By: Don Ernesto Ortiz
I have had the great fortune to have many wonderful teachers that have pointed the way for me to understand, as much as I can “meditation”
I remember the first one, a Zen Buddhist teacher (Sensei). When I was just 18 years of age. During meditation he used to walk around when we were sitting checking to make sure we had the right posture and that we did not move. He use to carry a branch with him and the moment I moved, he hit me with the branch and said, “don’t move”
Well needless to say I got waked with that branch many times because I could not keep still, my foot went to sleep, my leg got numbed, my ear itched… I think you can relate to this. Finally I told him Sensei, I come here to meditate and you keep waking me with the branch. He told me, you don’t belong here, go away. Wow! What a statement to make to an 18 year old that knew nothing about meditation. I waited in his presence while I was processing this statement, because in truth, I didn’t want to go away; he noticed this and said to me, go home and sit for 30 minutes without moving, when you can do that come back. So I did, I went home started practicing and finally after a few weeks I was able to sit for 30 minutes without moving. I was happy and went back to him and told him, ok I can do it now, he looked at me and said, ok go home and come back when you can sit for 50 minutes. I felt the challenge and without a question I went home and started practicing until I could sit for 50 to 60 minutes.
I went back and told him; ok I can do it now! Without saying a single word he pointed me to a cushion and I sat to meditate.
At the end of the meditation he said to me “you will never be able to master your mind without first mastering your body”
That was the gem, the treasure that he gave me that has stayed with me for the rest of my life.
So how do the “Akashic Records” play out in meditation? If we understand that the Akashic Fields are vast and unlimited, a vibrational frequency very subtle that exists everywhere, that has existed in the past, past, it is present in the present and it will continue without limitations into the universal future.
In 2014 Quantum Physicist recognized this field and named it the “Akashic Fields”. A field that is constantly impacted by everything that is alive, and everything is alive. The function of the field is to record those impacts or imprints so it is constantly receiving from nature, from the elements, animals, the planets and from people and our emotional bodies.
The “Akashic Records,” are unlimited fields of energy; they are called Akashic because they are composed of Akasha, meaning “energetic or primary substance,” “the substance from which all life is formed,” and they are called Records because “the objective of the fields is to record all life experience.” “The Akashic Records contain past and present knowledge, experiences and expressions of the soul’s journey from its inception, as well as the possibility of the unfolding of future events.” Akasha, is everywhere, “It is the connective tissue that holds the universe together, much like the connective tissue in our own bodies.”
The Akasha is the primordial domain of the cosmos, the domain that “connects” and “remembers.” Everything that happens in space and time is subtly connected with everything else, and everything that happens remains in space and time: it is “saved” similarly to items entered on the Internet and the Cloud. Akasha is the cosmic Internet that “saves” all things in the universe.
The existence of a deep domain of the world beyond the domain we experience seems like a subjective insight, beyond objective reality. Yet it is an insight that has been widely talked about in the history of thought. Plato called it the “Realm of Forms and Ideas”, and identified it as the “Seat of the Soul”. The Hellenic philosopher Pythagoras called it “Kosmos”, and Plotinus “The One”.
The Hindu Rishis called the deep reality of the world Akasha, the ultimate reality of the world; eternal and eternally unchanging and changing molding and shaping our universe. The world of space and time is lila, the unceasing play of appearance and disappearance, of forming and dissolution. It is but a manifestation of Akasha.
Swami Vivekananda said that the Akasha is “the omnipresent, all-penetrating existence. Everything that has form, everything that is the result of combination, is evolved out of this Akasha.” According to Paramahansa Yogananda the Akasha is the “subtle ‘background” against which all things become perceptible. And in the same vein famed physicist David Bohm noted that the true meaning of the things that appear to our senses can be seen only when we consider that they arose from an underlying field. He called this field the “implicate order.”
So as far as our soul and its evolution from the moment of our soul’s inception to this very moment, one lifetime after another we have left behind an imprint of all of our actions and interaction with life itself.
The result is a library of memories recorded on this field; we can call it our “Book of Life”, our personal “Akashic Records”. So they go from the very personal to the expanded version of interactions that we have with others, lets say our family and the shared karma from one life after another; in this case we have communal records. We also have cultural “Akashic Records”, a group of people, and a tribe that is evolving at their own speed as a culture and keeping a tight karmic bond between them. We can then take it bigger than that and go to planetary “Akashic Records” and go from there to universal Records and you can go to infinity from there.
So just imagine the potential to explore inner and outer fields or worlds if we are able to connect or jump into these fields and explore. We can go into our meditations with our Akashic Records open and have our meditation take a much more deeper meaning. If the desire to self investigate is there, if we want to explore the condition of our mind and its relationship to our emotions, then being inside of the “Akashic Fields” and our personal “Book of Life” will make it much easier to access the root cause, or the moment of inception of that emotion, since it may not be the first time we experience that particular emotion. We can then explore in the fields until we find the first time ever that we exerience that emotion and heal it.
So no matter the type of meditation that you do, the Akashic Records can give you a much deeper experience. Many years ago I was in the presence of one of my Gurus and I asked him a question about my meditation, I asked him about the main points of meditation. He asked what kind of meditation I was doing, and I told him mindfulness of breathing. “What will you concentrate on when you stop breathing?” he asked. I thought it was beautiful question and in a few seconds I was able to realize the space of emptiness that I created when I stopped breathing. I started then giving equal attention to the inhale and hold, and the exhale and hold.
Mantras and contemplative prayers are another form of meditation these can be characterized as pure undivided attention while chanting or praying. This is what all-contemplative practices have in common a thread that connects them all and that can be woven in a multitude of skilful directions depending on the purpose and direction we give them. There are numerous techniques of meditation, some focus on the field of perception itself, and we call those methods mindfulness; others focus on a specific object, and we call those concentrative practices. There are also techniques that shift back and forth between the field and the object.
Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy coming together of doing and being, the two sides of a bridge. When we have the patience to sit and look, little by little the muddy waters of the mind, the chattering that goes on in our brain comes to a stop and we are able to see what it is hidden behind, slowly we can let go of the mind and the heart center opens; this moves us from thought/emotion to experience an extraordinary reality that gives us clarity and understanding.
Meditation masters teach much about meditation, one of the keys that they talk about is to be fully present in this one breath, this moment, not the past or the future but the now, this, we can call a transcendental moment of the nowness. In the field of Akasha this is the eternal dimension of its timeless presence, not horizontal or vertical, no linear time but past, present and the possibility of the future in the now. Many people struggle with being fully present in the now; but where else could they be? If is not in this precise moment. Meditation is a way of being present and knowing that we are.
What about meditation posture?
Different schools recommend different postures, some of them emphasize a still, erect and formal posture, while others are more flexible and more focused on internal movements; both of these focus deeply on internal movements of consciousness.
The Buddhist, Tibetan and Hindu traditions, suggest an erect, upright spine, hands rest on the lap, with the belly soft; the shoulders relaxed, the chin slightly tucked in, the jaw is relaxed, the tongue behind the upper teeth, the legs are crossed in the lotus or ½ lotus position. It is important to have an erect spine because this way the light, energy, and the energetic flow can go from the base of the spine to the crown and back again undisrupted. If you are not able to sit cross-legged on the floor, sitting on a chair assuming the same erect position will be fine.
The Buddha in His teachings gave us four postures in which we can meditate: sitting, standing, walking and lying down. If you think about it this is quite simple, when you sit, you know that you are sitting; when you stand, you know that you are standing; when you are walking, you know that you are walking and when you are lying down you know that is what you are doing. Out of these four lying down to me is not as effective because there is the natural tendency to fall asleep. Learn to sit like a Buddha, stand like a Buddha, walk like a Buddha. Be like a Buddha, this is the main point of a Buddhist practice.
The Buddha taught six types of meditations: number one and to me the most important of all is “analytical meditation” this is an active meditation in which you are analyzing your emotions and the relationship between them and the condition of your mind. If we experience one predominant emotion, lets say anger in our lives we can meditate on that anger from the present to the past. If we know how to access our Akashic Records, then more power is given to the process because we can enter the “Akashic fields” and explore from present to past and look for the moment of the inception of that anger in our lives. The root cause can be from this life or a past life, this is the beauty of Akasha, it can take us to the moment we gave birth to that emotion, understand it and heal it. Lets remember that every thought, action, energy exchange and emotions we have ever experienced are recorded in our personal “Book of Life” in the “Akasha”.
This meditation is what I call the means of self-liberation from the chains that bind us to negative emotions and believes that don’t serve us in our lives, once we are free from that we can move with greater ease into the future.
The second type is “meditation of love” in which you must adjust your heart to that frequency. Adjust your heart to that which you long for and wish it more for others than for yourself; long for the wealth and welfare of all beings, including the joy and happiness of your enemies, wish for them to have more love in their lives that they are able to contain. Go from the present to the past, reviewing all your relationships, bring each person into your mind and wish them and give them love, eventually you want to get to your mother and father and wish them so so much love and gratitude for their presence in your life.
The third type of meditation is the “meditation of compassion” in which you think and imagine all beings in distress, as vividly as you can, feeling their sorrows and anxieties so as to arise a deep compassion in your soul. How is compassion different than pity? Pity is feeling sorry for someone, maybe you see a beggar in the street and you say; oh poor man I feel sorry for him, sorry energy is not compassion. Compassion is the true and genuine feeling for others to be free from pain and suffering and the wish for them to be happy and free. So you may want to see and say in your meditation the following:
• May all beings obtain happiness and be happy
• Mall all remain free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow
• May all never be separated from authentic happiness
• May all remain in a state of equanimity free from attachments and aversion.
The fourth type is “meditation of joy” in which you think of the wellbeing of others and rejoice with their rejoicing. If you have ever had a friendship or any type of relationship that has come to an end, and that end was not joyous, you can use this meditation to change the Akashic imprints left by your actions on your field and the field of the other person. So you are going to bring that individual to your minds eye and see them smiling and shining their best light with much joy in their lives. You can review all of your relationships in this same way.
The fifth type is “meditation on impurity” in which you consider the effects of wrong doings, the evil consequences of corruption, you may want to think about and consider how trivial are often the pleasures of a moment and how long and sometimes how fatal are the consequences. Think about karmic imprints in the Akashic fields and how you are entangling yourself at a karmic level with another individual or with a group. In your meditation and with your Akashic Records open you can go back to the moment in which the entanglement or the wrongdoing was created. There you will be able to see the action you took and the emotional damage you created in yourself and the other; the action can never be undone but the emotional imprint can be undone and healed by simply dialoging with yourself and the other and with consciousness ask for forgiveness.
The six type of meditation is “meditation on serenity” in this type of meditation you want to cultivate the feeling of “inner peace” in which you want to raise above love and hate, you want to let go of all of your wants, all of stagnated emotions, you want to let go of the constant chattering of the mind, and simply rest in the feeling, the sensation of serenity and inner peace.
If you know how to access your Akashic Records, all of this will take a new flavor, your meditations will be sweeter, much more deeper and significant, as you explore the inner and outer worlds and you blend your entire reality into the oneness of being; leaving behind all struggle and the feeling of separation from source.
I will leave you with the words of wisdom of Tibetan Master Nyoshul Khenpo:
Rest in natural great peace this exhausted mind,
Beaten helplessly by karma and neurotic thoughts
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of Samsara.
Rest in natural great peace
May your meditations be sweet and beautiful, may you be able to infuse them with love, kindness and compassion for yourself and others and may your mind find inner peace.
From the heart,
Don Ernesto Ortiz