Meditation

Advancing Awareness
To Get More Love In Your Life
The Psychology, Technology, Neuroscience and Spirituality of
Reducing Unhappiness by Becoming Progressively Loving

Prayer, Meditation, Contemplation,
Affirmative Prayer, Think Well

All spiritual practices are about creating feelings, the feelings are those of connection.
The result is inner peace and love and a shift in normal consciousness.

Tabula Rasa is a rapid way to Pure Awareness and Sensing Universal Love.

Practice 2

All are about the creation of feelings and the feelings of connection

We are programmed to be fearful so we will protect ourselves. We are also biologically wired to attach and love - but only when we have felt a safe loving relationship as a baby. With a strong foundation of love, we can make an art form of consciousness, as we co-create with our brain, our most loving adult awareness while residing on this earth.

TABULA RASA BEING

Back to our Earliest Consciousness Filled with
Pure Awareness, Inner Peace and Connection

Changing Awareness

Here is the truth of our human ability. You can learn to simply create a state of happy existence which is filled with loving awareness. You can also quite easily, learn to return to a peaceful loving state of “pure awareness.” I say “return” because this is a similar state to that which we experienced as an unborn and newborn. This earliest state of human awareness is often called Tabula Rasa, because it is a “clean slate” – a clean mind and body waiting for life to write its memories upon.

The Tabula Rasa technique is a way of returning to the calm and peacefulness of pure awareness. And there are usually some very cool and interesting experiences along the way.

There are also a number of you who do not really know what it is like to be calm of mind and body. You have emotions and body sensations in you the vast of the majority of the time, such that a calm body is really a foreign feeling. You have never known the fact that our most common human emotional condition is that of euthymia. This means to be without emotions or sensations. To be in neutral. Yes, neutral. Not happy, not sad. Not excited, not fearful. Not blissful, not shameful. It is feeling the sense of being calm, and in that calm there is inherent safety. This is euthymia and is where we should be most of the time (except for those on the spiritual path or spiritualizing).

If this is an unfamiliar state, using this technique will pose greater challenges and will test your perseverance. Here’s why. It starts with sitting quietly. When people have a hard time getting euthymic, when they simply sit - they begin to feel antsy, uncomfortable, nervous or some such feeling. See why -

Often a major source of discomfort is simply the silence of sitting quietly. So, one thing which might help is to begin doing this personal spiritual practice with a background of music you find pleasant and rather relaxing. Play comforting music until doing this practice becomes more comfortable. Then experiment with reducing the background music.

So, here we go.

What follows is a description of how to sit quietly and tune into your senses and in doing so, limit the amount of thoughts that might otherwise be rushing around in your brain and mind. This can be a daily spiritual practice or can be done more occasionally. Fifteen to twenty minutes once or twice a day is optimal.

The ultimate beauty of learning to be in this calm, peaceful, connected space is that you can choose to bring it into awareness while engaged in many different activities during the day. Although pure awareness is most easily learned while sitting in quiet spiritual practice, once you learn how to turn this level of awareness on, you can call it forward whenever you choose. You can control Brain Wander or negativity by shifting to this consciousness. It is also easy to move into pure awareness when you are in rather rote activities, such as cleaning or walking from one location to the next, or when going to sleep.

In this state of pure awareness, there is an inherent peacefulness. The body can progressively calm and relax as your mind is also relaxed, simply being fully aware without having to think.

This should not take the place of prayer or contemplation if you use or are attracted to such spiritual practices. For many, the desire to know God more fully will be through prayer and worship. All are positive paths to a felt connection with a grander sense of a loving presence. It is a bigger loving presence than we were able to know earlier in our life.

For many of you, it will be quite a challenge just to reach any state of calmness. You have been programmed to be in Go-mode. Or, if you have old unresolved fears or sadness lurking just under the surface, such feelings may push forward into the quietness of calmness. If you spend too much time alone as an infant, attempting to get to a quiet calm, may remind you unconsciously of being along and scared as a baby.

Both of these conditions are disruptive to obtaining the pure awareness of the clean slate. Many of you will feel like continuing if you have a couple of initial upsetting experiences. Of course you can, or you can decide to figure out why this is so hard for you.

The Most Amazing of Cool Experiences

And for all, it will take varying amounts of repeated practice to get to pure awareness. But once you get there, and you get there and stay there more and more often, you may find something quite remarkable happens. Most of you probably won't believe this, but -- what often happens as people are just open, aware and peaceful is they begin to feel a connection of love. What? Yes, they begin to feel love, and it seems like it is all around them. Some people experience this love as coming from outside themselves and some feel an internal lovingness, which is different than they usually feel.

It is quite a remarkable phenomenon. This sense of ever-present love can be thought of as Universal Loving Awareness. Sensing this Love makes for a very happy place inside. And once you discover the experience, you can recognize and realize that such a level of Love can be felt by almost all who choose to experience it. For some, this sense of surrounding love is often attributed to God. This felt sense of ever-present love might also be similar to our infancy experience of being surrounded by love from mother, father, our family and their friends, who held us, cuddled us, cooed at us, and beautifully communicated that we were wonderful and loved. Perhaps as we move to pure awareness, we re-experience an adult version of this omnipresent Love from infancy.

Developing an Awareness of Where You are Going

At first, you can tell yourself to be aware of your eyes. Eventually, you can direct your attention to your body, and then perhaps, to what you are hearing. You can tell yourself where to focus. But eventually, realize that you now know how to be aware and you don’t have to keep telling yourself anything. And you don’t have to be thinking at all to be in awareness of your body and the surrounding environment. When you can be purely aware of the sensations flooding your body, brain and mind and not be thinking about them, you will be in Pure Awareness.

So, as in most meditations, the ultimate place of arrival is one where one need have no conscious thoughts running through the mind. You can turn off Brain Wander. What you do have is dynamic inner and outer sensing. You are highly aware of your sensations. You have enormous awareness of what is around you. You can enter the state of Pure Awareness, which is a keen awareness of everything going on the inside of you and outside of you, while you are not thinking. You simply take it all in. Just constantly noticing all of it. Just Notice.

When you can do this, it is the Tabula Rasa Condition. This is how we exist in the womb and as a newborn and probably into some part of infancy. We are in a state of absorption. We are absorbing the world through our senses. We can feel our body, but we cannot control it. We can hear, but we cannot listen. We can feel, but we cannot touch. We can see, but we cannot look.

So, here is the basic idea of what you will be doing to get to pure awareness. While sitting quietly, one simply puts their awareness on their physical sensations and the information coming in through them, from the world around. You do not need to think about this information. You can just sense it. It is unnecessary to think about this sensory information. You just want to feel it and keep your attention on it. Just Notice. As needed, tell yourself where to focus your awareness. Then Just Notice what you are sensing.

The First Steps In Directing Awareness

First, have the above mental map in your mind so you know where you are going. You are going to pure awareness by fully experiencing and shifting awareness of your senses. This is your simple blueprint.

Then, determine a comfortable, peaceful place where, somehow, you can know when 20 minutes has passed and you can wind up your practice. When sitting comfortably, you can close your eyes (or keep them open if you really want) and start telling yourself to be aware of what you are sitting on. Just feel the sensations. Feel the pressures on the many different parts of your body. When you have a desire, or an impulse to shift your awareness, you can go to any other sense – sights, sounds or smells or your breath moving in and out of you.

After directing your attention repeatedly by telling yourself where to focus, eventually you will understand that you now know how to be aware and simply shift your awareness without “telling (talking to) yourself” about shifting. You won’t have to keep telling yourself where to focus. Just switch your awareness to different sensations, as you want. Perhaps you switch just because something catches your attention, like a cramping muscle or an unusual noise. Or perhaps it just seems to switch naturally.

You don’t have to be thinking to be in awareness of your body and the surrounding environment. When you can be purely aware of the sensations flooding your body, brain and mind and not be thinking about them, you will be in Pure Awareness.

Seeking this pleasurable state should not take the place of prayer or contemplation if you use or are attracted to such spiritual practices. For many, the desire to know God more fully, will be through prayer and worship. All are positive paths to a felt connection with something bigger than what we were able to know earlier in our life.

When you can be in pure awareness, with a sense of love, one has reached Tabula Rasa Being. Again, it would seem that this is how we exist in the womb and as a newborn. Our body and senses are working, but we have no way to think about what we are feeling. We just feel. We are in a state of existence where we can only absorb the information coming in through our senses.

So know, that when working towards having pure awareness, feel your body, but seek not to control it. Hear, but do not listen. Feel, but do not touch. See, but do not look. Love and learn the sense of love.

More Specifics On Seeking Tabula Rasa

As you sit in a pleasant environment, make yourself very comfortable and close your eyes. As you do, know that your intention is simply to experience the sensations that your senses are bringing into your mind and body. This is mind-body awareness.

Begin by directing your conscious awareness to your senses. And do not talk to yourself about that of which you are aware. Just be aware. Just Notice what your senses are telling you. Right now, as you are reading and thinking, you know you can be aware of your body, breath, seeing, hearing, smell and taste and thoughts. And of course, you have the conscious ability to switch your awareness between your senses, as you choose or desire.

It might be easiest when you first start to focus your attention, that you do so on your body. This is because there are just so many ways to be aware of your body. You can feel the pressure against that which is supporting your body, or you can pay attention to your breath breathing your body, or the clothes touching your skin, or the circulation and temperature of air passing around your skin. And then, how many of these different body sensations can you feel at any given moment?

Sitting quietly in this spiritual practice does not mean that you can’t move your body position as needed. Don’t worry about shifting around if you feel the desire. Moving to get comfortable only gives you more opportunity to be aware of your body and to move it with a high level of awareness and intention. If you move around, do it with very conscious awareness of feeling your body move. If you really feel it move, it will typically move a bit more slowly than usual. Just feel it.

If you know you want to move your body, because, for example you have a tickle on your cheek, and you want to scratch it, then scratch it with intention. Actually put your awareness in your hand, along with your conscious intention to move it to your face and scratch. All the while, be aware that you are making your hand scratch your cheek. Take yourself off of automatic pilot!

Now that you know what to do about the desire to move when sitting quietly, let’s return to our quiet seeking of the awareness. While being in your comfortable position, you just want to become more and more aware of feeling your body and eventually, all your senses.

When a shift occurs to a different sense, you can, for example, see the back of your eye lids, but know not what you see. You can actively hear, but you need not listen. You can actively feel your body, but seek not to control it (unless you know you want to move, and then do it with intention). You can shift without thinking and you can feel without thought.

After moving with intention, when needed, and you return to a quiet body, you can direct your awareness to feeling the parts of your body which are feeling pressure against them. So, feel where your body is pressing into that which is supporting you (chair, couch, earth). Feel each part where your body is feeling pressure. And just feel it. Let your awareness bounce between body parts if you cannot feel them all at once.

Over time, see if you can get to the point where you can feel your entire body at the same moment, and maintain this full body awareness for as long as you can or would like. For many of you, you will be in for a sensational treat when you feel your whole body at one time. (Just below are descriptions of really interesting physical sensations which can arise from just feeling your body.)

A Couple of Cool Possible Experiences

If you work to feel your whole body at the same time, often when you can feel all of your body at the same time, which feels supported, you will get an intense vibration inside your body. Even better, there can be times when you feel like you are floating, levitating. It can also feel like you are bouncing off of what is beneath you. This does not happen to everyone and eventually you do not feel it. But it is cool while it lasts.

There is one other interesting experience to mention, which is felt more frequently and can become a common experience. It is feeling bodiless. That’s right, you stop feeling your body. This most often happens if you are feeling other senses besides your body. If you are intent on just hearing and seeing, you may lose the feel of your body. It can even become such that if you try to feel your body, you can’t. You can easily feel it again by moving. So, if you are the type of person to get freaky over unusually different experiences, know that it is common and nothing to worry about. Knowing it can happen, if it does, hopefully, it will be fascinating rather than scary.

When you can feel all the major pressure on your whole body, how much more aware can you be? Can you feel your clothes against your body? Can you feel the movement of air across your skin? Does your body seem to disappear after ten minutes of just sitting comfortably and feeling your senses? Just Notice.

Once you have accomplished being able to feel your body, you can then enhance your awareness to be more inclusive of your body along with the experience of the world outside of your body. It’s not that you should not be aware of your other senses while you are creating focused body awareness, but you can become more aware of more of your senses at the same time.

So, over time, as you are more easily aware of your body, let more information come in from your ears, eyes and breath. Can you feel your body and other senses at the same time? This is not a normal state of awareness and must be desired, directed and practiced. Keep Noticing.

As you decide to switch your awareness to noises around you, realize you can just hear. You do not listen to the sounds as the sounds you know them to be. This means, you do not tell yourself what the sound is. You don’t think, “There are the gardeners with their blowers again.” “Oh, a Blue Jay.” “Trash day.” No. You don’t do any of this kind of talking to yourself. You just listen to the world around you. You just hear the sounds. Hear the noises. Hear the breath of the air.

As you want to think, simply redirect your awareness into your body, your breath, and/or your seeing, and/or your listening, and/or smells, and/or general sensing. Fill your awareness with sensing – being aware of more and more of your senses at the same time.

A New Awareness of Perfect Flow

As this becomes easier, you will probably begin to notice that All Is Well. You just feel good. There are no worries because there is no thinking. This can expand to the point where all begins to seem quite perfect. Everything seems to just be happening in a perfectly delightful unfolding. From moment to moment everything is right. All is flowing within you and around you perfectly. You can sense this without thinking it and without saying it in your mind. You don’t need to say it to feel it, just sense it and know its truth for you as it makes itself known.

After you come to know this experience during spiritual practice, you may come to an understanding that you can also create a much more peaceful existence by figuring out how to stay in the moment, think productively, and reduce worry with your Executive Meta Awareness.

New Awareness of Love

This next shift in awareness will seem preposterous to some, even unrealistically stupid. But as promised earlier, this is our potential. If you chose to not believe it, then you will have created your own conscious limitations, based on belief, not experience. So here it is, eventually you can sense and then really know - because you have sensed it - that in the flow, there is love. And you can become aware of it all around you. And you can come to feel that it is all around. It is all around everyone. But most don’t feel it. Sound ridiculous? Stupid?

Perhaps you can give it an inch of consideration before rejecting the notion. Stop for a moment and really realize that we create our own feelings. If we create our own feelings, then really, any feeling is possible within the realm of feelings. If you have felt the following forms of love, you can more and more easily feel the love that has emanated from all these sources in your past and which, for the most part, has also been put into the majority of humanity.

This love which can be experienced as both inside of us as well as surrounding us, is the sensory information from maternal love and paternal love, it is family love, it is neighborhood. It is belonging to the group, it is the unity of your nation, it is the sharing of humanness with each other, it is Mankind. And for others, they would say that this experience is the Love from God.

Mankind is dominated by love, but still highly tinged by unnecessary fear. Through pure awareness, we can intentionally become more focused on love by reducing and reprogramming our experience of unnecessary fear? It is not a reprogramming that takes the ability to have and use fear away from you when you really need it. But it is the understanding that you don’t always have to see the world through the Eyes Of Caution.

Experiencing this sense of ever-present love is to supersede survival consciousness. When you understand that you control your feelings, you can turn down the fear and amplify Love. And once you know this love, you can also learn and then choose to see more through brotherly trust, connection and eventually love. This is Universal Love. If you are interested in this Universal Awareness, seek it and it will find you.

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