Founder/Director of Quintessence Institute (QI)
In Part I, my Article focused on Spirituality and touched briefly on Meditation. In this Article, we?ll talk about the four levels of Meditation. Meditation is essential for anyone who wishes to grow Spiritually. But, not all people want to grow Spiritually and therefore, miss the connection between a lack of Spirituality and dis-ease. I hope that after these two Articles, it will be easier to understand the intricate relationship between dis-ease, illness, and happiness, which result from our spirit, mind, body, and emotions being re-connected from their dis-connection with God. It?s that process of re-connecting our soul with God that?s called: ?Spiritual Growth?.
Part II ? The Power of Meditation
?Meditation? describes a technique that has many benefits for our spirit, mind, body, and emotions. Our soul derives its? food, strength, and nourishment from its? conscious contact with God. That conscious contact happens while we?re in deep meditation. Just imagine being born into the physical body and then never having contact with food. We?d starve to death. Well, that?s actually the condition of our soul and we wonder ?Why? we?re experiencing all kinds of dis-ease and illness as a human race.
There are different kinds of meditation practices and different levels of meditation that reward the practitioner with certain benefits. The most important message here is to know ?why? are you choosing a particular form of meditation at that level of meditation? This is extremely important because if you?re serious about growing Spirituality, you?ll save yourself lots of time, effort, and frustration, if you first choose the right level of meditation before you spend weeks, months, and years in the wrong meditative practice. But, once you know ?why? you want to perform a particular meditative practice, then eliminate all the rest so you don?t waste any time. ?Time is the only human ?Capital? we all have! And, once it?s gone ? we can?t get it back! So, choose wisely!
As an example, some people want to learn meditation to improve their concentration, while others want to gain the ability to quiet their mind?s chatter, and others want to gain inner peace and reduce their daily stress. Still others want to obtain self-knowledge and God-realization - which involves having a conscious contact of our soul with God. That?s the hidden ?Power of Meditation! Meditation is that ?connector? that will bring you enormous spiritual benefits - if you choose the right level of meditation to practice. That?s really the bottom-line.
The Four Levels of Meditation
By practicing higher and higher levels of meditation, the practitioner will accelerate their spiritual progress and consciousness. Another important point to make is that the higher the level of meditation - the greater the necessity of having a truly competent spiritual teacher to guide you to achieving your goal. Having a competent spiritual teacher means getting clear on what you want to achieve with meditation. The higher the level of meditation, the more spiritually conscious your teacher needs to be. That?s to bottom-line. The inner spiritual regions are extremely vast and illusive.
By following a less qualified spiritual teacher means you will not make it to your goal.
For example, if you spend hundreds of hours studying for what you believe is a Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA) and you thought your MBA teacher is truly qualified and competent enough to teach you at that level, but in reality, was only qualified to lead you to a High School Diploma, then think of the amount of time and energy that was wasted on you getting to your goal. Therefore, it?s critical to spend some time investigating the competency of your spiritual teacher. Please remember, that ?NO? Spiritual Teacher can take you higher then themselves. In other words, if your goal is the fourth spiritual region and you teacher is only competent to the third spiritual region, then you?re not going to obtain your goal.
Here?s a brief breakdown of the four levels of meditation:
1. Level one is called ?Walking? meditation. Walking meditation involves the physical body and some aspects of the five physical senses are always being stimulated and animated by this practice. Since the five physical senses are being stimulated, this level of meditation is void of ?stillness? and will not lead you to self-knowledge and God-realization. This level is strictly an ?outer? physical practice that involves the physical body, whereas to achieve self-knowledge and God-realization, the body needs to be left behind in a state of absolutely stillness and silence. Walking meditation is ?physical activity?. It includes breathing exercises and various kinds of yoga postures, chanting of hems, singing of praises, performing devotional rites and rituals, for example, Sufi whirling and spinning or the spinning of prayer wheels, etc. These are all animated practices or physical activities and really have nothing to do with ?absolute stillness?.
2. Level two is called ?Mindfulness? meditation. Mindfulness meditation begins the ?inner journey? by shifting our ?attention? or ?concentration? (which is the outer expression of our soul) to going inside the body and takes us away from the ?outer? stimulations of yogic postures that involve the physical body. Mindfulness meditation shifts our attention or awareness inside the body to notice the fleeting and passing nature of our thoughts.
The practitioner sits motionless and simply observes the endless stream of mind-chatter that passes by their awareness. In this state, the practitioner might pose some questions to the mind and sit long enough to hear the answers. However, the nature of the mind is to analyze, criticize, judge, measure, and jump around back-and-forth from the past to the future. The mind pulls our attention away from getting ?silent? and into an endless dialogue that distracts our ?attention? more and more away from being absolutely motionless. Remember, the mind never sits still! It?s constantly restless. Therefore, those who believe the mind will lead them towards self-knowledge and God-realization are deeply mistaken. Since the mind?s tendency is to-never-be-still or to be in constant motion (by avoiding the deeper silences and stillness within), one can never use the mind to realize God. God-realization is another name for absolute stillness. ?Silence is Golden?!
3. Level three is called ?Jyoti? meditation. Jyoti means Light and this level of meditation begins another dramatic shift in ones spiritual evolution. This level involves having the practitioner?s achieve ?absolute silence and stillness? by focusing their ?attention? or ?concentration? into the inner radiant Light that they see. The practitioner focuses their attention into the center of the field of darkness they see in front of them when they close their eyes. This is our gazing point for Jyoti meditation. The gazing point is located between and behind the two eyebrows. It?s been called the ?Third-Eye? or ?Single-Eye? in many of the scriptures.
Jyoti meditation involves using a Mantra or a ?five-word-phrase? to control the chattering nature of the mind. The Mantra helps block the mind?s chatter and narrowly focuses the ?attention? or ?awareness? into the center of the field of vision that we see in front of us when our eyes are closed. The Mantra holds our ?attention? at the third-eye center and when the attention is steady, riveted, and fixed there, the inner doorway opens and we begin to see glimpses of inner radiant Light. We also begin to hear Sound.
The practitioner sees many colored Lights (Jyoti) ? white light, yellow, red, orange, green, blue, indigo, purple, and golden Light. This Light emanates from those non-physical spiritual regions far beyond the physical body. This is the threshold of where the soul travels to after the death of the physical body. In addition, one may hear Celestial Sounds or Music. This Music is referred to by different names and is called the ?Shabd? ?Naam? or ?Word? ?Logos? or ?Tae? in different scriptures. These celestial melodies are ceaselessly playing and sustain everything in creation. All of this remains hidden from us without knowing how to meditate and leave the physical body.
4. The fourth level of meditation is called ?Dhyan? or ?Samati? (which means: In Deep Contemplation). Dhyan and Jyoti meditation complement each other by helping the practitioner enter a state of absolute silence and stillness. During that state, the practitioner enters the radiant inner Light and hears Sounds or melodies. The practitioner is so fully absorbed into their inner spiritual experience that we say they have entered ?Samati?. While in Samati, the practitioner enters more and more subtle spiritual regions of consciousness. This is also called having an ?Outer-Body-Experience? or OBE. This experience is referred to as: ?Rising above Body Consciousness? or ?Dying While Living?. In this super-conscious state, the practitioner experiences their own soul and begins to travel on the radiant inner Light through the higher spiritual regions until they reach God true essence.
Since the radiant Light and Sound originally emanated from God, the practitioner simply rides upon the Light and Sound until they reach God?s true abode. These lofty spiritual regions are locations in consciousness and having a living spiritual teacher who can guide us there is essential. These inner spiritual regions are incomprehensibly vast and only a competent spiritual teacher who traverses these regions thousands of times a day is competent enough to guide us there. This level of Spiritual teach is called a ?Sant? and we?ll discuss them in our next Article.
In conclusion, I?ve tried to convey how essential meditation is to ones spiritual progress and development. Spirituality is the foundation upon which our mind, body, and emotions derive their power and help us become dis-ease and illness free.
When Spirituality and Meditation play an essential role in our daily lives both form a powerful correlation between health, happiness, and the prevention of dis-ease and illness.
---This article was written by Raymond Holmes for Breakout Betty. Breakout Betty is an interactive online magazine created specifically for Women, ages 18 and over, with acne-prone skin that discusses a holistic approach to healing acne and is psychological affects. To find out all that Breakout Betty has to offer, visit us at http://www.breakoutbetty.com About Author
Raymond Q. Holmes is the Founder/Director of Quintessence Institute (QI) which he established in 1995. He's been practicing meditation for over 32 years. He's also an Executive with the Department of Homeland Security and lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. If you would like to contact Raymond please email at info@qinstitute.com or by telephone at 202-399-7348.
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