the Divine by stilling our minds, a process of rejecting our lower nature and raising our awareness to the higher Self within.

And meditation is the same process canalised in a systematic and deliberate way. It is an intensified process of letting go of our lower self, which is always drawn by the vagaries of the world, and becoming one with the Divine — our higher Self, which is the ocean of Bliss.

As long as the realisation that we are the lower self exists, we will find that our practice of meditation and our daily life activities keep on playing a tiring tug-of-war — one part of the mind contradicting the other with much drain of essential energy. There will be a constant conflict within. The harmony, peace, and joy that meditation can fill us with will be lacking in our expression & our lives.

However, if the purpose of life is clear, meditation can become the source of dynamism for our living. It can act as the re-charging of our life battery in an intense manner. Meditation can be the spiritualizing force for all our thoughts, feelings, ideas, sentiments, and aspirations — for all our life and dealings with the world.

When this inner secret is recognised, life and meditation go hand-in-hand as if in a beautiful rhythmic dance.

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Thanks for reading!