For a couple of years at the beginning of my meditation journey, I read and tried various techniques on my own, and tried group meditations. I signed up for the Waking Up app and explored all the materials there for 2 years. I found it very valuable and encountered many new ideas, traditions, and experts through it. It helped me establish a more or less consistent meditation practice where I meditated at least once a day, sometimes 2 times a day consistently. 

Among other things, I visited a week-long pranayama retreat which I found very valuable and grounding. The techniques I learned there I use in everyday life as the need arises. Generally, it made me more mindful and is a big part of both meditation practices and everyday mindfulness.

The Mind Illuminated

Then I stumbled upon the book called The Mind Illuminated and decided to concentrate on the method taught there by practising it exclusively. I decided to take my time and not rush reading it or progressing through the stages until I fully grasped them. I was reading a chapter at a time, then practising it and rereading it until I experienced what the chapter was describing. I was able to make good progress with the early stages and after about a year was reaching stages 6 & 7. At that point, the consistency of my practice started to wane and I felt my ability to reach proper levels of concentration was lacking once I tried to achieve stage 8. I felt stuck even though the book specifically talked about the importance of just keeping the course.

Currently, I am still exploring stage 8 while studying and exploring other techniques as I feel the need to have more pointers at this point of my practice. The other practice I started exploring is laid out in the path of Kriya Yoga. I describe my initial experiences with it in this post.

The Purpose Of Meditation

I do understand the principle and that with meditation both quantity and quality are important. The experience, especially when you accumulated years of it, starts to transform you gradually to the point that you do become a different kind of being altogether but because your focus is not exactly on your own little self anymore, it happens almost imperceptibly. Overall, I can say that I am more mindful and attentive. As in I notice more things both in my awareness and in other people. There is this meta-perspective on everything now that allows to see connections that were not visible before.

One of the coolest benefits of meditation I discovered is the ability to enjoy it. Once you get it, it really is like a free ticket to the best amusement park in the universe. Everything happens in your consciousness and if you just pay enough attention you can have it all as well. That in itself is not my primary motivation for the practice these days but it definitely helps as one still has to balance things out on the path to awakening. With many changes and discoveries, it is important to keep stable and grounded. Thrown into any extreme, I know I am not at the most optimal. Thus spiritual life really does become a dance. For what is a dance but feeling the flow of music and attuning yourself to it. So I find ways to dance with the flow of my practice and all the obstacles that come with it.

At this point, I understand meditation as a way to refine one’s ability to see the beauty in this world. It’s like developing the instruments for sensitivity that allow you to notice and comprehend more things.

What’s Next

With my voracious appetite for wisdom, I keep researching and reading about other techniques, traditions, and paths, even as I maintain an established practice these days. My natural curiosity keeps reaching out to those places with the intention of integrating the knowledge from all paths into my understanding of this reality. It is an immense process that will take me a lifetime but at this point, this is the only important thing in my life I can think of. This website is aimed at helping me document my progress and discoveries along the way.