Awareness Externalized
In concentrating on a flower, one of the sādhanas that you have been given, when awareness is held steady and only the flower exists within the mind, as well as outside your body, close observation and scrutiny of the flower can then begin. An intuitive flash will bring knowledge of the complete cycle of that particular form in all phases of its manifestation. This intuitive flash comes to those just beginning the processes of meditation. Later on, the process can be slowed down and sustained. We cannot be imaginative here or fantasize, for only through actually keying into the particular area in time and space does one begin to contemplate future and past in relationship to it.
Living in the external area of the mind, it appears that thoughts are always changing. New concepts come and old ones go, as do customs and systems of living. From an inner perspective, it is similar to riding on a train, seeing the countryside, animals, people and buildings quickly pass by. Everything seems to be changing, but it is only you who is traveling through space. So it is within the mind. You travel through inner space rapidly or slowly, depending upon the nature of your sādhana or your natural emotional velocity. It is through holding fast to this perspective that a swift inroad to further enlightenment can be attained. If you hold to the perspective that thoughts and forms are always changing, your awareness automatically traps itself into the pygmy consciousness as a victim in a vast, ever-changing conglomerate of prāṇic mind substances. You have experienced this, no doubt, as it is the experience of those who have not awakened to the inner path.
What we must seek to see is the all-pervading energy which permeates all form. It is not necessary to centralize on one thought or sequence of pictures as opposed to another to gain this new perspective, for we cannot, in a sense, climb up to it. We have to drop down into it by going deep within the essence of the mind and intuiting the all-pervading force. We come out of that state as a pure, unhindered awareness, able to flow and focus detachedly in the accustomed areas of mind that make up what we term “our life,” and as new cavities of mind awaken before our vision, we flow in and out of them not hampered or hindered by what is seen.