An Epiphany of Sorts

Namaste, I first would like to say that I am a very humble person and when I use the word "epiphany", I don't mean it in the cliche' excited state where sometimes people get an experience and believe they are enlightened. I simply mean to share my thoughts and an experience I had.

We all generally recognize that the mind likes to think, even when it wants to not think (such as the mind wanting to still itself to meditate and paradoxically it continues it's ongoing habituation of past, future, and present thoughts, be it concerns, randomness, etc...).

Instead of viewing this as an obstacle, I thought to myself, and remembered reading sutras about breath meditation and observing the gap in between the inhale and also the exhale. The hard part is that breath is not made of words, it isn't a mantra. Generally when I hear about mantras, I have heard of their usage for both a literal belief in Saguna Brahman helping one, purifying the mind, or even simple pacification of other thoughts.

That's when (and I know this idea is not original) I decided to internally repeat "Om Namah Shivaya". I chose that mantra as a symbolic expression of Siva destroying the bundle of thoughts that make up the mind. First I repeated it over and over with concentrated awareness.

The part about fixating on the mantra is important because the mind takes on the quality of what it is fixated on. This time instead of regular thoughts, we are "becoming the mantra".

After some time I let the fixation go in between the gap after each repetition of "Om Namah Shivaya". In that gap, there is formlessness. That space, that gap, isn't about thoughts, which also relates that it isn't about a body, an "I", or even the world. It is without form and silent. Silent but conscious. So I let the mantra slow down with increasingly less attention to the mantra and for fixation of the gap.

I experienced a temporary unification with that gap between the mantra. It is silent, completely conscious, but without form.

This experience seems to change my view about there not being an eternal self, to having more belief in an eternal unchanging reality.

Thank you for reading, and does anybody else want to share an experience if they had one about the "gap" between thoughts, mantras, or breaths?