Stilling the mind is as difficult as anything you will ever do. Effort is required, but it's not the key. When we want to overcome a bad habit, it seems the more we struggle the tighter the grip it has upon us. Therefore, it is better to adopt an attitude of deflection; by making progress in an area over which you have control, the problem can be resolved.
So, what can we control? Our breath, and the focus of our attention.
Once you have become proficient in utilizing the Calming Breath, you will be ready to approach a very interesting doorway. Self-Observation is the key to opening this door.
Focus your attention on your breath. As thought arises, do not struggle to push it down, but allow it to flow through you. Remain detached from the thoughts that arise: simply Observe and remember to Breathe.
If you can maintain the observing function you will eventually notice that there are pauses between thoughts. After observing these pauses for a while, they will appear to extend, to last longer; while thought fades more into the background of attention. Here thought is beginning to reveal itself as background noise to a silence full of potential.
At this point, do not make the mistake of becoming attached to the pauses. This only creates a struggle for control of attention, which will pull you right back into thought. Just continue to observe the pause...the stream of thought... the pause... and breathe.
This flow of pause/thought/pause/thought has a rhythm to it. The rhythm has a musical quality that is an underlying stream that will carry you through the doorway.
Energy seeks to fill a void. The doorway of the pause enters a void. But it is not a void in the sense of total emptiness as we normally apply the word. It is both empty, and filled with the potential of all possibilities. It is difficult to describe the experience of being aware of self as consciousness without physicality, without locality, outside of time as we normally experience it. There is a knowing and experiencing of everything all at once. It is the homecoming of union with All That Is. Once you have experienced the fullness of this dimension of being, you will know that consciousness is independent of physical matter; you will know your own personal consciousness as a small, but intimately connected, part of universal being, unique and enduring. And when someone asks you, What have you learned?, you'll only be able to respond in vague terms as I am doing now. Essence cannot be truly articulated, it can only be experienced and developed through experience.
Lord Alfred Tennyson described his experience as follows:
"... a kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being: and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility; the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is beyond words?"
In order for man to evolve, rather than devolve, Knowledge and Essence must grow in balance. For all knowledge without experience of essence is incomplete knowledge. It can be seen in the scientific mindset that, without an experience of universal connectivity, has brought us to our current dangerously imbalanced ecological condition. But just as harmful, is a developed essence without knowledge. This is seen in the raw charismatic vision gone amuck. It comes in many guises, from the tyrant waging a holy war, to the religious fervor of an Inquisition. Logic without heart, or heart without logic: neither complete the journey with positive outcome.
There is only one way to enter the void: stripped of all artifice; the way of innocent curiosity and trust. Your energetic core of consciousness knows the way and will joyfully play in the void, when you finally allow the waters to remain still.
And when you've returned to this time, in this place, you must strive to incorporate your experience into the processes of daily life, to share what you have experienced. Through the attempt to articulate and demonstrate experience, for yourself and others, we develop Knowledge.
For most of us living in a techno-military-industrial complex, essence is tyrannized by the rules of a psuedo-knowledge twisted with pride, which denies true evolutionary development on any level. The backlash is apparent in the growing religious fervor demonstrated as we approached the millenia year; and now, as we struggle with the realities and images surrounding the 'war on terroism' and concepts of 'holy war', we find ourselves deeply entrenched within issues that seek balance. Therefore the man who wishes to evolve must seek knowledge of universal laws and balance that knowledge with experience of essence. All the while carefully observing the nuances of his own personal imbalances as they emerge, so he may rectify them accordingly.