On the spiritual path, you need to have deep passion, with deep patience!
Passion means the tremendous will to succeed, and patience is the deep prayer that you should succeed.
When you have passion with patience, you will have intensity without restlessness.
Understand: once a technique has touched you, there is no way you will not be transformed. Sometimes the transformation will be subtle, and sometimes others may see it better than you do.
If a technique is helping you feel more relaxed, more centered, more sensitive – it is working.
If it is making you more joyful, helping you expand, feel more energetic – it is working.
Usually, among the first five or eight techniques you choose, there will be one that is right for you.
Locate it.
Pursue it.
Now one important thing you need to understand: ultimately, all meditation, all techniques, are only for your body-mind.
Your being needs no meditation!
Your being is always in that still, silent, blissful space… or I should say, that still, silent, blissful space is your being!
Meditation is not so far away from you as you think!
In fact, we are all continually experiencing split-second samadhi.
So often, without realizing it, we dip into the Self, into our being.
These are the moments when we enter into spontaneous meditation!
Just recall any moment in your life when you have experienced great beauty: the sun rising suddenly from behind a mountain, or the first time you hear a lovely piece of music.
At such a moment, suddenly, you become totally still, wordlessly aware. Haven't we all experienced such moments?
That is meditation!
At such moments, we are living enlightenment.
But the problem is, we have virtually no control over when such a moment will come or go. Our meditation is a pure accident!
Understand, our meditation is not in our control.
Not just that, even if we do have a powerful glimpse or satori, our body and mind cannot retain that high voltage ecstasy for more than a few hours or a few days.
Actually, experiencing a glimpse of pure consciousness, a moment of satori is not such a big thing. It is not that difficult.
But to stay in that space and to express and radiate that state, preparation is needed.
Training the body and mind to sustain and radiate that experience continuously is the purpose of meditation.
This is a continuous process.
That is why I always tell people that meditation cannot just be a quantity added to your life, it has to become the very quality of life!