How to Attain Samadhi in Meditation

In order to experience samadhi in meditation, you first have to understand what keeps you from attaining savikalpa samadhi.

At the level of unconsciousness, which is to say, the level of being identified with your thinking, you are a victim of your thoughts.

Your thoughts and emotions control you and ultimately create your world. Every thought you think becomes your reality.

So if the thought arises "I am not good enough" then you identify with that thought. You become the "I" in that sentence. You experience the stress and unhappiness around it. You take it on personally and become that thought. There is a contraction that happens, a feeling of stress with every thought that you identify with.

But in meditation, at the level of awareness, you have the choice of whether you identify with the thoughts or you let them go and remain as the witness.

In awareness, when the thought arises "I am not good enough," you can see the thought arising and let it go. Or really, what you are doing is not grabbing hold of it in the first place. And then it will not affect you in the least. It will not be personal. You will remain as the witness in a perfect state of peace. This is the prequisite to savikalpa samadhi.

Only if you grab hold of the thought, get caught up in the content of the thought will it affect you.

Thoughts arise by themselves. In meditation, we are not looking to control thoughts any more than we are looking to control the rain. So allow the thoughts to come but watch them.

If your attention is strong enough in meditation that you are aware of the thought arising, then you can simply let go of the thought. The thought arises and disappears all on its own, you need not grab hold of it at all.

So practice being aware of the thought arising and instantly letting it go. Then as you progress, you learn not to grab hold of the thought at all. It just passes through.

This is challenging because you are attached to identifying with thoughts in the same way a drunk is attached to drinking.

So say he decides to stop drinking.

He walks by the bar the first time and the desire is too strong and he has to go in for a drink. But at some point he realizes his mistake and he leaves.

The second time he walks by the bar, he wants to go in but he does not give in to the desire. And without that drink there is much upheaval, emotional, physical and mental.

But the next time he walks by the bar, it is easier to pass by.

Each time, less upheaval, less desire, more freedom.

And after a while, he passes by the bar and has no interest in going in.

He can't even imagine why anyone would want to go in there on such a beautiful day and drink such awful tasting stuff.

It is the same with your thoughts and entering savikalpa samadhi.

If you get to the level of attention where you can see the thought arising, then you can choose to not grab hold of it.

It may be hard at first, there maybe much upheaval. It may feel like you have just lost your security blanket. But with every thought you let go, it is easier to let the next one go and remain as the witness.

The thought arises about cookies, and you really want to imagine eating the cookie, but you let it go. And it hurts a little, not having the pleasure of imagining that cookie. There is an emptiness there.

But with practice, the bliss of witnessing the thought will far outweigh the tiny pleasure and stress you get for imagining the cookie. You will fall in love with the emptiness.

It will come to a point where you do not even see the content of the thought. You will feel the thought arising more as just a movement of energy that arises and disappears on its own.

And when witnessing becomes your natural experience, you naturally enter savikalpa samadhi.

First what happens when you enter witness consciousness is all judgmental thoughts disappear. There is great peace just in this level of awareness. You experience that everything simply is.

Then what happens is all thoughts about the personal "I" will disappear, meaning the thoughts about your life, your friends, your job, what movie you saw last week- All of those thoughts that pertain to you and your personal life disappear and you begin to experience incredible dreamlike visions that arise by themselves and have nothing to do with your personal life. As they arise, they burn away in bliss.

And as this happens, you will experience the thoughts arising as energy out of energy and disappearing back into energy.

In this experience, the feeling of being a person will temporarily disappear. Your whole sense of being you, of being a body, mind will go and you will experience only consciousness, only formless energy, only bliss. Everything is simply arising and dissolving in energy. This is Savikalpa Samadhi.

And in Savikalpa samadhi, you will no longer feel any desire to identify with thoughts. It is like the bond between you and thoughts has been broken. In samadhi, the idea of a 'me' as a person with problems and desires has been burned away and you exist in a pure state of awareness.

You will experience everything as bliss. You will be immersed in a peace beyond what could be imagined. As though every cell has been reset to its natural vibration of bliss.

To enter into Savikalpa Samadhi some form of Shaktipat (Spiritual energy) is needed. Usually this Shaktipat is transmitted through an enlightened master but you can now also receive Shakti through sound..

By listening to some unique "Shakti" meditation music, shaktipat is transmitted to you and very naturally you experience deep states of meditation & bliss. You can listen to the free samples by visiting the Shaktipat Awakening CDs website and experience the bliss for yourself.

How Attain Savikalpa Samadhi in Meditation

How Attain Savikalpa Samadhi
in Meditation