Kip Mazuy

Photo by Skier Scott

The silence begins to consume all of the noise. It consumes all of the limited ideas of who you are and what you know, until there is nothing left for you to hold on to. And in that you learn to surrender into the silence so that there is only silence, the nature of which is unconditional peace.

Line of Fire by Solkku

The intensity of the Shakti pushes you beyond yourself and you learn to remain surrendered in this intensity with great silence, great humility as consciousness itself.

It was when I came out of this meditation that I noticed something quite amazing. It wasn't a feeling of attaining something, but rather a feeling that something was gone. That personal sense of "me" with all of its problems and conflicts was not there. I was still there, still aware of the body, still functioning through the senses, but that stress that I recognized as myself was gone.

If you want to be free of anxiety then notice and feel this: life is happening in this moment. You are not doing this moment, you are not making this moment happen. It is here on its own.

One of the most amazing realizations you can have is to realize you are actively avoiding this moment. That at the very core of your ego is that constant reflex to separate oneself from this moment, to constantly seek some sort of mental distraction that takes you out of feeling this moment directly.

You are unconsciously but constantly resisting this moment; separating yourself from this moment. So the path of awareness in meditation is to get you back to this moment.

If you surrender every thought that arises back into this moment then you will begin to feel this moment directly.

The beauty of it is, the moment you begin observing the thinking instead of identifying with thoughts, that sense of stress and conflict considerably dissipates and there is incredible peace.

If you allow it all to arise without holding on to it, without trying to get rid of it dramatize it, or identify with it, then it automatically burns away in shakti, it burns away in consciousness. It simply becomes a flow of energy; the way the wind blows through the trees.

One of the reasons we sit to meditate is to strip away all of the things that distract us from this moment. All of the things that make us feel secure and in control.