Active Meditation

Active Meditation
When we sit with our eyes closed to silence the mind, we are at first submerged by a torrent of thoughts; they crop up from every side, like frightened or even aggressive rats.
(Satprem, "The Adventure of Consciousness")
http://integral-yoga2.narod.ru/IntegralYoga/Satprem/Adventure_of_Consciousness/Satprem.Adventure_of_Consciousness.eng.htm

Some people was critical with Satprem's flowery language and thought there was something wrong with him, but it was comprehensible when he felt himself to belong to that wave of symbolic and sacrilegious poetry and poets which appeared in France in the last decades of 1800, of which he shared somehow that bohemian kind of life and reasons of existence at least for a season. He was born an adventurer, and so he looked at Consciousness, as an Adventure.

But here in this sentence is not Satprem what we look at but the traditional approach of an european mind and the traditional position. That sentence basically means: sit, meditate, silence, achievement of silence. But when we analyze closer the sentence we see there are possible remarks to be made.
The first and most important: How is it that the very root of the noise may produce silence?
The ego, that we associate to the thinking mind, is that noise. Is it possible that the noise may produce silence out of itself?

Because we may be led to think that if some silence is there, it is because of the operations and stern attitude of the ego, when actually it has nothing to do with the silence, which is -in fact- what is there when the ego is -not there-.

Another point is : that silence is to be reached sitting in meditation, and what happen with the rest of  the day? Is it noise allowed or silence?
And after all what is meditation?

We have to came to the evident conclusion that "ego" and "silence" are -concomitant-, but not interdependent, because noise may not produce silence out of itself.
You understand the point here.
So, the real question to be posed would be: how to set ideal conditions for that silence to manifest itself, to emerge spontaneously, because if it is not spontaneous it will be a manipulation of the ego, an instrumentalization of the silence for our own purpose and not for the purpose of the silence, which may well have a different purpose from our own. Because we want the silence to stop our thoughts, not for  what the silence is in -itself-; we set a series of circumstances which looks negative to us and we want to substitute that with another set of opposed circumstances as bliss, peace, etc., we actually are merchandising silence, we are trying to make a smart business, by selling something we don´t give any value and exchanging it with a new and wonderful set of privileged bliss and spiritual knowledge.

After all, who and why is searching for silence?
An ego tired of himself and its limitations? Who wants silence? Why?
Because it seems an historical or doctrinaire proof that something has been achieved by sitting in meditation?
Is it the great alchemy of the being we are looking for, to which silence seems akeen?
But is this great alchemy something we built, or it expresses itself when the ego is not there?
You understand those are important questions, because we want to learn how to meditate, and basically we do not even know what meditation is.
So to start with: What is meditation?
An action, within that same field of wanting to produce silence.
So it is a movement vitiated from the beginning, because we are -presuming- a result into that direction, the ego is trying to extend its purpose into a next future, you see, it is a farther mental operation, which may exclude any other thing meant to manifest itself.
Because we have linked again meditation with silence. As an indissoluble thing.
But, and if meditation were something larger than this we are expecting, or different, how could we program its manifestation?
Again, is that a -legitimate- movement?
Evidently, to know what meditation is we need attention.
Attention to the process, which is not a process to be established routinely at fixed hours in time, but pretends to involve our whole life at any moment, because we -know- somehow, we feel a certain urgency that a change should be made and that change has to be a whole radical change, that meditation should be something more complete, which breaks with routine and devolve its meaning to life.

So at first sight it seems that meditation should be purposeless, at least not with the purposes of the ego, and it needs to sustain itself on attention, and needs to be an action extended in time, not a clock-directed purpose of spiritual transformation.
But why we want to transform and what?
If meditation sustain itself on attention, then, -attention- is here the most important element, sitting in meditation would be of subordinate value. We sit in meditation so to produce attention.
But is attention produced by the mind or the ego?
Or rather is a condition of being, as much the noise or the silence are?
So, what is attention?
It is evidently not a purpose.
If I concentrate on what I'm reading, the mind and my breath becomes still, but attention do not belong to that mind, it is something beyond it.

The attachment to results in meditation may become one more of the attachments we pretend to free ourselves!
Instead is important to understand the process of attention, which is all what is meant to achieve sitting in asanas, or in many other different ways man has discovered since its appearance.
When we give attention to the whole process, we certainly see the breath and the attention are related.
And we see that a deeper attention needs almost a suspension of the breath, and we know that a few deep breaths concentrate the mind as we often see athletes in television before their performance.
So we -know-, we spontaneously know the relation with breath and being, meditation takes out that spontaneous knowledge we -already- have, or rather -are-.
But it may be an error to  think that -only- sitting in meditation that can be achieved.
In this sense, the whole Nature truly meditate, birds and animals and trees and flowers, but only the human doesn't...
It is because they, the animals, are what they are, with attention.
They do not pretend being something else, but express their true nature.
Without complication of any kind, just plain and simply that.
So may be we should ask ourself if meditation asks to reflect that original condition as a previous movement, if the base of meditation is just -being oneself-.