Meditation on the Feeling of Being

A quick Google search of the WWW will quickly reveal just how many
types of meditation there are available to practice, each with its own
disciplines and techniques. The ultimate goal of each one of them is to
go beyond practice and make them seamless, then they become your
natural state. Seamless meditation is when there is no differentiation
or separation between the meditative state and day to day life.
Most people begin meditating by learning to still their mind and make it
peaceful, and this is good. Once their mind is still, they can become
aware of what they feel. Feelings will then be recognized to exist
within a hierarchy. At the top of this hierarchy are the most profound
feelings; those of joy, love, bliss and happiness. By meditating on your
feelings, a deeper sense of well-being gradually develops and
transforms the lower, superficial feelings, like fear, anger, boredom,
loneliness etc. into the feelings of love, bliss and deep joy.
Once the whole array of human feelings are available, sit quietly and
meditate, focusing on the feeling of being. Its obvious that you most
certainly do exist. You might question exactly who or what you are, but
that you do indeed exist, there can be no doubt. So remain sitting and
contemplate on this fact that you exist. Youll soon see that you dont
need to think to exist, you dont even need to be awake to exist.
Neither do you need to be aware of anything to exist. Therefore,
gradually let go of everything else so that all thats left is this feeling

of existing, the feeling of being. Assume an attitude of indifferent to

everything; lose interest in everything during this meditation, apart
from that most basic feeling of simply being or existing. Resist the
temptation to see yourself as being something and just stay with
simply being. If it helps, you can ask do I need this (or that) to exist?
If the answer is no, then immediately let it go. Gradually, silently and
even without thoughts, feel what it is to simply be.
When you can relax your attention, releasing everything and letting
your attention return to its very source, youll notice that as soon as
you stop giving your attention to anything, there is no longer an
awareness of any thing. Then you can simply rest in your beingness,
just as you are. This feeling of being is always, already there, way
before it became modified and diminished into lesser feelings such as
those we experience in everyday life; i.e.; excitement, disappointment,
satisfaction, frustration, lust, revulsion, certainty, doubt, interest,
boredom, energetic, lazy, fear, anticipation, joy, sorrow, tenderness,
anger, etc. the list could go on forever, but you get the idea. That most
basic feeling, before any other feeling can arise, is the feeling of
being. Relax your attention so that all you are aware of is this feeling
of being, make it seamless, at least for the time. You will then realize
that youre abiding in the very source of yourself, the point where your
existence originated the Self.
Another way of approach is the Vedantic practice of Vichara or SelfEnquiry, which is to ask, Who am I? In the beginning you might try to
answer this intellectually, but eventually and with persistent practice,
you can feel the answer, and it comes from the heart rather than the
head. So initially think about the question, then move on to feeling the
answer and finally become the answer. This question will lead you to
discover the sense of I Am that we all have. Not I am this or I am
that but simply I am without distinction or qualification. If and when
we can feel beyond this ego-self, we can let go of the feeling of I and
feel the mere Am-ness behind the I am. Resting in that Am-ness,

all sense of separate identity evaporates and you are present as the
feeling of being.

Sri Ramana Maharshi

This may lead to a swoon of bliss and light. This light is the light of
higher awareness and is the light by which all objects (and all lesser
lights) are seen and known. It is through this light that feelings, the
mind and all thought is known.
During our normal waking hours it is mostly our verbal, thinking mind
that we identify with, without any sense of our original, inherent, true,
happy, blissful and loving identity, the one that lies within, beyond and
behind it. Once we are able to engage meditation on the feeling if
being, our perspective will have been changed forever.