SGM July 2014 Weekly Message Two: “The Bliss & Power of Deep Concentration”
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Welcome back to the July 2014 Edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM!
This month we’re exploring the deeper secrets of meditation. Meditation deepens in stages, from conscious relaxation to concentration to transcendence to inner guidance. Last week, we explored Stage One, conscious relaxation and the key to mastering this stage—letting go.
Letting go may seem easy in theory, but it is a real skill. Letting go can mean releasing a thought that is pestering you, a feeling that is getting you down, or a tension that is cramping your style. Letting go can mean releasing a relationship that is unhealthy, a job you’ve outgrown, or an addiction that is stealing your attention, energy, and resources. Life is in constant motion, and to be in flow requires an ability to let go and move on.
Like any skill you get better and better at letting go through practice over time. Meditation is an opportunity to practice this skill. It’s an opportunity to let go of your cares, worries, and tensions, and allow yourself to sink into deeper and deeper states of relaxation.
In this Week’s Message, we’ll explore a skill that might seem to be the opposite of letting go—that is being able to hold your focus on one thing—the ability to concentrate. The ability to have one-pointed focus, be single-minded in pursuit of a goal, or whole-heartedly devoted to a project is a mark of those who live their dreams, achieve great purposes, and enjoy life fully.
The ability to concentrate is essential for being able to stick with your good intentions, complete work and life tasks, and stay focused on what really matters to you. The ability to concentrate helps you absorb information, hold it in your mind, and make good decisions. Being able to concentrate helps you stay present and engage fully in what you’re doing, so you don’t get swept away by distractions.
Being able to choose your point of focus can change your life. Especially when you consider that the experiences you have are the result of what you are focused on. The ability to choose your focus is the difference between enjoying your life, feeling empowered, and being successful or being dragged along by circumstances, conditions, and other’s opinions.
For example, as SGMers you know how focusing on what you are grateful for immediately changes how life feels. You know how focusing on how you can serve others lights up your life with purpose. You know how focusing on opportunities rather than problems relieves anxiety and inspires positive action. You know how staying focused on healthy choices empowers you to let go of unhealthy addictions and cravings.
Can you imagine what it would be like if you were able to choose what you focus on and stay concentrated on that at will?
Meditation is a powerful way to grow your ability to focus and concentrate. In a broad sense, meditation can be described as a process of consciously guiding your attention. In other words, it has a lot to do with being able to choose what you are focused on and stay with it. For example, you might focus on some aspect of your posture, breathing, an area of your body, a specific feeling state, or any number of meditative cues in sequence.
The meditative practice of concentration has been shown to grow the parts of your brain that are associated with focused attention. In particular the anterior cingulate cortex deep in your forehead, a part of your brain associated with the ability to choose your focus and make good decisions, grows in size and neural connectivity through daily meditation practice. The insula and amygdala, parts of your brain associated with being able to monitor your inner state and control your anxiety and fear are also positively affected by meditation.
These findings have tremendous implications for how your brain functions now and as you grow older. Research is showing that meditation practice is protective against anxiety, addiction, depression, stress-induced brain fog, memory loss, ADD, ADHD, and even Alzheimer’s. This research has prompted many folks to take up practicing concentration using different meditation systems.
However, one thing you quickly discover as you try to “stay with your focus” in meditation is that your mind wanders, sometimes in seemingly random ways—and without your conscious permission!
One moment you are focused on feeling the sensation of your breathing and the next moment you’re wondering how you’ll do in that presentation at work this afternoon. One moment you are starting to enjoy the feeling of deep relaxation and the next you are imagining eating a cheeseburger. This can be amusing or very frustrating. It might lead you to think that you are failing in your meditation practice or that you’re just not cut out for it. The type of concentration you expect and were hoping to have in meditation may seem elusive or impossible. Your mind seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to controlling your attention.
This brings us to another deeper secret of meditation practice:
There’s a part of your mind that monitors your attention and lets you know where your focus is at any given moment. By growing this part of your mind, the Observer, you strengthen your ability to choose your focus, recognize when you’ve wandered from it, and return to it. This is what the practice of concentration is really like. It’s not just guiding your attention onto one thing and sticking with it. It’s choosing your focus, noticing when you have wandered from that, and choosing to come back to it—again and again.
As I mentioned last week, I call this the 3Rs of meditation—Recognize where your mind has wandered to, Release that, and Return to your meditation cues. Understanding that this is what the process of meditation is like can help you let go of the frustration, self-doubt, and self-judgment of thinking that you aren’t doing it right because you have so many different thoughts and feelings going on. Whatever happens in meditation is part of meditation. Meditation is as much about being aware of all the different things going on as it is about being focused on one thing.
That being said, by practicing the 3Rs you’ll find that you begin to stay with your meditation cues for longer and longer periods of time and your mind wanders less and less. You’ll also find that you can become more deeply absorbed in the meditation cues that you are following. You’ll be able to feel the sensations more strongly and these will attract and absorb your attention more and more. These stronger felt sensations of meditation will draw you into deeper and deeper meditative states. Your thinking mind will fade to the background as you become absorbed in felt sensation.
You may find that you become so absorbed in what you are feeling that your normal sense of self, along with all your normal worries, tensions, and frustrations fade away—you’ll sink into what many have described as “blissful concentration.”
At this point, you no longer feel as if you are guiding your attention, or that you have to make any effort to maintain your focus. You find that your mind doesn’t wander as you are effortlessly absorbed in the felt sensation you’ve been concentrating on. This may feel somewhat dreamy or otherworldly. You may feel tingles of sensation, a feeling of lightness, expansiveness, and energy. You might find that certain parts of your body or your body as a whole “lights up” with sensation.
When you begin to have this experience of blissful concentration, you’ll likely want to hold onto it—and you’ll want to repeat it because it feels so good. You may feel like you’ve come home to yourself or to a feeling you’ve always wanted to have.
Yet, at this point, you’ll need to draw on that skill from Stage One of your practice—letting go. Concentration is not something you can hang onto, but something you can give yourself over to. It’s more like surrendering than hanging on. If you start thinking about how wonderful this state is or try to sustain it through effort, you may find that it fades. It’s by giving yourself over to the object of your attention, and merging with it, that you sink deeper and deeper into blissful absorption.
Now, in case you haven’t experienced anything like this blissful state in meditation, I don’t want you to think that there is anything wrong with your practice or even that these feelings are the deeper purpose of your practice. These experiences are effects of guiding your attention and following your meditation cues, observing what happens as you do that, and using the 3Rs to come back to focus. This is the heart of your practice. This is what trains your mind to be able to choose your focus, stick with your intentions, and create your life on purpose.
Furthermore, as many of you may have discovered in your own practice, meditation is different every day.
Some days you may find yourself deeply absorbed in the bliss of concentration for a few moments or for an extended period of time. Some days you may find your mind wandering from thought to thought, feeling to feeling, or tension to tension in your body. Sometimes the events of yesterday or tomorrow will keep grabbing your attention. Sometimes tasks ahead of you will keep trying to be solved. Sometimes you’ll experience spontaneous healing. And sometimes you may move beyond all of that and rest in a state that feels like “nothing,” “spaciousness,” “pure presence,” or “transcendence.”
Meditation, and life itself, is not a linear progression from one stage to the next. However, as you become more skillful in meditation, you may find that your meditation sessions move through four stages. For example, you may begin each session with conscious relaxation, then move into deep concentration, transcendence, and inner guidance. Yet, most likely, every day will be different in terms of exactly how this process unfolds. Knowing this possible progression and being open to how it is always different can be helpful for your practice.
In next week’s message we’ll talk about the movement from concentration to transcendence and the amazing healing and sense of freedom this can bring.
Until next time,
Observe where your attention is and practice choosing and returning to your focus.
Enjoy your practice!
Kevin