Have you observed what is happening in your mind every moment? It vacillates between the past and the future. It is either in the past occupied with what has happened or in the future thinking about what you have to do.
Knowledge is being aware of this phenomenon of the mind -- of what is happening right now in your mind as you are reading this article. There are innumerable volumes available on a countless number of topics, but the awareness of your own mind cannot be learnt from a book.
There is another tendency of the mind -- it clings onto the negative. If 10 positive events are followed by one negative event, the mind will cling to the negative. It will simply forget the 10 positive events.
With meditation, however, you can become aware of these two tendencies of the mind and bring it to the present. Happiness, joy, enthusiasm, efficiency and effectiveness are all in the present.
When you culture your mind with meditation, its tendency of holding on to negative emotions simply disappears. You gain the ability to start living in the present moment and are able to let go of the past.
In your day-to-day life, you come across all kinds of situations that can be challenging and demanding a degree of alertness to be able to make good choices. These situations give rise to different states of mind and neither life nor the states of mind occur with our permission. In fact, they often occur in direct defiance to our wishes. Meditation can bring about a balance between the different states of the mind. You can learn to switch from the tough aspect to the delicate aspect within you.
One of the biggest deterrents for people not being able to meditate is that they don't have enough time. Yet when they start to meditate, they find they have more time, because they are able to focus and get more done. Not only that, the regular practice of meditation also leads to greater intuitiveness, sharpens the mind through focus and expands it through relaxation.
With the integration of meditation into one's daily life, a fifth state of consciousness, called cosmic consciousness, dawns. Cosmic consciousness means perceiving the whole cosmos as part of oneself. When we perceive the world as a part of us, love flows strongly between the world and us. This love empowers us to bear the opposing forces and the disturbances in our lives. Anger and disappointments become fleeting emotions that occur momentarily and then vanish.
The confluence of knowledge, understanding and practice make life complete. When you grow into higher states of consciousness, you find that you are no longer thrown off balance by different situations and disturbances.
