Meditation is often considered linked to ideas such as peace, stillness, happiness, freedom, and joy.
People who begin meditating may certainly experience these states during meditation, especially later on down the line, but many times what they experience is the exact opposite, both during meditation as well as in day-to-day life.
It is very common for meditators to begin to experience emotional roller coasters and so understanding what’s going on behind the scenes can really help a person deal with the emotions more easily.
We have lots of repressed emotions (energy in motion that has been pushed down, stuck) which, when they are allowed to be without resistance, they will begin to be let go of. Emotions naturally want to flow, just like all of life, and when you stop putting the brakes on them, they’ll naturally begin to flow through you and out, even if they had been stuck for many many years.
The emotional roller coaster is really nothing more than a release. They have begun to flow again and are now coming back up into your awareness. This is a positive thing, a healthy thing.
The object is to simply allow these emotions to be just as they are and release them through non-resistance. Remember, when you cease struggling with your emotions, your emotions will cease to be a struggle, as explained earlier.
So any time you notice emotions popping up, thank your body and your self for bringing this stuck energy to your awareness and allow it to be let go of. Don’t force the emotions to leave or try and smack them with the door on their way out. Allow them to be released on their own and the emotions will naturally exit your energy field.
This is a healing process. Despite the appearance of emotional turbulence that arises, it’s actually a wonderfully healing experience in the end.
In place of what was stuck energy, you may allow yourself to receive the Love, healing, and help the Universe is always sending you. You may allow yourself to receive it all, now. 
Question:
What is the fastest way to kill the ego?
The meditation is working well, and things are moving forward.
I want it dead by my birthday february 25.
JB.
My response:
There are many paths you can take, all of which will guide you into letting go of all sense of separation resulting in ego transcendence and enlightenment. Let’s look through a number of options and see if we can find something that resonates with you. Mix and match based on your own intuition and experiences.
First and foremost, the ego is not something to push against, struggle with, or overcome. The ego is not something to be killed. That mindset will only set you up for more struggle with the ego sneaking in the back door. Struggle, resistance, fighting, and killing will not work. You don’t defeat darkness with darkness. You transcend darkness by bringing in the light. This is a critical point.
Who is it that wants to kill the ego? Why, the ego, of course!
The ever present awareness has no problem with the ego being there. It is as it is.
So, how do we transcend the ego? Read More …
Question:
Dear Ariel,
How do you meditate?
Thanks,
F.
My response:
Life itself IS meditation.
The stereotypical sitting cross-legged in a corner just a first stage. It evolves from there.
First you DO meditation. Continue to do it enough and you eventually BECOME meditative. Anything and everything you do becomes imbued with the meditative state because it’s simply a reflection of what you are.
So there’s a lot of value to “doing” meditation, but realize that it’s not an end in an of itself. That said, there are many different types of meditation including chakra meditation, kundalini meditation, watching your breath, being fully present in the Now moment, watching your mind, merging with anything such as people or animals, and so forth. In my experience, all of these techniques have proven themselves to be very valuable and effective, but a few are better suited for those who are interested in enlightenment.
Chakra meditation:
You, and your physical body, are composed of raw energy, clustered around 7 centers called chakras. The lower level chakras have to do with more survival-based concepts such as security and sexual reproduction while the upper chakras are more associated with spiritual concepts such as intuition and universal energy.
Interestingly, learning how to open these chakras provides you with a blueprint for how to run your life in a healthy manner in alignment with the universe.
Insecurities, neediness, scarcity mentality, icy heartedness, fear of others… all these fears vanish once the appropriate chakras have been opened and balanced. Opened, the chakras become a guide for how to live your life from a place of true Love and compassion.
Surrender:
Surrender is one of the most important and life-changing practices one could possibly adopt.
Surrender is a constant process of not resisting or clinging to the moment but instead, continuously turning it over to God. The attention is focused on the process of letting go and not on the content of ‘what’ is being surrendered.
The trick is not to completely turn off your ego, at least not at first, but to simply disidentify from it altogether.
In meditation, simply watch your mind think its thoughts. Do not become the thoughts and identify yourself as “I am the thoughts.” Instead, be the silent witness and watch the thoughts go by on their own.
Doing this, you operate from a state of enlightenment. You merge with the field of consciousness, becoming the awareness in which all things happen.
God is the silent witness that is aware of everything unfolding within itself.
It is both the field AND the content within the field.
So, the trick is simply to watch your mind and everything that happens in life as if it’s some autonomous play that’s happening on its own while identifying with nothing within the play, not even the parts you think you control… especially those parts.
With the practice of this meditation, your field of awareness starts to expand.
Your peripheral vision starts to expand naturally. Instead of focusing on one thing at a time, which is how the ego functions, you begin to see everything all at once, becoming the silent witness.
Focusing on one thing at a time actually takes effort.
Colors become brighter as the filter of the ego drops away. Sensations go straight in without being dulled by the ego’s thoughts and judgments.
Food tastes so much better, richer.
Everything starts to glow, both inanimate objects and animate.
You begin to understand that everything fits together perfectly as part of the totality. Separation becomes completely foreign. The reality seems to be that everything comes together as one magnificent symphony.
The ego operates by concentration, by selecting one individual point and analyzing everything about it, judging it, criticizing it, labeling it, categorizing it. It’s like listening to an orchestra and tuning out every musician except for one single person. You miss almost EVERYTHING by trying to focus on something.
When you surrender the ego, you reach a state of bliss because suddenly, you hear the symphony that’s been going on all around the entire time.
You don’t have to think about or analyze the symphony while listening to it. If you do, you start to lose the richness of the experience. Nothing is lost when you stop thinking and listen to everything as a whole.
This is what enlightenment is all about. It’s SO beautiful when you drop the mind and hear the incredible splendor and sheer gorgeousness going on all around you. It always has been and always will be. EVERYTHING is Love.
The high notes and the low notes, the fast notes and the slow notes all come together to produce the whole symphony. Both the bass and the treble are necessary, and everything in between. The totality is a state of absolute perfection.
Thanks for your question.
Emotion and feeling are often confused as one and the same, thought to be interchangeable. However, the two are actually quite different and serve different purposes.
Emotions are used for creation. (manifestation)
Feelings are used for communication. (intuition)
Emotion:
Emotion is the power which attracts. Your emotions are created by your thoughts.
If I say “Be Happy,” notice you can grin, but it won’t actually make you happy. You need to think of an event which makes you happy and THAT will lead to an emotional response which we call happiness.
Thought itself is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had, or ever will have is creative and produces energy. E-motion is energy in motion. It is the by-product of those thoughts.
This energy you create goes out into the universe and because like-attracts-like, you attract more of the same frequency of energy. When enough “clumps” of like energy come together, they form matter.
This is the essence behind the Law of Attraction. Read More …
