Proper Mental Attitide During Meditation

(Brief quotes from "The Notebooks of Paul Brunton" - Category 4: Meditation)

"Meditation needs a loving commitment to it and a warm devotion to its object if success is to be achieved. Merely to practise it mechanically like a physical exercise is not enough."

"In this period, when meditation will take the place of action, the remembrance of God should become paramount."

"The Overself is drawing him ever inward to Itself, but the ego's earthly nature is drawing him back to all those things or activities which keep him outwardly busy. On the issue of this tension depends the result of his meditation. If he can bring such devotion to the Overself that out of it he can find enough strength to put aside everything else that he may be doing or thinking and give himself up for a while to dwelling solely in it, this is the same as denying himself and his activities. Once his little self gets out of the way, success in reaching the Overself is near."

"Bring a real hunger of the heart to this work, come to it with a great love, feel that it can be productive of many benefits; then any difficulties in keeping to the program of regular meditation, or in sustaining the period itself once started on the day's exercise, will sooner or later go."

"When the time for practice comes, he should feel interested, pleased, and eager to begin. If he feels nothing like this but merely that a routine duty is to be fulfilled, or a monotonous necessity is to be endured, the chances for success are reduced."

"One important error made too often by beginners is to sit down to their exercise in the wrong frame of mind. They come to it demanding, wanting, or expecting a mystical experience, that is, a bestowal of Grace. They will get a better result if they reverse this attitude and replace it with a giving of themselves, a loving offering of their heart and a feeling of joy at being able to sit down with the thought of the Beloved without interference by any other activity. If they will only give before they try to get, they will have much less cause to complain of their failures in meditation."

"If your meditations are barren and dry, one or more of several different reasons may be the cause, and consequently one or more of several different remedies may be needed. Among these, a useful but neglected remedy is to pray for, or meditate on, the inner welfare of others, either specific persons or humanity in general. In that case, do not confine yourself exclusively to those in your family dearest to you, for they are extensions of yourself, and your interest in them is egoistic. To help others in this secret way will bring others to your help in your own time of need."

"Meditation that is not accompanied by a deep and warm feeling of reverence will take much longer to reach its goal, if it reaches it at all."

"The belief that reality can be touched only in the trance state implies that its attainment is an intermittent condition and that a man would have to spend twenty-four hours every day to sustain it if he wished to remain perfectly enlightened. This is an error, a case of confusion between the end and only one of the means to this end. It is the love which he brings to the task which really matters. Prolonged trances, set meditations, and formal reflections are, after all, only instruments, whereas such love is the dynamic power that wields them."