Learning to meditate

The practice of Effective Awareness available for everybody.

Have you ever tried to meditate? Maybe close your eyes and try to “blank your mind.” According to Sesha, our mind resembles a helium balloon. It is not that the balloon flies blown by the wind in any possible direction, but because it is tied to your hand with a thin string. Unfortunately, we do let go of that thin string that controls our mind many times a day, plunging it into distraction and absent-mindedness. Some studies estimate that, on average, a person remains distracted 74 per cent of their conscious time. This book will teach you how to get to know and tame your awareness, until eventually you will realise the moment when you are letting the string go.

In order to survive as individuals, we have developed multiple habits that help us subsist daily; but paradoxically keep us away from happiness. Having the strength to change those habits for more stable ones; or even more stable habits for deeper certainties, is not easy. That is precisely the reason why the ancient scholars of the mind came up with a number of strategies to develop Effective Awareness, until achieving their own personal realisation. Thus, the culmination of this process is called Meditation.

The goal of this book is learning to control where the balloon is going, and training our awareness until installing a regular meditative practice. Thanks to one of the greatest masters of Advaita of the Spanish-speaking world, the art of meditation is now at arm’s length, available for everyone.

In the first part of the book, involving the theoretical aspects of meditation, I will try to analyse in a simplified manner the most used terms in the grammar of meditation. I will run from one concept to the next gradually according to their importance, trying to link them in order to bring the ideas to a state of greater complexity. Meditation contains in itself philosophical, psychological and even pedagogical concepts that should be integrated to achieve the necessary conceptual clarity.

In the second part, I will break down the foundations of the internal and external practice of Meditation. I will go into detail explaining the mandatory canon for both practices. Apart from being a simple reading, this book also aims to be treated as a text for study and reflection.