It is not about Silence

Complete text for reading along:

Good morning.

Yesterday evening, I had my first life chat session online with Jetzt-TV and Devasetu, and I had a great time, I was able to answer questions of people live. It was very exciting for me. And doing this, I heard again from a few people the same thing I already heard from other people before about the Samarpan Meditation, and that they are unable to find silence while they are meditating. And I have heard this from so many people. And I got so inspired to talk about this, so, I make this video right Jett the next morning, right now.

It is such a common misunderstanding amongst meditators. We believe, you believe: you sit down to meditate in order to find silence, in order to have a nice experience, and this is not true. This is a misunderstanding. And in a way, the opposite is true, but i will talk about this in a moment.

Swamiji, the Indian Guru who brings this meditation from the Himalayas to us, he never said anything about silence. He didn't say: sit down and become quiet. I don't know where this misconception comes from, but it's very common. In esoteric literature or in videos from esoteric people, we hear that in reality, we are silence and that we are one and all these beautiful things. And then we sit down and meditate and we think: oh, this, I guess this is what I should feel. I should feel God, I should feel Oneness, and I should feel perfect silence.

And then this doesn't happen to you, and then you think, of course, you do it wrong, or you are incapable: ah yeah, again proof: I do it wrong. No, you don't do it wrong. It's just that this is a misconception.

This is not why we meditate, not at all. The official instructions for the meditation, that what Swamiji says you should do, is the following: he says: you give your attention to the crown chakra, to this spot on your head. The crown chakra, this is this physical spot here which is the highest point of your body, the highest spot of your skull... and then, when your attention gets drawn away from this, your task is to gently bring it back, back to the spot. That's the official instruction. Put your attention to the crown chakra, and bring it back again and again. That's all. Swamiji never said anything about silence. He never said: ...and then find silence. This idea comes from somewhere else; this comes from us.

We like goals, and we like to make us wrong when we don't reach them, but this meditation does not include a goal. So, if it's not silence, what is this meditation about? Why do we do it? Why do we do it, if it's not about resting in wonderful silence?

Well, this meditation is a training ground. We train something. We train something we are usually unable to do, and that's why we need a training ground. And it's interesting. When you begin this meditation... you know, it sounds totally easy: okay, I take my attention, I put it to the crown chakra, no problem. Any child can do this, right? And you can do this too. But what happens next? You'll close your eyes, you sit down, you put your attention up there, and in the next moment you notice: oops, I'm in thoughts. Or you notice: oops, I feel my left toe, it's itching, or your attention is with noise or voices you hear in the distance through your ear. And then you return with your attention to the crown chakra. That's easy. But the next moment, you notice: oops, I got lost in this very very important thought which I must not forget, it's important. And then, you bring your attention back to the crown chakra, but the next moment you notice: oops, I'm again lost in some other thought.

So, very quickly, you notice something very important, something very valuable. You notice: I'm not master of my attention. My attention does whatever it wants. My attention is drawn here and there and the other. My attention does not stay where I put it. And this is not a problem. It's important to notice this. This is the first step. That's the first thing, the first learning we do when we do the Samarpan Meditation: "ah, I am not master of my attention, interesting." For the first time in your life, you notice: "wow, I can't direct my attention, it goes wherever it's being drawn to". What you can do is: bring it back gently, slowly, again and again, and then, swap... it's somewhere else again.

So, this is the one thing why we do this meditation: we notice how it really is for us. And then it's like a training ground. We notice: oh, this is something I'm not able to do, so I have to practice. And that's what we practice. We begin to practice bringing our attention back to where we want it to be, to the crown chakra, to this part of our head here. And that's what we do. That's the purpose of the meditation, that we practice this. And it takes time, again and again, again and again we put our attention where we want it to be, to the crown chakra. We experience the next moment that we are somewhat completely different with our attention, and then we bring it back, again and again and again.

And what we experience doing this exercise is not silence at all, quite the contrary. We begin to notice more and more all the things which are in fact pulling on our attention. Our senses, or the bodily senses, or the itches and hurts, or the outside noises and the thoughts. The thoughts: that's the world, all the important stuff or the dangerous stuff or the negative stuff or the wonderful stuff... all the thoughts pulling on our attention.

So, what's happening to you, and to me by the way, when we meditate is: it gets louder and louder, because more and more do we notice what is holding our attention so far. So, it's getting loud, not silent. And it's good. It's good to notice this. And you know, it's not a problem that it is like this for you. It's not that you are wrong or screwed up, no. What you discover is how it is for a human being. It's normal like this. It's not that there's something bad happening and... you know, pretty quickly one feels that one is basically at the mercy of all these external inputs and thoughts, and you're just unable to control your own attention. It feels like you're being manipulated by other people's thoughts, by advertisements who pull on your attention, maybe by opinions and by politics and whatever... But this is not the case. This is not the problem. There's not a problem with you, and not a problem with the world, it's much deeper than that. What you are discovering, what you're really discovering is how this human existence naturally is, from the very beginning.

There's a wonderful sentence of Swamiji which he said once in the Karma-Free Meditation. He said: "from the very beginning, from the beginning of life when we are born, our attention is directed outwards." And this is natural. Our senses are all directed outwards, our eyes look outside, our ears hear the outside, our touch touches the outside, and also our thoughts are something outside of us, thinking about the world. Everything you can perceive up to this point, everything since the day you were born, is outside. And naturally, that's where your attention goes. It never went anywhere else; how could it be different? And that's what you're starting to discover when you begin this meditation. So, there's no reason to think you do something wrong. You just discover how it is, and discovering this is very valuable.

And then you begin to practice something completely new, something you never ever did before in your life. You take charge of your attention. You, for the first time in your life, decide where your attention should be. And not only that, it is not only that you direct your attention, you direct your attention into a completely new direction, a direction you never tried before: inside.

Now this "inside" is something... the "inside" I'm talking about is something you don't know about. Usually, when else; you hear: "okay, look inside", where do we look? We look into the body, we feel our body, you feel your left big toe from the inside, you perceive your emotions, your feelings, you begin to perceive your thoughts for the first time. You begin to experience this inner noise for the first time. But this is not "inside". This is not who you are. This is not your "inside". That's what we commonly think we are: the body, the feelings, the thoughts, that's not us. And this is something you begin to discover when you begin to direct your attention to the crown chakra.

The Samarpan Meditation combines two magical things in one exercise. And the one magical thing is that we train our attention. And this is not the first meditation in the world which does this. There are other meditations, beautiful meditations, which teach the same thing, like the breathing meditation, when we put our attention to the breath and follow the breath with our attention. It's lovely, it's so beautiful. This tool is a wonderful practice and training to become the master of your attention.

But what the Samarpan Meditation adds, and this is totally new, is a new target for our attention, this spot here, which in the beginning for you is just an ordinary spot of your physical body. And that's fine, it doesn't have to be anything else for you. But when you begin to do this, after a few weeks or months, when you have put your attention back to the spot again and again and again in so many meditations, you begin to notice something subtle but very interesting. You begin to notice a kind of a space, a kind of a something which can't be named and can't be described, which is beginning here, which has no end, and that's what I call "inside". It's like that's the door to your true inside. Your true inside is not the thoughts, your true inside has nothing to do with the body, but you don't know anything about it.

So, this meditation does two things at the same time. It helps you train your... that's what Swamiji calls your ability to be master of your Chitta, and then to use this ability to put your attention, your Chitta, on one specific spot, and that spot is magical. And when you do this, then it gets very interesting. And this is not new. Jesus said the same thing, Jesus said: basically his... the one message Jesus said over and over again: "put God first". Put God first, everything else will follow, that's what Jesus said. And with God, what was Jesus talking about when he said God? God is you're true nature. God is your true inside, God is that what you find when you put your attention to this innocently looking spot over and over again, this subtle but tangible space so close to you. That's what you discover when you put your attention there again and again and again.

And Jesus said two things. He says the same thing like what we do in the Samarpan meditation. He tells us where to put our attention, and he said: just do this again and again and again, practice this. Jesus has the same thing like Swamiji, he says: if you put your attention into the right direction, if you become master of your attention, and put it into the right direction, Jesus calls it "God", I call it "inside", Swamiji talks about the crown chakra, that's the door to the inside, that's what I call the Door to Heaven. Jesus says: when you do this, everything else, all the things you think are important, all the things you think you have to take care of every day all the time, they will all happen by themselves. Jesus says: there's only one thing you have to do. One, only one thing: become master of your attention and look with it into the right direction. And that's what we practice with the Samarpan Meditation.

It's not about experiencing bliss and silence when we meditate. No. We practice. We practice become master of our attention, and then we direct the attention into the right direction again and again and again. And I can testify. It's my own experience that it is exactly like this. Life becomes easy, life becomes magical when you do this, when you do this what Jesus already talked about over and over again, but nobody understood him and nobody believed him really.

And this is what Swamiji says. Practice your attention and look into the right direction, look at the crown chakra, look at that. Nothing else is important, everything else will happen by itself. And nobody believes him. But I experience that he's right. Then, then life begins. And it is important to know that the fruit of this you do not experience in the meditation itself. The purpose of meditating is not that you sit down and you put your attention to the crown chakra and again and again you ignore your thoughts and you come back, and then it becomes quiet and blissful. This is not the purpose of this meditation. And the opposite is happening: the more you become master of your attention, the more you look into the direction of the crown chakra, the more you notice all the distractions which have been ruling you up to this point in your life. The noise of your thoughts, the pull of the world, the pull of your body and all of its sensations and needs and wants. You perceive this more and more, and that's important, it's good, because it helps you practice. So, this is not a bad sign, this is just the nature of this exercise.

The fruit of this meditation you notice somewhere else, not in the meditation. The fruit of this practice, the fruit of your growing ability to be master of your attention and the fruit of having your attention with God, with the crown chakra as well as you can, the fruit of that you will begin to notice in your life, in your daily experience. It's happening very gradually, slowly. It's not that one day, there's a huge noise and a huge bang and the doors of Heaven open and something amazingly insane and unheard of happens in front of your eyes. This is all childish imagination, no. With your growing ability and with your growing time of your awareness, of your attention with the crown chakra, with God, your life changes in ways you cannot explain. You just cannot explain it.

It's like Jesus said: everything will be taken care of when you do this one thing. And that's what you begin to experience in your life. Slowly slowly, the things which were bothering you, scaring you, making you crazy... slowly they disappear, and often it is like you don't even notice how they disappear, because you don't do anything about it.

One day you notice: wow, that is gone which was torturing me every day, it's gone! Where did it go? How did it happen? You don't know, because all you did was doing this simple practice of becoming master of your attention, and then, slowly slowly, your life becomes more and more miraculous. And it is like... it is like... there is a silence growing in you, there is a Heaven growing in you... it's not that Heaven grows... Heaven was always there, but your ability to perceive it, your ability to rest in it. Heaven begins here, by the way. Right here, like Jesus said: Heaven is at hand. Really. Your ability to perceive this, to experience this, that is growing, and it's growing because you become master of your attention, and because you know in which direction to look, and then you begin to experience this.

That's why in every of my videos it says the same thing: "Heaven is at Hand.... ...if you know it's Gate." That's the gate, and it's at hand, very very close.

Yesterday, in this online event which inspired me to do this meditation... sorry this video this morning, the first question I received was... you know, before the event started, I was 10 minutes early online, and so I was just sitting there, closing my eyes, I was just meditating, I was just doing exactly this: I was practicing my attention, I was directing my attention to my crown chakra. I was a little nervous because it was the first online event of this kind I ever did, so my thoughts were pulling on my attention, my body felt a little uneasy, so I just did the same thing I do every morning, the same thing you do every morning when you do this meditation. I was practicing my attention, directing my attention to my crown chakra. I was hearing all these loud noises in my head, I was feeling my nervous body, no quietness there.

But the first question I received was: Devasetu asked me: when you sit there with your eyes closed, it feels as if you are sitting in silence. And as I just said, all around me was no silence, there was no silence around me. There were my thoughts around me and my crazy body, and some children's voices in the house and some outside noises. But when I direct my attention to else; my crown chakra, the more I do this, the longer I do this, month by month, year by year, it's like I'm bathing in God. It's like I'm bathing in the space which opens here. And with this, I'm bathing in silence.

There is silence, a deep timeless silence, and at the same time, all around me is noise, the noise of my thoughts, the noise of my body, the noise of the world, it's there, it doesn't go away. And yet there is a silence developing... I mean, the silence doesn't develop, it's always there, but our ability to perceive it, that develops more and more.

So, we perceive silence deep inside of us, but for this, the thoughts don't have to stop, the world doesn't have to stop, the world doesn't have to change, the thoughts don't have to change, they will always be there, they will always continue. The important thing is: where is my attention? And the more I rest in the crown chakra, the more I'm bathing in this space, in this silence, the more unimportant all the other things get. And then it's like I'm not thinking anymore. The thoughts are still there, the brain is still functioning, the brain doesn't stop functioning, but my attention is not there anymore. My awareness, my attention is not on the noise, my attention is on my true inside, which I find when I put my attention to the crown. And that's what we do in the Samarpan Meditation.

So, the goal is not to become quiet, it's not about becoming quiet, it's not about becoming silent. The noise remains. The crazy noises don't go away, they don't have to go away. But there's something developing. And what we practice, what it is about is: we practice to become master of our attention. And we practice to put this attention at the right place, to God, to the crown chakra, that's what we do. And the rest develops by itself. And then, I'm sitting in all this noise, and all you see from outside is my quietness.

That's how it works.

Thank you for listening. Thank you.

I love you.