Saintly Qualities

The first three verses of Chapter 16 of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the holy yogic texts, lists "divine endowments": fearlessness, devotion, purity of heart, abiding in the Spirit, charitable giving, self-restraint, holy offerings, study of sacred texts, austerity, and uprightness.
  The list continues: Non-violence, truthfulness, absence of anger, renunciation of wrong desires, serenity and freedom from finding fault.  Finally, compassion for all beings, absence of cravings, gentleness, modesty, steadiness, vigor, forgiveness, fortitude, freedom from malice and pride.

This is a larger list than the one we have in our scriptures. I find it interesting to contemplate those that are added. In the yogic tradition, it is assumed that you can cultivate all the good qualities on the list through meditation. One way to experience your true Self is to be alone and quiet. Inquire of yourself, "Who am I at my innermost being." You are not the mind which is subject to being changed and modified. You are not your moods which are also changeable. You are not your personality, "the mask" you present to others. And you are not your body which is going through its deterioration process and will eventually cease to exist.

Although these aspects of yourself have changed, You have not. Here is an exercise that allows you to reach that Self. Meditate to the stage of alert, tranquil awareness. Rest there for a little while, then go more deeply into the silence. Think about God. Contemplate the energy field that He emanates which is identical with the essence of your being. Merge with that field and feel the oneness that is possible with God.

Desires

For those of us who want to live at a higher level of consciousness, we must let go of:
1) unrealistic desires
2) Obsessive desires which nurture fantasies and cause psychological distress
3) Desires which, if fulfilled, would contribute to personal misfortune, harm others or the environment and serve no purpose.
4) Desires which arise because of restlessness, confusion, boredom or an inclination to imitate the behaviors of others whose life purposes are different from yours.

Instead, we can have our life-enhancing desires fulfilled if we:
1) Accurately define our needs and meaningful goals. Be specific. Write them down. Write what you an and will do to accomplish them.
2) Discern the different between necessary life-enhancing goals and desires who are not necessary or important. Focus your attention and actions on having those necessary, life-enhancing desires fulfilled.
3)At all times, be aware of the fact that you live in the wholeness of God's spirit. In order to do this, quiet your mind. Rest in the silence until you are peaceful, God-centered and confident. When desires arise in your awareness, discriminate between those which are in harmony with your ultimate aims in life and discard all other desires. By allowing those desires to disappear from your awareness. you will weaken their hold on you and soon they will be dissolved. The energy formerly tied up with them will be released and used for higher purposes.
4)Learn to cooperate with with universal, impersonal laws of mind which determine that every cause produces a corresponding effect. The thought you habitually think, the states of consciousness you maintain, and the effective actions you skillfully perform will then manifest the results you desire.

We can be healthy, happy, secure, creative, prosperous and spiritually filled. Meditate....

Breath

Breath is very important in achieving a peaceful meditative state. Inhale from your diaphragm, in through your nostrils to the count of six; hold for six counts; then out through your mouth for six. Rest, then do that set for a total of six times. When you begin meditating, just allow the breath to flow--in a relaxed state.

Now, the hard part.--at first. With the approach to observing thought, it is helpful to have something to do or say silently to yourself. You can count your in-breath up to the number ten. That is, you inhale and say to yourself, “One,” then exhale. On the next inhale, you say. “Two,” and so on until you reach the number then, at which time, you begin again. Some people keep track of the number by counting on their fingers. The value of this exercise is to give your conscious(“monkey”) mind something to do while you let go of any thoughts that arise.  

Meditation requires and develops “attention.” We generally talk about “paying attention” to something or someone. It is important to be very clear about what we mean by “paying attention,” for attention is crucial in meditation. In a very real sense, paying attention is meditation. Paying attention is directing one's mind or energies to something happening within or outside of oneself. When we pay attention, we expect or wait for something; and when it appears or occurs, we give heed to it, observe it closely. In this sense, meditation is active, not passive, as it is thought to be. Or rather, it is, paradoxically, and kind of passive action. In meditation, when something “comes up” in our flow of consciousness, we, from a quiet and detached center, focus upon it (the passive part) but we also stretch towards it (the active part), to see what that thing is—not necessarily as we would like it to be or fear that it might be.

In meditation, we come to understand the flow because we are not caught in the flow (as we almost always are otherwise) of ceaseless thoughts and emotions. Instead, we view them from a vantage point, and just experience, observe, and study them—good or bad, pleasurable or painful, or maybe just neutral. We attend to them, in short, without being all caught up in their ceaseless and mostly unpredictable flow—that flow just being the nature of consciousness in its usual state, our ordinary and ever-in-flux stream of awareness. When we are caught in the flow, however, we are, in a sense, not aware, even though we are experiencing. Meditation fosters awareness.

Most of us live in this perpetual stream of mere experiencing second to second, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day—even month to month, year to year, and for all our lives. We feel that we are a small boat being tossed and turned in that ongoing stream of our internal events. The stream may be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. But it’s a stream that we feel we just exist within and, in many ways, just cannot control. If the boat that we call “ourselves” is floating along nicely, we say we are happy. However, just beneath the surface of those lovely waters is our fear that we won’t be happy for long—that something or someone will come along to disturb our joy. Underneath each joy lurks the apprehension that it will go away. This causes us to cling. This leads to anxiousness, even unhappiness, in the midst of joy. We can use drugs—whether the drug is a pharmaceutical, work, sex, or even religion—to make us believe that we will always be happy. But even though everyone knows that this just isn’t so, and can never be so, we, wanting to be in control, go running here and there looking for something that will provide us with a life of mere joy. We chase the illusion of joy like a cat its own tail. And because it is an illusion, our ongoing program of pure joy through control leads to pain. Indeed, control is not the solution. It is the problem.

Rather, by clearly, courageously looking at our present unhappiness or dissatisfaction straight on, we may learn from it what it is trying to teach us: Why we are unhappy right now? What does this unhappiness feel like in our bodies—what shifting patterns, locations, types and degrees of energy do we feel in our bodies in this unhappy state? What choices have we made to get us to this point? Or what have others done to us that has brought us here (so that we may maturely experience our justifiable anger or sadness because of it, and then healthily learn to forgive, love and move on, just as the Savior said)?

What is the solution to this dilemma? Is there a solution. We believe, along with two millennia of meditators from within almost every religious tradition and even from some non-religious ones, that the answer is to continue to develop oneself in meditative practices. For, when consciousness is viewed from the higher state of “super-consciousness,” a detached consciousness that has been trained in meditation to see view our ordinary consciousness in a calm spirit of healthy curiosity, we then honor our inner events, each and every one of them. We can be like the Lord when He arose and said unto the sea, 'Peace, be still.' And the wind ceased, and there was great calm.” (Mark 4:39)

The Effect of Meditation

Most men and women are convinced that there is a divine Power of some sort operating within human affairs; but they are not sure what it is, nor do they know how to bring this divine Presence and Power into their daily experience. Meditation is that way to find the peace and connection within. As we seek peace within, we find harmony without. We reach the depth of the Soul, and It takes over our existence, providing activity and newness of life, a peace and serenity, the like of which we have never dreamed. (Joel Goldsmith, The Art of Meditation)

Just 10 minutes of calm sitting in the morning, letting go of thought, can influence the rest of day. And 20 minutes has proved to provide profound physiological, psychological and emotional change for the good.
Sometimes it's just the little things, isn't it?

Learn more about workshops and classes at www.morningstarmeditation.org