For more than a thousand years, the greatest minds of the East and West have been telling us that the source of all our problems is our consciousness. I will join their point of view. Of course, they are right: your consciousness itself "may be the heavens of hell and hell of heaven" (as the English poet John Milton put it). After all, consciousness cannot be removed with the help of a scalpel!
To find the answer to this question, let's first get acquainted with the principles of our consciousness. Consciousness is a complex set of thoughts, ideas, stories, impulses, preferences and emotions. All these thoughts and feelings distort our experience and prevent us from achieving the desired happiness, relaxation, efficiency and healing. Meditation will teach you to change this by focusing your attention and calming your consciousness; if you dig deeper, you will find in the depths of your consciousness some stories and patterns that, over and over again, make you feel suffering and stress, and which you can get rid of through meditation.
So is it still higher or deeper?
Spiritual teachers and personal development advocates have an irresistible craving for "vertical" metaphors. Some believe that you should get to the bottom of your inner experience or penetrate as deeply as possible into your inner being. Others prefer to talk about higher consciousness, or overcoming the secular, or having a consciousness as wide as the sky.
To some extent, the difference between approaches lies in the personal preferences of each teacher. But the difference in their use is related to the attitude towards inner experience: if you believe that the source of being is somewhere deep within you, then you reason in the categories of deepening. If you believe that this source is somewhere in the higher spheres, then you reason in the categories of elevation.
In my humble opinion, if you dig deep enough, you can find yourself at the top of a mountain, and if you climb high enough, you can find yourself at the bottom of the sea. In the end, whatever you call it, it will always be the same. In the end, a pure being can't essentially have a certain place - it exists in every one of us, everywhere and always.
A short walk through your inner possessions
I'm an avid traveler and swimmer, and I prefer the broken metaphors associated with nature. In my opinion, they are very suitable for describing meditation. So imagine going down to the bottom of the lake. Speaking of the lake, I mean you. In other words, we will travel to the depths of your being.
Passing through layers of inner experience
Meditating, you not only develop the ability to concentrate and soothe your consciousness, but also plunge quite deeply into your inner experience, discovering layers of which you did not even know existed. What, in your opinion, is at the bottom? In the tradition of meditation it is called differently: the essence, pure being, true nature, spirit, soul, priceless pearl, the source of all and love. Adepts of Zen Buddhism call it your original face - a person who was with you even before your parents were born. Perhaps you would like to portray it as a source that is a pure, refreshing moisture of being.
This source of being is what you really are, in its very basic, and what you were before you somehow thought you were missing something or that you were not what you should be. This source contains your integrity and completeness, which were inherent in you before you began to feel alone and fragmented. It is a deep feeling of an inextricable connection with something more significant and far-reaching than yourself - and with any other being or thing in this world. And, ultimately, by the source of peace, happiness, joy and other positive, life-affirming sensations - even if it seems to you that they are caused by some external circumstances.
Connecting to this source of pure being is the ultimate goal of meditation, even if you are seeking other goals (e.g., enlightenment, stress, productivity, or quality of life). Meditation will certainly bring you closer to this source. But when you meditate, you may encounter material that forms a barrier between you and your experience, just as you may find layers of algae, schools of fish and debris on your way to the bottom of the lake. These layers aren't a problem unless the underwater currents in the lake lift the silt from the bottom and make the water cloudy enough to make visibility difficult. (By underwater currents I mean an overloaded, agitated consciousness or a disturbed and frightened soul.)
Trying to follow the sequence in which these layers may occur in your path during meditation, I describe them in the sections below.