Let me resume from my basic premise about meditation-

It is all about reversing the default process of information/ knowledge flowing from conscious to subconscious.

In a single line, that all what the meditation is. So, the first question comes to mind, how can one do that!

Before understanding that, we have to remember that subconscious mind is many time more stronger than the conscious one. So, the most obvious way to reverse this process is to make conscious mind stronger.

Now, how can we do that!

Mind works in the same way as the physical body does. when we want to make any part of the body stronger, we try to use that body part more and more, and over the time, the muscles of that part becomes developed and stronger. We all see that with body builders. We have to do the same in the case of conscious mind too.

The very simple and perhaps the only way to do this is to focus the conscious mind on one thing continuously. That thing can be anything, a mantra, A picture, a thought, a sound, light or any thing else. The object of concentration does not matter much. From my personal experience i can say that without any hesitation.

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It is the same as one is doing cardio exercise. As we know that there are many types of cardio exercises like jogging, running, skipping, running stairs, burpees etc. They all are different types of exercises but their impact on the body is the same. They all burn fat and makes our heart stronger. The same is with the concentration. Irrespective of the focused object, all kinds on concentration give the same result. The differences comes only after certain stages, and we will discuss that later to avoid any confusion.

Technically speaking, the focused object may be anything, but for practical reasons, it is easier and more fruitful not to choose anything as an object which is being seen by the eyes. Again, the reason for that is our default mechanism of us being conscious. For a normal person, all the time he/she is awake, conscious mind pays the most attention to what we see with the eyes. The experiences of all other organs comes later. This is a natural phenomenon. During all awaken times, the consciousness resides in the eyes all the time, unless it is required to pay attention to other organs because of some important reasons. So, if we keep our eyes remain open during mediation/concentration, it would not help much because in that case it would be very difficult to concentrate the conscious mind on anything other than what is being seen with through the eyes . Mind will again and again come back to what we are seeing with the eyes. So, the only remedy is to keep the eyes closed and find something else to focus upon.

Many of us may themselves have experienced in their lives or seen others closing their eyes while thinking seriously on anything. That is quite natural. And, reason is precisely what i stated above, the default process of the conscious mind is paying attention to the eyes all the time. When we think seriously on anything, we force our conscious mind to focus exclusively on that thing. And, in order to do that it has to withdraw its focus from eyes and thus they close.

To understand this, i would like to put this into computer terminology. Think that the conscious mind has A certain RAM( Random access memory), Say 3 GB and, 2 GB from this is deployed all the time to eyes and rest 1 GB takes care of the rest of the body. But, when we force it to concentrate intensely and exclusively on one thing, that 1 GB spread all over the body becomes insufficient and that forces mind to withdraw permanent deployed 2GB Ram on eyes and use it to that issue. And, the only way for the mind to withdraw its focus from the eyes is to close them because as long as they remain open, the mind would have no choice but to focus on what is seen by the eyes.

I think that that would be enough for one post.

with love,
sanjay