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Awareness is the basic overall aim of meditation. The problem with a meditation beginner is that their mind is focused on things. It’s pretty hard to break that habit. At the beginning you have to learn to focus your mind on objects. This is why many people recommend focusing upon your breath or a physical object at the start. There is of course levels after this.

Buddha started on breath awareness but he didn’t just remain concentrated on his breath all of his life. He transcended that teaching and moved on after it has served its purpose. If you say to a rookie spiritual seeker “yeah, just become aware of your awareness” they will just look at you blankly and try and make some kind of mental construct of concept out of it. You have to lead the mind slowly.

When you meditate upon things you are still not completely aware of the stillness and formless within but it’s at least a start. It concentrates your mind and at least severs the idea that you are body, thought or anything else. When you’ve totally focused on something your mind is still.

As you get used to this state and master it you will experience the state of inner stillness and its beauty which is beyond words. Infinitely more beautiful than any physical possession. It’s the connection with what you truly are. You see it in someone who has a child and suddenly becomes more vibrant, alive and childish looking. They’ve connected with source and experienced stillness of the mind.



Removing The Crutches

Now you have realised a still mind, you are ready to take off your crutches and allow it to become your natural state. What you do is switch the focus from external things (the object of your focus) to awareness of awareness itself. This sounds complicated but it’s you completely natural state under all the mind made noise.

My technique for doing this is that I sit in a cross-legged state in a dark room. I do this so that I can stop my mind focusing on objects and I close my eyes to gain as much focus as possible. Then I sit at the gate of my mind where things enter and leave and just become aware of the inner stillness. At the start my mind is often busy and I have to acknowledge and become aware of thoughts. Whenever you realize that a thought has took my attention elsewhere on a little journey I just watch it, forgive it until it vanishes and return to silence.

You will eventually get to the point where you are just pure timeless awareness. You are not aware of a body or thoughts. It’s blissful. You can tell how close you are by the degree of lightness and inner peace you feel. When you connect with that state the ecstasy just multiplies the longer you say there, deeper and deeper. It might scare you at first with its power, go into it in degrees.

If at any point you feel like the mind noise is all too much, just internally and silently forgive and accept your state. Then move on from there. I can’t say how long it takes to get to that place because it requires the acknowledgement of timelessness and forgetting your space in time as that is a thought form.



The Stateless State

Once you’ve learned how to access this state it will become more and more prevalent in your life. You will feel an inner peace with you wherever you go that you can amplify at any time and a knowing of being one with all (coincidentally my favourite type of pizza). If you are struggling to find an answer then to this place and silence your mind and the answer will be given to you. God speaks his truth in feelings to a silent mind.



Your Minds Resistance

Your mind will always resist going to this place, ALWAYS! You will find it making up ridiculous excuses just to stop and distract you. It does this because it is fighting for its existence. It wants control of you and at the moment it has it. Old habits die hard. If you want mind control then you will just have to see through this and put yourself into meditation. That’s the hardest part.

One night before sleep, after gaining a great amount of control back from my mind, I was visualizing that I was in my body the following morning getting out of my bed turning off my alarm and going for a shower. Simple, right? Well when I got up the following morning I lay in my bed and I was aware of my mind telling me that I’d reset my alarm for an earlier time and that I should go back to bed. This wasn’t the “close your eyes for just.. another .. second” thought. It scared me a little and I got up. This all happened after just an hour of deep meditation daily, for about 3 or 4 days in a row.

Your mind is full of illusory concepts which it believes are reality. Reality is in constant flux while concepts remain rigid. Something had to give. I’ll take this as a good sign though as I read somewhere that Buddha saw the illusion of horsemen on a chariot galloping towards him just before he reached enlightenment as his mind was trying to fool him.



Appreciation

I found that without any conscious effort, I just started appreciating things massively. My fear of death just started to fall to the side in the place of gratitude and deep love of all, and sleep became incredibly deep and restoring. I’d awaken extremely alert as if I’d slept for years. I started to feel and know that life was living through me rather than the other way around, I’d touched the immortality of the human spirit and it is breathtaking.

A couple of days ago, I bought myself a winter coat with matching hat and it made me feel so amazing. It was as if gratitude and love just burst through my chest and swallowed me up. and after it had died down I just had no fear and it’s aura stayed with me for days. Go to this place, it’s the most beautiful, natural restoring thing you can do for yourself and others who come into contact with you.

We all grow physically as humans and there are enough geniuses in the world but how many people grow to full emotional maturity and learn how to control emotions? If you grow to 40 years old physically but have little or no emotional control, you are in essence still a child trapped in an adults body. Control of and a deeper understanding of my emotions has helped me avoid the initial pleasure in expense of the long term one and gave me a huge control over my anger and many other benefits that are beyond words (peace of mind etc).

Many people are actually controlled by their emotions. Just consider that for a second. If you are controlled by your emotions, are you ever fully in control? Can you say to a family member that relies on you “I’ll be there for you in hard times” and one day you don’t know how to control emotions within you, then you might not fulfil that promise? If you feel angry and you physically or verbally lash out, you were not in control at that point if you regret it immediately. If you were in control you would not have took that action. What then was in control? You were letting your emotions run through you and your autopilot habits took over. This is acting out of conditioning which is the old level of consciousness that humans are leaving. The new one is free from emotional bondage.

Emotional control paradoxically comes from first letting yourself become vulnerable to your emotions and accepting them. So many people deny their emotions and resist them. Resistance always causes an object to become stronger. Once you accept and make yourself vulnerable to an emotion it is allowed to flow through the wall of resistance that you have created and learning how to control emotions is found in this surrender. This sounds abstract, and it is, but you just have to experience this rather than listen to it explained. When an emotion comes to you just sit and be with it. Don’t judge it, just recognise it and it’s released from your system along with its past.

There is a you observing the emotions and the emotions themselves. When you do not deeply realise this simple truth then when an emotion arises, you become it. You get a raise at work, you become happy, you become the raise. As that happiness goes you try and get it back because it felt so blissful, as the raise goes, you have attached yourself to the raise and the emotional feelings that accompanied it. This is why you feel so under attack when things go wrong. You have duped yourself into thinking you are dying.

How to Control Emotions: The System

The that this works always follows a similar pattern which is:

• Recognition/Awakening
• Acceptance
• Meaning
• Observation
• Release

RAMOR! Sounds like an evil Aries noodle monster or something. (Ramen Noodles. Aries is a Ram … Ah screw it … my humour is wasted on you guys!).

Let’s go into them a little further shall we?

• Recognition/Awakening – This is where you realise that you have been under and have been controlled by your emotions. This the most critical step. If you stay unconscious to the emotions ruling and running your life then the other 3 steps are impossible. You will all of a sudden realise “This isn’t me, I’m getting emotionally controlled here”.

• Acceptance – The first step that seems logical is to get angry that you are experiencing negative emotions. Darkness cannot bring light to darkness! Watch your mind trying to get angry and just accept this. Accept that this emotion is here right now and is in your system. It is unconsciousness trying to come out of you which is a good thing.

• Meaning – Emotions arise within you to bring your attention to important things like reminding you to be compassionate. Note what the emotion is telling you to do and ask how would your higher self deal with this? Resolve to take action in the next 24 hours. The emotion is now ready to be released.

• Observation – Now you have recognised and accepted the emotion is there, observe it, partially. When you’re done or if it is not important then just observe how the emotion makes you feel physically and what it does to you mentally. Notice the subtle links between the two. Make it your aim to be as alert as possible as if a burglar has entered your home and you are trying to sense him with all sense. Just feel your body as a field, what area is claiming your attention. Give it your non judging attention.

If you do not do this the emotion will stay clogged in your system and leave behind a residue of sorts which will clog up your being. Also, acceptance is important in this step as you must just keep observing the emotion is out of your system and peace is returned, it can be a tough process but keep reminding yourself to accept what is. This step of observation also brings in the critical noticing that you are not your emotions, body or mind but are in fact observing them. This step will take the longest.

• Release – When you keep accepting the emotion has served its purpose and is heading out of your inner energy system. You will know it had gone when you no longer feel its pulls and you feel a calm inside of you. This is the final step.

Asking how long this will take is like asking how long a piece of string is. It depends on experience, what emotion it is, the person in question etc. All I know is you will get better and more efficient at this process the more you do it.

Practical Techniques

If you feel a strong urge to do something that you know your better self would not do catch yourself doing it. Just keep watching the bodily sensations, the thoughts that accompany it etc and take no action. Eventually things will die down and you will be able to choose the better course with your clear, still and focused mind. It becomes easier with practice.

Emotions arise within you as a physical reaction to your mind. You can tell by someones body what emotions and what state of mind they are in. This also can work in reverse. If you want to feel extremely confident, then change your body posture to standing up tall, looking at the ceiling and smiling. It is impossible to feel terrible when you do this I tell you. This is more of a short term thing to give you an instant boost than a long term fix where real control is gained but it can work if you are about to ask someone out or make a speech for example.

Sit and see what arises. Do not go too deep though as going into your emotions of the past is never ending. This is just to show you how the technique works. Watch your mind and when a thought arises and you get taken by that thought into its little world when you come back to presence from it, see what it has done to your body and mind. Feel that you were not there and it is a scary feeling, kind of as if you were sleeping.

When you start doing this you will start to notice just how unawakened you have been in your life before you learned how to control emotions. When thoughts and emotions are consuming you and you suddenly wake up into observation it starts to feel like you literally have woken up from a dream, the sensation is incredible. The whole of reality changes that moment.

You can literally do this at any time. It only takes one second to look inside and become aware of your emotional state. In a queue, in your silent moments make it a habit to look inside and ask “How do I feel now?”.