Jake's Summary

A question arose in a meditation. What are we really doing in meditation? In the following we will suppose that there is a mind (or consciousness) and a body (which include the brain). One type of meditation is to try to see our deep inner self. The mind tries to see itself. The mind seems to use the body to see the mind, so there always seems to be a filter between the mind and itself. This filter might be what is called the Ego. I decided to try to see the mind without passing through the body. It felt as if the cycle was closing on itself, that the mind was seeing itself more clearly.

In the following days, a feeling appeared near the end of the meditation. It started as a Good Natured Calm, became a Wave of Calm and at the end of this morning meditation, felt as a Vast Underlying Subtle Calmness. It might be related to what Rod called the Sea of Tranquility or Piet's Empty Completeness.

The Calm is not present for long, because I automatically start analyzing and questioning it. It is really an automatic mechanism which resembles the chain of thoughts that runs in circle and circle and circle. Those automatic mechanisms are a source of stress. Sometime in the day I was able to break those useless chains of thoughts and feel the underling calm and sharpness for a brief moment.