Meditation seems to be the basis for all human achievement, advancement, and evolution as a whole. All invention, all creative additions to the world such as art, music, philosophy, and the gross development of cultures has come through the mind's of men and women who've looked inward and visualized something new. Something beyond the scope of the currently seen reality. Tapping into some vast inner space where anything is possible, where imagination can create entire universes, reshape the world we see by simulating a new future according to the inputs of the past...
There are those who claim there seems to be something even beyond this incomprehensible and limitless expanse of the mind; they claim that there is a source of this void where thoughts and ideas seem to incept themselves and inspiration strikes. Many of us wonder – where do these groundbreaking ideas come from? Where was E=MC squared before Einstein incepted from formlessness the concept and put it into form so that others could ‘see’? Where was the automobile before Henry Ford, the airplane before the Wright brothers? And why did it take so long for history to write the story of their existence? What lies beyond the mind and what happens if we practice going there? These are ideas that chafe the borders of my sensitive brain as I contemplate my own place in this world, what I hope to bring into actual form, and how I plan to make something ‘real’ that appears so far away… It sounds crazy, but even things as lofty as world peace make their way into my consciousness and I think – “WHY NOT?!”
Here are my thoughts on the subject of meditation.
Meditation comes from the a Latin root meditari, meaning to reflect on, to study and to practice. I am not so sure that the true meditative states of the masters who spent decades deciphering the code of consciousness could be captured in the meaning of meditation as mere “reflections”, and I am sure there are other meanings. Who knows the true origin of meditation practices to begin with, but we know that it has existed for as long as recorded human history. There are hieroglyphs of humans sitting in classical meditation postures, such as padmasana or the full lotus position seen in yoga. There seems to be something special about the practice of doing absolutely nothing, which can be one of the ways to practicing meditation. As my father would say, based on a conversation I had with him over Thanksgiving – “often times the best thing to do is to do nothing at all, and most people have a really difficult time with that.” He was referencing the stock market, but I feel the wisdom applies across numerous endeavors. It is certainly true that the hardest thing we can do is to do nothing at all, due to the nature of the mind to solve problems and DO things.
We were built, by nature, to do, to accomplish, to build. It stands to reason that doing the opposite of what we seem to be created to do (no pun intended) would be a quite difficult task to achieve. Then why has it been perpetuated across cultures and civilizations? Why has it survived the turmoil of religious conflict, and in some way being found in all of the major religious paths we see today? Why does it appear to not only be limited to the spiritual and esoteric, but is recommended even by the most pragmatic of experts as an effective lifestyle practice?
When even the brightest scientific minds in the world are seeing the seemingly unseen benefits of meditation, and schools like Harvard are performing research on the actual, tangible value of turning the mind’s attention inward, it is useful for us to take a closer look at this strange practice of doing nothing. And why, if we are really starting to understand the countless benefits of it, is it just so damn difficult to do?! The paradox is that it would appear to be easy to do nothing…. Yet when we sit down to actually practice meditation, we find countless reasons not to and it becomes the hardest thing we do all day.
Sitting in silence with ourselves is not easy for many reasons. For one, we get to take a hard look at the various asshole-ish things we do in our daily lives and have to reconcile being a bigger jerk than we see on the surface when the flow of life is constantly sweeping the issues under the rug. It seems that when we sit and meditate, everything we could be or should be doing comes up and we end up having a thousand tasks in our mind that need our doing. If we sit for a bit longer, we might encounter the deeper states of reflection and introspection that end up showing us the darker aspects of our lives which have gone unobserved or unchecked. We see the personality we’ve created, we see the habits and patterns we have, we see the changes we could have made in our lives (and haven’t) to make our world a little better place. It is a dark place, to see all of this. We don’t like it. It is uncomfortable. In a way, we are practicing dying. Sort of like a mini episode of a NDE (near death experience), where life flashes before our eyes and shows us all of the opportunities we have had to show love and chose a different outcome out of fear, we end up having these micro-awakenings every time we make an attempt to sit down and face ourselves.
Because ‘facing ourselves’ is really what we are doing. In the silence of meditation, with the eyes closed and the senses are turned inward, we have no choice but to see these things. The beautiful thing is that we are given an opportunity – infinite opportunities, in fact – to rise from the meditation practice and step into the version of us that is bursting at the seams of the heart like an over-germinated seed, just waiting for our recognition of it and the courage to act upon it. Yet once these kinks have been worked out, and meditation becomes a more peaceful endeavor, because we have actually taken the steps in our lives to not have such a difficult time sitting quietly… something beautiful arises.
I think that this ‘something beautiful’ is actually there all of the time, it just takes a bit of patience for us to see beneath the surface of our mental fluctuations that we are making the meditation more difficult than it needs to be. The fascinating thing is that I do not believe we need to ‘do’ anything externally to become a ‘better meditator’; there is no specific diet requirement, there are no amount of breathing exercises or physical practices we ought to do to deepen our state of meditation (although these can certainly help), nor is there a specific way of living. “The Truth is One, paths are many.” These things – the external lifestyle practices – arrange themselves naturally, for the practitioner organically develops a communion with their natural state of being. Which is what, I believe, is the ‘goal’ of meditation. If we can say there is even a ‘goal’ at all.
For all of us have a spark deep down in the cave of heart which flickers from time to time, vying for our attention, casting the shadow of our current belief system about our life into stark contrast against the beautiful tapestry of what life truly has in store for us. If one thing is for sure, it is that we have no freakin’ idea what life has in store for any of us. We might not be the next Einstein, but we all certainly have some very unique and special gift to offer the world, if it is only to be the best damn janitor on the planet or be the juice-bar chick making the most love infused smoothies on the planet. Our unique and special gift is always available to us to express, but we seem to have lost ourselves in the external world thinking we ought to be or do something else. It is this imprint of the outer reality that has left our soul gasping for authenticity, clawing its way out of the abyss we’ve thrown ourselves into, seeing a light at the end of a tunnel but feeling that it is too far away or thinking that just seeing the light is enough.
I don’t know if seeing the light is enough. I don’t know if simply sitting in silence is enough; I don’t feel that reaching these higher meditative states and catching glimpses ‘beyond the void’, or just resting in peaceful alertness beyond the grip of thought and mental chatter, is enough. We enter fearlessly into the cave of darkness, we fight through the demons of our personality guarding the entrance, we breach the inner grotto where countless beautiful jewels and innumerable, invaluable treasures lie waiting for us to come find them…. And what do we do? Do we just hang out in our cave, counting our riches like a Scrooge? Surely we’ve earned this rest after all the hard spelunking work it took to get here! No.
Half the work is going in, and perhaps the greater half is coming out. We exit this beautiful oasis of light and make the return journey upward, back to the Earth’s surface, where the true treasure lies waiting for us to discover it with new eyes, as if for the first time. Yet the imprint of abundance lies stamped on our heart, and the glimmer of treasure emanates for our being, for we’ve been fortunate to discover that there is nothing outside of ourselves more valuable than our innate gift. That inside of us, all of us, is a cave waiting to be explored, with seemingly infinite treasure waiting to be discovered, and it is through the careful curation of this cache of immeasurable worth that we find that we have something to offer the world, and it is untouchable and unblemished by anyone or anything else outside of ourselves.
This is the meditation – reflecting on our own perfection, connecting to the Source of our being, where we bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth; we reach into Heaven to bring forth that which is worth expressing, worth creating, and truly worth having as part of our Earthly existence. If that looks like a mathematical equation that changes the entire scientific community forever, great. If it looks like a poem, great. Whatever it looks like, it looks like YOU. It is not somebody else’s idea, nor is it even influenced by your environment. It is the untouched, the flawless and impeccable expression of someone whose soul is on fire and the only intention of this soul is to spark the fuse that exists as dynamite in the hearts of every other being around.