Sit quietly and make an inner decision to let go resisting higher levels of functioning. This means to make a decision to stop denying the higher levels to yourself, and make a decision to let go of all blocks to happiness, success, health, acceptance, love, and peace. By doing this the deed is already done, you have set the whole experience into a context that will automatically begin to unfold.

Your joy is intrinsic, inborn. Yet you rush here and there seeking happiness in others and that's why everything you do has some weird failure in it.

Your only difficulty is that you do not understand yourself.

LOVE YOURSELF

As human beings we always act and feel and perform in accordance with what we imagine to be true about ourselves and our environment, without stopping to consider what we are doing and who is doing.

We can see that in conventional life one who thinks of himself or herself as poor or lonely or weak, lacking in skill or strength, a victim of sorrow and misery, actually becomes that. As you think, so you become.

We are controlled and dominated by everything that we hold in mind. If you think "I am desperate," you will do things that you would not do if you think, "I am safe."  Our definition of self is not fixed but variable. The self fluctuates from moment to moment. At one instant, it is kind; at another, angry; at another, selfish, and at another, generous. The self of actions is illusory, just as the self of the present moment is also illusory.

You have been talking and thinking about your “I” for a long time. Can you explain what that “I” is? Or what is its purpose?

Our difficulty lies in the power of the mind to construct images of things apart from the things themselves.  This includes the ability to make an image, an idea, of ourselves apart from our Self.

You must see through this idea of yourself before any transformation can happen – this invented person you keep going at such cost, this you that is not you.

When we are no longer identified with the idea of ourselves, our entire relationship with others, the world,  our life undergoes a sudden and revolutionary change.

WHY MEDITATE

The primary purpose of meditation and mindfulness is to become conscious of and familiar with our inner Self – the very source of ever-present love and creative energy.

The Self is known by being what you are, instead of what you imagine you are. The inner vibration of Being,  Knowing, and Loving. Pure awareness of Being. Pure delight in Being.

The fundamental principle underlying meditation is that the Self is the unchanging power of Consciousness  -  of strength and enthusiasm  -  and that Consciousness is the original and self-existent Reality. This Primordial Consciousness is made accessible through the awakening and functioning of a generally latent  inner energy, which results in a progressive disentanglement of one’s Self from every false and negative identification.

Truth is that which, when known,  sets you free from all bondage and all seeking.

This is certain: all things exist in Consciousness, all things flow from it, all things are Consciousness. It is omnipresent, it is the one Self, it is the Truth.

THE SECRET TO 'MEDITATE ON YOURSELF'

Thoughts arise from a silent space that is knowable just prior to the emergence of the thought. We see this by focusing attention on the field of energy out of which the thoughts arise instead of on the content of the thoughts themselves. By doing this exercise in contemplation or meditation, we are focusing on the unchanging context instead of content. This is a quality of Consciousness called the Witness, which is not burdened by having to "do" anything. It just "is".

It is simple to observe that although there is a ‘talking mind’ going on, at the same time there is also a silent awareness that is always present. Contemplation or meditation that focuses attention on this silent witness rather than content facilitates moving one’s identity from the thought forms to the discovery that one is the field of conscious energy and not the specifics of the content. This jump in realization can be very sudden, which is a new level of awakening.

The field of conscious awareness is silent, effortless, peaceful, all-encompassing, and unprogrammed. It is free, unbound, spontaneous, and tranquil. Discovery of this field is simple, easy, and relaxed. The realization is a consequence of ‘allowing’ rather than ‘trying’. It is surrendered to rather than acquired. As desire for (and the ego’s obsession with) control are relinquished, the field presents itself for recognition.

Our real nature is that we are the joyful, silent witness, the nonattached, immortal spirit that animates all creation, and to have the experience of that silent witness is just to Be!

Aikido is a training system that provides us the means to actually experience such a state! Through commitment and practice spiritual concepts become experiential realities.