Meditation, Self-Realization, and Transcending the Illusion of Reality

Posted On July 10, 2019 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

While many people approach the idea of meditation as a method of some kind that’s designed to produce a predictable effect, and believe there are only certain ways to truly meditate, the fact may be that it’s a process through which we train our mind to step outside of our lower, conditioned nature and connect intimately with our higher Self. In our Western society, which has a tendency to focus almost exclusively on our physical nature, meditation is often seen as a means of calming the mind and inducing deepened states of relaxation, which is the beginning stage of most meditative processes.

Some people even go so far as to argue about what’s meditation and what’s not, indicating that there’s a right way of doing it and a wrong way. Yet meditation, like any spiritual practice, which means it involves how you use your own mind to achieve altered states of consciousness, is something that’s done in a unique way by everyone doing it. There are no rules of right and wrong ways, simply guidelines that provide us with a starting point as a means of producing the foundation out of which a natural process arises and becomes active beyond our ability or desire to control it. If you’re held to the idea of a right and wrong way, and go about it by obeying rules laid down for you by others, then it simply becomes a relaxation technique or produces whatever the structured process is designed to produce.

Meditation as a Spiritual Practice

Meditation as a spiritual practice provides us with a means of calming and subduing our habitual thoughts and impulses, while forming a place of inner peace and silence that ultimately connects us with our Higher Self. It also provides us with a process for being able to step outside of and detach from the conditioned content of our mind and view it instead from an objective and unemotional perspective. As we detach from our own thoughts and story about things and view them instead from a perspective of witnessing them, we begin realizing the process involved that acts to give rise to our thoughts. We can watch the impulses as they rise up, form into a whole synchronized series of interrelated thoughts that peak and express momentarily, then subside, die down, and fade away, while another impulse rises in its place.

By quieting the mind of outer awareness and habitual thoughts, we become present with our inner awareness. Our focal point becomes our own feelings and allowing our thoughts to freely flow by without grabbing onto them or penetrating them and going into a detailed story or narrative of some kind. As we simply sit on the shore and content ourselves with watching our thoughts flow by we can begin realizing that it’s merely the content of our mind produced by our conditioning, and we become aware instead of the process involved in producing our thoughts as our perception of reality, which is a form of delusion that we’ve mistaken for being who we are. By observing the content of our mind we can begin realizing that we’re not the story itself, but rather the mind that’s producing and acting to give rise to the story about our self. We’re the author and storyteller, and not the story itself. Our soul is our mind as the medium through which the story plays out as a reality.

Once we gain realization around how it is that we’re acting to create our self through the reality we create through the perspective of our conditioning and personality, we can begin questioning our own motives, and gaining even deeper realizations about the nature of our unconscious mind and how it acts to produce our perception of reality. As we move into the emotions that drive our thoughts and actions, while maintaining an awareness that’s detached from the need to somehow justify and validate our reality as being true, the illusion of it becomes more and more apparent, and our identification with our body and personality begins slowly fading away. We can gain an awareness of our self as the medium through which our thoughts take place, rather than being the thoughts themselves.

As we continue to become aware of the process our mind undergoes as a means of creating our perception of reality, we begin stepping into our true identity as the mind and soul that’s creating it as a mental projection. This awareness as a new and higher form of self-realization liberates us from the delusion of our conditioning and we no longer have a need to continue creating it. As our conditioned mind begins dissolving and fading away, we begin sensing our self and reality as it really is, apart from our story. We see with great clarity that we were creating our self out of a false identity through an unconscious state where we didn’t realize in the direct sense who we really are, what we were doing, and how it is that we were doing it.

As we gain a deeper awareness of our self as our higher consciousness, we shed the identity of our conditioning, neutralizing and purifying our body, and it becomes the temple as a vehicle for our higher self to create from a fully conscious state of actual self-awareness. We come fully into the realization that the material reality is not who we are, but something we create by formulating it inwardly as imagined thoughts that are then projected outwardly. All needs and desires for material possessions and status that used to provide us with the means for defining ourselves and feeling secure in our false identity begins to disappear. As we realize that we’re not of this world or dimension, and begin consciously residing in a higher awareness, we assume a natural position of serving others. Our karma that was incurred through unconscious conditioning resolves and we no longer continue to live and create out of it. Liberation comes as a mental state of being, not a physical one. The mental is what lays the foundation for the physical to naturally emerge out of.

Seeded Meditation

Another method of meditation comes by entering into an altered state of passivity, while setting an intention to acquire information about something as an answer to a question or problem. By fully relaxing our mind and body, calming all habitual thoughts while relinquishing the need to try and control or come up with the answer from our conditioned mind of personal memory, and impressing the question on the empty space within and around us, then letting go and residing patiently in silence, we connect with higher consciousness and act as a passive receiver for information that provides us with the answer to our inquiry. Questions and answers, like higher and lower planes of the same reality, exist in polarity to each other. They’re complementary aspects of the same idea as a holographic pattern.

By focusing our attention in a single minded fashion on the question, free from distractions, we tune ourselves energetically (spiritually) to the answer, and serve as a passive receiver for the answer to come through us. As long as we’re actively trying to figure out the answers, we exist in an active state and can’t receive an answer that’s not a part of the previous experiences of our conditioning. The active aspect (masculine) of the mind can’t communicate (seed) with another active aspect, it has to have a passive mind (feminine) that can conceive it and where it can rise up within the imagination of the passive mind (unconscious) and reveal itself (begin unfolding) as a thought-form.

The subconscious is the receptive aspect of the lower material mind and serves to draw in and gives life to the active aspect of either the higher mind, or lower self-conscious mind of outer awareness on the same lower plane of the subconscious. By silencing the active material mind of conditioned thought, we render ourselves passive and receptive, and become a fluent receiver for higher consciousness to seed and impregnate us with an idea that will serve as an answer to our question or solve a problem. If we begin to use our conditioned mind to evaluate and alter the answer through our beliefs and emotional filters, then we stay stuck in the reality of the problem. This is what Einstein was referring to when he said “a problem can’t be solved with the same mind that created it”, and why all great thinkers and inventors get their ideas as a form of vision that comes to them out of the blue bringing new awareness and realizations.

Goal of Meditation

While many use meditation to achieve certain states or as a means of relaxing, once you get into a regular practice and begin connecting with your higher consciousness within the silence of your material mind, it produces a feeling of euphoria and you begin falling in love with your higher self. You form a deep desire for the connection and begin identifying with it as a normal way of being. Once the illusion of our conditioned state begins falling away along with the identity we formed through it, and we begin looking through the eyes of higher consciousness, we begin training ourselves to maintain a passive mind as a normal way of being in order to stay connected with our higher awareness. We become fully present in our everyday life while maintaining a sense of inner peace. Meditation becomes our normal way of being and we train our body to be the vehicle and instrument for higher consciousness to inhabit, be, and express through.

When this happens you give up the need to be right, you no longer argue to prove your point, all pain and suffering born out of the illusion and lack of forgiveness fade, you lose your desire for material gratification and status, and you begin seeking solace in the silence and natural beauty of things. You begin tuning into the miraculous nature of life, and feel compassion for all other living beings. Every act becomes an expression of kindness because you’re no longer invested in the illusion and need to judge others who are still consumed with the illusion of their own making. Once we no longer get our identity from our conditioning, we liberate ourselves from our own story and tendency to delude ourselves. We realize with extreme clarity that “we are in this world, but not of it”, and that “of ourselves we’re nothing”. All true power comes from our higher self. We’re not the product of our own story; we’re the creator of it. Our story of reality takes place both within us and outside of us through the medium of our mind as a projection through the time-space continuum.

Dr. Linda Gadbois