HIM Blog #7: The central technique of HIM meditation - Attentive discernment

Before meditation, we need to be very clear on our intentions. This is important because your intentionality exercises your free will to act in line with particular values that underlie the whole reason we are meditating in the first place. These intentions should cover the broader underlying and specific reasons why we are meditating. By being clear with our intentionality, we stimulate the inner values that control the direction of our attention, which increase the likelihood that our focus will remain oriented towards goals we are consciously trying to achieve with this practice. When we are not explicit about our intentions, it becomes more difficult to discern if our attention is hitting the intended target and increases the likelihood that we will remain in distracted states without being fully aware that we are heading off-track.

Generally, our meta-intention is to put God at the top of our value hierarchy by giving our life to Him. We desire to be reborn in the likeness of Jesus by consciously embracing the Holy Spirit as the foundation of our identity, through the establishment of an authentic personal relationship with God. This meta-intention is what motivates us to practice HIM meditation, but we then need to be specific in relation to what we do during meditation. The specific intention for HIM meditation is to fall into silent communion with the infinite pure consciousness of the Holy Spirit within. One way to do this is to align our attention with God’s attention towards His beloved creation.

A fundamental characteristic of God is that He is omniscient, meaning He knows all things that could possibly exist in reality. Therefore, He is cognizant of your whole subjective experience of life, as the Holy Spirit is within us experiencing all that we experience. God knows all things because all things are ‘of’ Him, which is to say all of creation has been forged by the essence of God’s being. Therefore, God sees all things as His beloved creation and, thus, has a perfect love for all things He creates. It is this love that sustains and upholds creation. Thus, when He is experiencing the world via your perception, He indeed is in a silent immutable state of love towards that which He has created, including oneself as the personal perceiver He is seeing the world through. When we move our ego-controlled attention from our own thoughts and direct it to the ‘outer’ world, a blanket of silence befalls our perception, as we are valuing the unfoldment of external possibilities that God is creating in the present moment. This direction of attention aligns with the directionality of looking that the Holy Spirit within you values, creating a sense of inseparability between yourself, as the perceiver, and the perception your consciousness is generating. As a reward for aligning your values consciously with the Holy Spirit, He will cause you to feel an unmistakable feeling of wholesomeness, inner security and love, which reinforces the understanding that paying attention in this direction is a gateway into communion with God who is always here and now in the present moment. Therefore, more specifically, it is our intention to fix our silent attention on a target object that is unfolding in our external perception of the world.

This then leads to another specific intention which is to employ a meditative technique I call ‘attentive discernment’, which helps us refocus on our intended target when we notice that we are distracted. Attentive discernment is the central technique of HIM meditation that we must learn. As we ease into the meditative state, values related to our ego will inevitably try and take over the experience and hijack your attention towards self-created thoughts, imagery and memories etc. This is very natural as the ego loves to control everything and has an immature need for attention. However, this meditation is a practice of remembering God within us and, thus, denying our ego in this moment. Therefore, upon the realisation that our attention has moved away from the target object, we can then take back control of our attention and redirect it back on the intended target, aligned with values that exist far deeper than your ego values. Every time you notice you’re distracted and calmly take back control of your attention, you have successfully disempowered the influence your ego has over your life. This is hugely significant as you are reinforcing your ability to choose exactly where you want your attention to be directed based on your God given free-will. The practice of attentive discernment provides microcosmic examples of how you want to unfold your whole life, as we ultimately want to take back control of our attention and thus, life, so we can then wholeheartedly give it over to God to have maximal influence over the unfoldment of our life. Therefore, it is a very good thing that you catch yourself in states of distraction during HIM meditation as it gives you another opportunity to consciously reclaim your attention and allows values that align with God within you to take your attention to the outer target object. This technique may seem simple, but it is indeed very powerful, as you are beginning to develop a sense of sharp discernment of when your attention drifts in unintended directions.

Every time you practice attentive discernment you are essentially heightening your consciousness to new levels where you begin noticing how quickly and easily your attention can be completely railroaded by ego-related values that may oppose your intentions. Fortunately, the meditative context that we have set up accentuates these moments when our attention falls under the control of irrelevant values. This is because of two dynamics that occur during such moments. Firstly, we can ‘feel’ a big difference between the values that are at play between the intention of outer focus, that align with deeper Godly values that relate to the love He has for His creation and values that exist at shallower personal levels of our being. When we practice silent focus on the breath for example, we will notice emotions within us that are extremely deep and subtle that promote a sense of grounded expansion and openness, as we become absorbed by the presence of God’s love existent in the present moment. As we are drawing nearer to this experience, we often are abruptly interrupted by values vying for attentive control, creating an opposing experience that feels very bounded and embodied, where we inwardly contract with self-focus and close ourselves off from the flow of the present moment.

This difference in the levels of where these values reside help us refine our discernment of where our attention is being projected, as it becomes viscerally obvious when we have our attention fixated on God’s externally unfolding creation compared to the inner focus of oneself. Secondly, when we become distracted, our attention had to make a drastic U-turn as it moved away from ‘outer’ focus to ‘inner’ focus. This is often indiscernible when it occurs in throughout the day-to-day activities of life, but when we are in a highly controlled meditative context, this shift from outer to inner focus becomes quite obvious. When we retake control of our attention, we again notice the clear experiential difference once we begin beaming it on the outer target again, which acts to refine the consciousness of how our attention behaves.

Most importantly, during the process of moving your attention from the distraction back to the target object, you must embody a position of ‘pure consciousness’, which exists in the background silence of your whole experience. In other words, you had to exist briefly in the stillness behind your whole perception, where God dwells, in order to notice you were in the state of distraction. These moments mark our initial meditative experiences of falling into the ‘present moment’. We also then notice how the presence of this silence remains with external focus, as our attention is not internally directed on the mental noise of our thinking mind and, thus, we remain present with the current unfolding moment. We must never underestimate the power of being attentive to the present moment, as this is where we ‘find’ God and notice His silent omnipresence. It is only in the present moment where we can touch eternity in this temporal realm because that is where God is. When we experience His silence in the present moment it means we are aligning our personal values with God’s values within us, as He dearly loves His beloved creation which we can feel and recognise when we fully attend to it. He will deliver a deep sense of calmness and security, which encourages us to keep beaming our attention in this direction. Such positive orderly feelings are given to us by the Holy Spirit, as, this state of prolonged silence, allows direct communion with God, which pleases Him dearly and, thus, rewards us with the felt reception of His infinite love.

Experiencing the present moment is precisely what the Devil does not want us to do. This fills His black hardened heart with fear, as he can’t come near you when in the presence of God. The Devil will do anything he can to make us distracted and pull our attention away from the present moment because he knows full well that is where we can immediately enter the intimacy of God’s presence and love. The Devil desperately does not want us to find God, as he wants us to be separate and isolated apart from God’s communion, which puts us in a position where we are completely exposed to his evil influences. Knowing God is found in the present moment and, thus, rather easy to find, is the big secret Satan is trying to hide from us. He hates it when we finally wake up to the ease of direct communion with Him. The Devil also works his way into our heart via the human ego, which is why he will heavily influence our ego causing it to be very noisy and persistent, providing abundant mental distraction, when we are trying to meditate and go about our normal day-to-day life. These spiritual dynamics that are most clearly noticed during meditation reinforce how powerful the ‘attentive discernment’ technique truly is, as it acts as a front to subtle yet deeply evil manipulations Satan is always trying to attack us with.

When we become more competent in holding our attention on the constant creation of the outer world for prolonged periods in mental silence, our meditative experiences will begin taking their own course, as we are essentially giving up control of our attention/life and giving it to God. As we repetitiously go through this meditative process we become more and more aware of the ever-present silence that our whole experience is nested within. We become more conscious of our consciousness, which means our attention begins to loop back on itself driven by God’s intentionality to silently commune with us. Even though God values His creation, He indeed loves Himself primarily, which means He will begin taking over control of our attention, allowing it to collapse inwardly on His internal presence as the Holy Spirit. This is where God begins to control and direct the experience of the meditation. In other words, you become solely focused on the remembrance of His Spirit within, which allows you to surrender to His presence and enter His domain; His temple within you.

The meditation unfolds according to His dictates and based on what He wants you to know at this time. If we develop a habit of meditation, we simply give God more and more opportunity to communicate to us what it is He wants us to know. This information will relate to who you truly are and the Godly purpose He has instilled within you by design. He may also expose within your barriers that exist within your ego structure that inhibit your ability to fulfill the desires He has for you. No one can tell you what you will experience when in communion with God, as it is exclusive to the unique relationship you have with Him. Hopefully though, HIM meditation will act as a springboard that helps you set off in the right direction where you can more easily discern God’s omnipresence within your life and therefore develop a relationship with our Lord that never stops growing and flourishing.

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