Concentration vs. Contemplation vs. Transcending (Michael Mamas: On Meditation)

Surya Ram Meditation Instruction: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2C63C7FD1F8F6691 In this video, Michael Mamas discusses Meditation: Concentration, Contemplation, and Transcending. There are many different forms of meditation. A lot of times we start to get confused and try to project one form of meditation onto another form of meditation. Some people call meditation basically contemplation: you’re sitting and thinking about something or feeling into something or reflecting on something, etc. Some people say, “Oh, I meditate when I garden in my backyard.” If they want to call that a form of meditation, that’s their business. Some people think that meditation requires concentration and effort: You push out thoughts, stay focused, and stay on the Self with no thoughts. If a thought comes, you try to resist it or get rid of it somehow. Or maybe if you’re doing a mantra chant, you just focus on the mantra and no thoughts: mantra, mantra, mantra, mantra. All those things are NOT what we are talking about when we talk about the Surya Ram Meditation. The Surya Ram Meditation is all about entering into a state of physiology that’s natural for all human beings. In fact, we all briefly go into that meditative state here and there throughout the day. There’s a moment right before you fall asleep where for a brief moment, you go into that meditative state, and then to sleep. What happens when you witness a magician’s trick is you have an experience of bliss and delight. For a brief moment there, the magician tricked your beliefs and notions of life on the surface of existence. All of a sudden, something happened that you didn’t expect. For a brief moment, you transcend the surface of life and you’re awareness goes boom, very briefly touches into that meditative state, that level that is beyond relativity, just the unbounded Self. That brings delight. It can happen when you’re sitting daydreaming that for a brief period you go into a meditative state. This doesn’t mean that when you’re daydreaming, you’re always in a meditative state, but it can happen. When we talk about transcending and the Surya Ram Meditation, what we teach here, the purpose is to go into that meditative state in a way that you can go into it whenever you want. You can stay in that state for a period of time. Why do we want to do that? Because it purifies the physiology. It awakens the physiology and your awareness to the depth of your own being. There’s the idea of homeostasis in the area of health. Homeostasis maintains the normal functioning of the physiology. If you cut yourself, there’s an inner intelligence that guides the healing of the cut. The whole point of this meditation is that there is a place, we call it the Transcendent, the Absolute, or whatever you want to call it is fine. There is this place deep inside and the physiology can become more and more integrated with, more and more accustomed to, resting into and functioning from that place of equilibrium, ba