26 On meditations on the physical and emotional world
Beloved Shya,
Love.
To clarify, when I speak of meditations on the physical world, I am talking
of nothing other than being in the world without illusion.
Normally, people walk around projecting elements from their creative world
into the physical world.
In other words, "wishful thinking".
This is also called "mind too complicated".
Situating your meditation in the physical realm means leaving your imagination,
as a very real thing, in the imaginative realm.
It is this very denial of the reality of imagination, in its proper realm
that leads people to project these imaginations into the physical world,
where of course they are false.
Once you are situated in meditation on the physical realm, and not pushing your imaginations into the way, you can focus on the two important elements of the physical meditation.
The first is the ability to accept all physical states without differentiation.
Accept hot, cold, hungry, full.
This does not mean to not do anything about them, but it does mean that
you should not get upset when these conditions arise.
The second important element is the awareness of the miraculous.
As long as you are projecting your imaginations onto the physical world,
you will be unable to notice the truly miraculous as it occurs around
you.
As soon as you free yourself of these fantasies in this realm, you will
be able to notice how everything around you has miraculous qualities.
Meditations on the emotional realm will not have much success until you've
centered yourself in the physical and imaginative realms.
When you are able to be meditative and accepting of conditions in the
realms of the physical world, and the mind, then you can begin to work
on the emotions.
Like the physical and intellectual, in the emotional world you must come
to accept emotional states as they arrive, and realize they are not rooted
in your essential self.
However, many people are incapable of accepting their emotional states
without either being wildly controlled by them, or repressing them.
Hence, the need for the practice of the yoga of dreams.
When you repress emotions, they end up being expressed in your dreams.
For most people, most dreams are just attempts at releasing the emotional
energy they seal up inside themselves when they repress.
Working on the dream states is most important, for achieving a gradual
centering of the emotional realm.
Love
Swami
