Why Meditate? Because "Meditation Works When Your Mind Doesn't."

Sitting quietly clears our mind to reflect Consciousness better, and grounds and binds our mind to our heart...

      As a three-time near-death survivor, I can tell you that Heaven is not any place in particular—in fact, it is different things for different people; but all heavens have some very powerful attributes in common that demonstrate it to be an attainable state-of-being, available to everyone...possibly in the next life, and very possibly in this one.

      This little excerpt from the chapter Meditation Works When Your Mind Doesn't, in the Part III: Purpose section of How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), is a taste of the relief, clarity, and serenity that meditation can provide anyone (even the most unlikely meditators) in a successful search to find a little piece of Heaven.

      "When we start being able to sit longer in meditation, we can consciously engage that holistic experience and hold ourselves in a balanced state where we discover that most demanding thoughts aren't really so important. Life can be experienced in a more "realistic" way when we are in this way "less realistic," because we recognize that the actual moment we're living in is fine, as it is. Life isn't really full of sequential demands or threatening "realities" at all—those are mostly imaginary delusions thrown up by our prehistoric ego. Equipped with the conscious awareness that a meditation practice gives us, we can start freeing ourselves from unnecessarily demanding thoughts. Nothing really needs to happen right at this moment—unless a bear is heading your way or you're sitting on something wet.

      The escape from serial thinking delivers us into presence, and the power and comfort alive in the eternal moment. It's a presence for Life that only becomes possible when we can gain some control on the courses we run through our heads, and meditation allows us an easy awareness of those different parts of of inner life—the duality of material ego versus our extra-dimensional spirit. When we can identify ourselves with our loving, spiritual nature, we become more effective in our demanding daily lives, because the ease  in our thinking makes it easier to get things done.

      As we sit making space in our thoughts, we experience a sense of joyful transcendence, and a sense of unity that's impossible to experience when we're pent-up and weighed-down by material demands. There's the presence of that graceful intuitive intelligence, rising up through our more spacious thinking, informing our decision-making and problem-solving with fresh clarity and confidence." 

      I almost always end my encouragements to meditate with this wonderful quote from the Buddha, when he was asked: 

"What have you gained from all your meditation?"

"Nothing at all," he replied.

"Then what good is it?"

"Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana."

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? And BTW, in Buddha-talk, nirvana is Heaven.

(quote; Easwaran, The Dhammapada, p.58)

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn available direct on this page or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

SITTING IN THE WILDERNESS: How the Buddha and Christ overcame their obstacles in meditation

Read a summer meditation about summer meditation—and what discoveries the Buddha and  Jesus learned by just sitting in "the wilderness." At The Mindful Word.

Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor, from Llewellyn Worldwide, and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond. Both are available everywhere – but ask for them at your local bookstore!

A HTSL&D Interview – Link to Celestial Broadcasting

Here's a cover rough that didn't make it to press, it must've taken a wrong turn...  

Listen to this fun and informative hour-long chat with Peter Kelly, about the nature of life, death, life after death, consciousness, Love, and much more, on "Peter the Healer, Celestial Broadcaster," only on BBS Radio. We go deep into 'death,' and have a good time doing it!

The Neuroscientists' Map of Heaven

Recently, I was being interviewed about my three Near Death Experiences and the spiritual realizations that grew from them. The interviewer asked me if there was any scientific support for my views, or if my assertions were "just a matter of opinion."  But all profound spiritual experience is a matter of opinion. There is no proof I could give her, other than to show her what's in my heart. What has happened for me. 

For that variety of spiritual skeptic devoted to "proof" – to results of the scientific method – profound spiritual experiences always present an intriguing problem: finding a provable explanation for mysterious, personal phenomena. When one has predetermined that any extra-dimensional cause, or “magical” explanation is impossible, the problem is how to simply reveal the source of the phenomenon by applying scientific methodology. Like flicking on the lights on at a fraudulent séance. 

These days, the favorite way to conduct that search comes through "mapping" the human brain, whose incredibly complex workings are currently being captured and cataloged by ever-expanding artificial intelligence. Since there's so much going on inside of our brains, naturally the paranormal – even "The Divine" – has simply got to be in there somewhere too.

  

The idea that there's a spiritual part of the brain, an area where cellular electro-chemical activities generate sensations of unity and transcendence (neurotheology) isn't really new, but thanks to advances in brain-mapping, it's been getting a lot more airplay lately. Locating and documenting the "God Part" of the brain could provide a tidy explanation for the persistent belief that an external, or even cumulative, intelligence is at work in the world. It could decisively debunk all the claims of transpersonal, extra-dimensional spiritual experiences, like those made by the growing ranks of near death survivors, and other such witnesses of the sublime. 

After all, even we mystics and navel-gazers ourselves suggest that it’s an inward path to spiritual realization, so doesn't it just make scientific sense that divine experience doesn’t originate from without, but from somewhere within – within the circuitry of our brains, that is?

The real problem is that every direction you look in turns magical pretty quickly. Looking outside of our brains, we’re immediately assailed by the totally incomprehensible domain of our very being. That darn infinite cosmos. First, there's the fabric of Time/Space, loaded with the galaxies and question marks that we see when we look into the night sky. Then, there's the limitless sub-atomic universe, described by the ridiculously magical – yet scientifically reliable – quantum mechanics. In both cases, Science's very best explanations are at best conditional, and otherwise reliably subject to change.

In our larger, avowedly "magical" context, mapping the mysterious processes within our brain may someday function to demonstrate how the neural pathways of the brain work, but not necessarily what the brain may actually be capable of doing. It's a bit like capturing lightning in a bottle.There's a whole lot more to it than just how it works.  

It seems to me that the real questions posed by the neuroscientific skeptics are: How are all of our sensory – and "extra-sensory" – expe-riences explained by the idea that each of our brains is independently conscious? Are our brains exclusively the generators of everything we perceive (including "God") – or aren't they quite possibly receivers, and projectors too? The answers to those questions almost seem obvious.  

Naturally, there's a part of my brain that experiences spiritual sensations. There's a part of it that experiences heat and cold and hunger and heartbreak, too. There's a degree to which all sensations are received, and generated, and projected out into my life (and yours sometimes) by me, and my little ol’ eight pound brain. And the same is true for you too. That’s how we process this life, whether our “reality” reaches us from the outside, or grows out of the many ways we create it ourselves, utilizing these clunky (but elegant) vehicles we run around in. (No wonder they're so expensive to maintain.) 

No scientist worth his salt would suggest that temperature only exists because my brain tells me it does, though how sensitive I am to it, or how much of it I generate myself can vary quite a bit. The same holds true for the experience of profound spiritual realizations. The reality of spiritual awareness, consciousness, and extra-dimensionality is, no doubt, realized in the part of our brain that takes care of all that for us. Why wouldn’t it be? We’re only human, after all.

For thousands of years, we have been describing spiritual experiences of an extra-dimensional nature with far more solidarity and consistency than the scientific community has managed to muster in its comparatively brief life. And  even the proposition that there's an individual, brain-centered experience of the spiritual, that manifests a kind of spiritual mass delusion throughout humanity, suggests the participation in a shared field of consciousness  – the conceptual lightning that quantum mechanics let out of the bottle long ago.

And what of the human heart? Can we map that as well? Studies now demonstrate conclusively that the heart, with cellular similarities to the brain, serves a cognitive function, at times controlling intellectual judgment, as well as emotion. 

Feelings of sublime connectedness, the generation of Love, and our compassionate impulses are all processed by a mixture of mind and heart. So, too, those deep, transformative realizations of a spiritual reality, most convincingly testified to by meditators and trauma survivors (including near death experiencers). But as usual, the people who have the most trouble “scientifically” squaring these kinds of testimonials with their own expectations are those who may never have had such profoundly spiritual experiences themselves. Once they do, they usually change their tunes in pretty short order.

While we don’t seem to be evolving much physically these days, we unquestionably are spiritually. The internet, synchronicity (a connecting principle without cause, according to Jung), measurable instances of global consciousness, spiritual realization of all sorts on a mass scale (not just on Oprah), as well as the incredible potential revealed by mapping the human brain, all point to an increasing awareness that demonstrates this evolution. 

Like the evolution of those parts of our brains that have allowed us to process logical thought, vision, communication, creativity, and cooperative effort, our brains –and hearts– are evolving to process our growing spiritual potential. We’re not just simply generating spiritual sensation, we’re becoming more and more capable of observing, receiving, and projecting spiritual energy through our shared field of consciousness.

I hope the skeptics discover what we believers found “within” a long time ago – namely serenity, compassion, and the deep understanding of the nature of our absolute unity. And that maybe, Love is a kind of quantum field itself.


How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying) is available now, from Llewellyn Worldwide, and will help you realize Heaven as a state-of-being—not just a wishful destination. The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond, based on lessons (learned the hard way) by a three time near death survivor is now available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

Meditation is a Spiritual Spring

Each Spring, my wife and I are happy when it's time to head back up to the river, to reopen our little house on the Upper Delaware. It's usually still cold, and a little barren, but there's that vitality starting to percolate with the early birdsong, and the green shoots everywhere, fighting skyward. As always, the Spring brings me a new chance to reconnect with my angels, and myself.

My city meditations are calming and inspirational, but at last, again, I get to unfurl my blanket on a rock by the river, and tether my serenity to the simple magic alive in every natural moment. The early neighbors, mostly red-shouldered blackbirds, don't mind that I open with an audible OM.  My voice breaks, unsteady at first, but I manage to round off the changing syllable, and drop an octave to a solid end.

Almost immediately, thoughts become rather superfluous (thank God). Voices of my angels and ancestors begin to arise as I settle in to the gentle cacophony of the birds' chorus, and the light effervescence of simply being springs open in my heart, and surrounds my mind. I ask my "guardian angel," if I may enter that special place. “Of course,” she answers, "...of course."

A Canadian goose honks past on the wing, and suddenly, a bright, creaky cry puts my meditation on hold. Just down river, a matched pair of Bald Eagles take perch, sitting in their stately patience, welcoming me back to the edge of their river. Life is really alive. The sun rises over a slight saddle in the hills, directly above them, and pours a reflection onto the water, in a line from the pair to my heart.

Then, the voices of my angels arise, not like someone talking in my ear (don’t call the men in white coats…yet), but as intuitive understandings, originating in my heart. My guardian angel tells me, "Be yourself." My favorite childhood aunt says, "We love you."  Our late uncle, a famous philosopher and author, tells me, "Keep writing." Our cat Max, who passed over two years ago, says, "I will help you keep your heart open." My gnostic angel says, "We have work to do." My Buddhist angel advises, "Just sit, and be." It gets a little noisy, being so peaceful.

As the evidence of this deepest magic, when we visit Max's burial site in a fern grove above the house, the path leading to his marker is already dark, exposed earth – when all around are old leaves and forest debris. It looks like it's been raked, even though we haven't set foot there for nearly seven months. Obviously, somebody  has. There are cat paw prints– bigger than I like to see in the neighborhood. Next to them are deer hoof impressions, and other signs. They've all been visiting our friend.

I end my meditation with a stronger, clearer OM, and know that all of this peace and magical connectedness isn’t just imaginary. I've died, and come back to life so many times – this Spring is no different. This meditation is my path back into my truths.

When I return to the city, there will be things that need to be done. There will be talking heads barking the latest. Crowded commutes. Franchise coffee. Clients who wanted color – but not that color!   I ask you, does our reality live in this insistent, numb bombardment of "what must be done," or down that miracle path of meditation, to what truly is, within us, and without us, all? I think you know what I know.

As always, this meditation – like every meditation – is the rediscovery of my spiritual spring.

Freedom From the Prisoner's Perspective; Beating Conundrums

The other night I was watching the Yankees game and a televised political debate at the same time, switching back and forth, when I began to notice something strange happening. As the Yankees kept striking out, and the political misrepresentations kept piling up, a powerful feeling welled up inside of me, moved to center stage, and started directing my thoughts and comments with unwanted authority. It was a feeling of acrimony, of aggravation, of anxious agitation...and I'm still only on the "A"s.

"The universe exists in order that the experiencer may experience it and thus become liberated."           Patanjali

Suddenly I realized that somehow I'd just taken myself from a relatively serene state of mind to a discombobulated tangle of self-centered sensations – spontaneously arising opinions, judgments, perceived injustices – all the product of having momentarily attached myself to these two televised events. If I hadn't been watching I presume I would have been fine, calm and at-ease within that very same moment.

So as well as I could (after the shows were over) I returned my self to it's former tentative state of serenity, relaxed and refocused my mind on other, less aggravating thoughts, and made a note to try and not do that anymore. You'd think I would know by now, but they can come so automatically, those waves of thought and sensation, can't they?

It's in the nature of our sensory experience itself that I spontaneously respond to outside stimuli that inspires certain thoughts, which evoke certain feelings, and then engages a cascading circuit of thoughts and feelings that usually makes me want to do something about it, when there plainly isn't much I  actually can do – except maybe to calm down again. But why do I always have to go the long way around again? Where does this willingness to get myself all worked up again come from?

I called a mentor (whom I like to call Fascinating Ray), told him about this all-too-common loop I'd just taken again, and asked why I can so often condemn myself to that circular confinement, as opposed to remaining in an easier, less agitated state. He told me something that reminded me exactly why I call him with these questions; in essence he said this:

In the body-mind-spirit trifecta we experience in this life, there's an underlying intuitive sense of being stuck in this form, for the time being, subject to the electrochemical, physiological machinations of thought and feeling that "this flesh t'is heir too." It can feel like a kind of sadness, anxiety, dissatisfaction, or longing to "return to the garden," so to speak – and what's more, it's true – it arises from a subliminal reality, the innate understanding that our spirits can function on a much broader energetic level – lighter and freer – than simply being a human being allows us.

So, sometimes we unintentionally carry with us this "perspective of a prisoner," and part of our challenge in this life is to avoid being defined by that truncated view, and to allow our greater (spiritual) potential to be our friendlier guide through life. The trick in escaping that perspective, that self-created prison, lies in becoming aware of the thoughts and feelings that promote it; and also in recognizing when we might be taking on that role ourselves, sometimes intentionally, feeling like we need the excitement and anxiety to provide us with some kind of sensory encouragement.

"All life is a play of universal forces. The individual gives a personal form to these universal forces. But he can choose whether he shall respond or not to the action of a particular force. Only most people do not really choose – they indulge the play of forces."             Sri Aurobindo

Ray went on: There can only be limited growth when we're in prison, you know. There isn't the requisite space and variety of influences necessary to allow your world to expand in a healthy, balanced way; and so your world gets smaller, hemmed in by uncontrolled cascading thoughts and feelings. ("Isolation is a darkroom where your negatives are developed"). You repeat behaviors that don't really work, and eventually prove to be [destructively] defining, like 'em or not.

The cause of this self-imposed confinement is usually due to what a Buddhist might call "attachments," or "selfish cravings" – the identification of ourselves and our sense of well-being with some special interest or need that we feel is being threatened, has been slighted, or that might go unfulfilled. In short, the imaginary ideas of how we want to control our world that really end up controlling us:

People don't do things the right way; my ideals are under attack; there's a fundamental injustice at work in the world...some of which may really be the case, but unless we escape that mentality, that "prisoner's perspective," we'll never be able to muster the vision to find any meaningful solutions. To grow out of our imaginary, and real conundrums. We'll be stuck stacking up those blocks around ourselves, driven by that drumbeat, wondering why our world seems to be getting smaller, instead of evolving beyond the attitudes of confinement that this body-life often insists upon.

"Emanating from the finest ether, these souls become entangled...in the prison-house of the body...but when once they are released from the bonds of the flesh, then, as though liberated from long servitude, they rejoice and are borne aloft."                 Josephus, describing The Essenes' beliefs

It's right, in a way, to naturally want to identify myself with my team or my cause; it's part of what Joseph Campbell would call "the metaphysical impulse to transcend the delusion of separateness." It's a wish to be a part of something larger than myself; to effectively contribute to a worthwhile cause for humanity, to be of service; and to identify and share with others who believe what I believe, and give themselves to the ideals I'd wish for myself and others to experience in this life. Notice, none of what I really wish for has very much to do with winning, or with even being right.

That's where beating it does come in – by answering with a different kind of beat: call it to heartbeat it; using the shared heartbeat of the joy and creativity alive within us all, and in the world. That's what I had to do – open my heart to escape the corner I'd painted myself into. I needed to stop my thoughts, and liberate my heart to gain that freedom, that grace.

"There's no problem that acceptance won't help solve" is an axiom I don't naturally react well to, probably because it's so painfully obvious. The more elaborate my entanglements become (or I make them), the less likely I am to escape them. I need that open-hearted freedom. I need to change, to escape that "perspective of a prisoner." It's my choice, really...I could just turn off the TV, and actually do something about it; starting with accepting, relaxing, letting it be, and letting the world roll right off my shoulders...

"If an earthquake opens the prison walls, do you think an escaping prisoner will complain of the damage done to the stone and marble work?"

Rumi

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

Eluv's Ultrasounds, For da Soul!

It's fundraising time at WMNF, the Tampa public radio station that's home to our fav-orite "music of the spheres," Ultrasounds, hosted by the wonderful Eluv on her ex-cellent show that airs Thursday nights at 11 PM. Here she is, with my wife Sue Pike, The Animal Talker®, doing one of their reiki/sound healing sessions (...and hear Sue's animal messages every third Thursday on Ultrasounds, at about 11:15 PM)!

Contribute to the cause of spreading joy and gentle sanity by dropping a coin or two into Eluv's Ultrasounds Tip Jar on WMNF Radio.  Help keep her cool calming voice and super-serene selections beaming out across the universe!

You can also pick up some Ultrasounds for yourself, Eluv's incredibly beautiful ambient music for healing what ails you, like my favorite above – just  one of many available.

Cheers&Blessings, everyone! 

Tales: Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! Finding Your "Right" Brain.

......................................you see, meditation is not boring!

It's easy to see how someone might think that sitting in meditation would be a terribly boring thing to do, sitting there, doing nothing. Trying to think of nothing. Trying to think of not thinking. Of course, that thought (like most of them) couldn't be farther from the truth.

When we just sit at first and try not to think, we naturally fail, and so we start thinking of all sorts of things. Everything comes up. Everything. Like: What your father said to you twenty-five years ago. The money your Ex still owes you. That guy who was on Oprah. When will the landlord finally fix that leak upstairs? Things in the Mid East will never get better. Is there an asteroid heading directly for Earth? What are we having for breakfast?
 

That's one of the really great things about just sitting in meditation, thinking about nothing is an endlessly interesting and entertaining thought show, and we have the best seat in the house.

All these different crazy kinds of thoughts occur in a serial fashion, that is, one after the other after the other. One leads haphazardly to the next, sometimes connected by the barest thread that only makes sense right at the moment it connects. A few more turns of the wheel down that road, and you can't even remember how you got there, or why. Because there is no why.

How you got there is simply caused by the incessantly demanding nature of your "thinking organ," your brain, which like some kind of wild, prehistoric shark, insists on relentless movement, the continuous exercise of thought, that overlying process that we often confuse for ourselves. Descartes was a little off on that one, "I think, therefore I am." We are, whether we think – or not.

Thought requires consciousness; Consciousness does not require thought.

"Serial" thought, the kind most of us often find ourselves and our identities tied to, is an apparent function of our Left Brain, the left hemisphere of our thinking organ, which is our serial processor. It's job is to process, process, process in that con-tinuous shark-like motion, joining one thing to the next, relating each significant fact (or not so significant lie) to another. Often, the best we can manage is to discipline our mind to think things that we want to think about. Like to focus our thinking on problems that need solving, say building a bridge, creating a Unified Theory of Everything, or figuring out how to get the TV remote to work. As long as it's something we want to think about – hopefully something productive, or creative, or at least painless.

The simplest form of this discipline is the common self-request, I don't even want to think about it.

When we sit, all we're really trying to do at first is to witness this serial inner monologue, try to wear it down a bit, until it gives in. Or best of all, to side-step it completely. That's the best way to put it, because it describes what the (very appropriately named) Right Side of our brains are doing while all that exhausting thinking is going on. It's functioning concurrently as a parallel processor, connecting everything to everything, simultaneously. Processing our entire sensory experience holistically, with a kind of quantum perception, which for the most part appreciates Life. It's the part of our brain power that gets short shrift because of the sequentially demanding nature of contemporary life, but you're using it every time you find love, beauty, melody, serenity, and joy.

As we sit longer, we try to engage our Right Brain experience, and to live in it for as long as possible. When, in this state, we're collecting beauty, creative energy, and Love in our hearts, suddenly, your serial thoughts no longer have all that urgency. Life can be experienced in a more realistic way when we are in this way less realistic, because we recognize that the moment is always fine, as it is, not full of demanding or threatening "realities." Nothing really needs to happen right at the moment, unless the doorbell rings, your butt is getting wet, or the kitchen is on fire.

This escape from serial thinking, to the Right Side of our brain is a much more pleasant state of affairs, when we can experience a presence for life that's only possible when we give the crazy person in our heads the day off.

In the popular myths of religion, this is the same experience that was reached by Buddha, when Mara the Tempter assaulted him with all the allures and fears of the world (see illust. above); or by Jesus, when he was in the wilderness, and Satan offered to make him the King of Everything.

Neither of them even wanted to think about it.

"What have you gained from meditation?"

"Nothing at all."

"Then what good is it?"

"Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana."

The Buddha

Visit other postings about meditation. And check this talk by Jill Bolte Taylor!


Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore! 

Animated Atmospheres

Things are always busy busy right before KidScreen, and I've been hard at work on a show I can't show yet, but I hope you'll get to see soon. In the meantime scratching away on d-zines and writing furiously in a hunt-and-peck style leaves me needing to meditate a little, every day if possible...While doing just that, I discovered that my wife, Sue Pike "The Animal Talker®"- Reiki Master and Playshop giver, has her sound healing friend's Eluv's new, and thoroughly amazing CD "New Beginnings," full of smooth, soothing sound healing stuff that is absolutely perfect for sitting and naval-gazing...like one might do in this bamboo meadow I recently whipped up for a Hasbro website game.

Here's what the cover of this wonderfully groovy, interiorly-oriented, luscious sound thang looks like. I highly recommend that you pick it up and sit down to some amazing healing bowls and ocean sounds...

...a little like this gentle crashing wave splashing up on the shores of my "Codename: Kids Next Door" EFX file...how's that for a linkin' blog?

Backtrack to Aurobindo on Meditation

Backtracking a little bit to the earlier posts concerning meditation, I came across these quotes from the Super-Guru, Sri Aurobindo. Have you ever heard of him? This Aurobindo Wiki entry is a good introduction, but needless to say, he seemed to know just about everything about everything. He wrote prolifically about it with such amazing acuity, insight, wisdom, and supreme knowledge, that one wonders whether one might possibly overcome his propensity for sentences that run-on in the extreme, in a prosaic style which could only be described as dated, beyond what any reasonable reader may be willing to continue concentrating upon, or even caring about, so that one may eventually have to give up to the simple fact, arising from the intricate convolutions of his grammatical style and intensely profound and esoteric subject matter, that one has forgotten what he (being The Super-Guru Aurobindo) was talking about in the first place. 

Kind of like that. But bear with him and you'll find he really did know everything about everything. It's probably best to tackle his small, edited collections first, like: The Future Evolution of Man, and Bases of Yoga.

Now what was I talking about again? Oh yeah – Aurobindo"s observations on meditation. He really had a way of directly addressing the heart of meditation, it's problems and purposes. Notice how concise and enlightening these bits about it are, from Bases of Yoga:

"A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface and you will feel your true being within separate from them, observing but not carried away, able to watch and judge them and reject all that has to be rejected and accept and keep to all that is true consciousness and true experience."

"...but I do not mean by quietness of mind entire silence. I mean a mind free from disturbance and trouble, steady, light and glad so as to open it to the Force that will change the nature. The important thing is to get rid of the habit of the invasion of troubling thoughts, wrong feelings, confusion of ideas, unhappy movements. These disturb the nature and cloud it and make it difficult for the Force to work; when the mind is quiet and at peace, the Force can work more easily. It should be possible to see things that have to be changed in you without being upset or depressed; the change is then more easily done."

He continues on (and on) in the generous and helpful manner that was his trademark. His teachings on the spiritual evolution of humankind are truly profound and essential. As you see from the above quote, he was a big influence on everyone from George Lucas to Ram Dass, Sri Chinmoy, and Michael Murphy, founder of the Esalen Institute.



Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor, which can be purchased on this page or online, along with the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond – or ask for them at your local bookstore!

Tales: Meditation Tips. Or, Which Way Was That to Nirvana Again? Part 2 of 2

Here's the second part of the previous post, start down there- it's the second and third methods of meditating that have helped me with what to think about when I'm not supposed to be thinking of anything...

Devotional Meditation

For many of us, it's very helpful to "go to a peaceful place" in our mind when we meditate. Guided meditations can be great for this. When we meditate quietly by ourselves, we can call up a thought and feeling of a divine environment, or inspirational spiritual figure. In this form of meditation, it's important to feel, to expand from our hearts, as well as witnessing the workings in our heads. We might think of a heavenly dimension, a sacred location, a perfect summer day; or of a prophet, saint, or catalyst of personal transformation, like Yeshua (Jesus), Teresa of Avila, Mahatma Gandhi, or The Buddha.

We might focus on our personal concept of God: The Heavenly Father, The Feminine Divine, the Loving and Miraculous Universe. Or we might focus our meditative thoughts and feelings on Love. On the love of our family; on the love of our pet (or of all living things); on the joy of Being that is the love of this life. On gratitude for the gifts we receive each day. The beautiful opportunities we have for sharing our joys and sorrows with one another, and the world. The remarkable flow of Love through our lives. Or on how everyone and everything deserves Love.

Our internal dialogue while meditating might go something like this, for example: "Thank you God, Divine Mother, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna (insert your favorite...), angels and ancestors, family and friends, for the Love in my life. Make me a pure channel of Love and Peace. Let Love surround me and flow through me. Let me sit in a place of Love and light. Let me be Love."

Of course, you can replace God with Love, or Love with God, or mom, or peace...you get the point. The subject of your purest spiritual devotion.

You may pray, or chant to focus the connection of your meditation. Like the sacred word OM, open "ahhh," then out and rounded "O," and ending with a deep mmmmmm. The Lord's Prayer, or the St. Francis Prayer, or a mantra, like Om mani padme hum, Buddha's Mantra of Love and Great Compassion. We call on the spirits of light and Love that surround us, or invoke the beautiful power of the Universe that makes the flowers bloom. We single-pointedly focus on that same power that makes us bloom into Love.

With this devotional focus, we forget ourselves, and the troubled thoughts manufactured by our unconscious, and connect to our true selves. To the beauty and mystery of Being in unified consciousness. We recognize ourselves as being one with everybody and everything, and transform our daily lives beyond mundane fears and superficial demands. We arrest our thinking at the level of the Ego, and transcend it with expanding heart energy. Like that.

In Hinduism, this corresponds to Bhakti Yoga, The Yoga of Devotion, and can be seen practiced to something of an extreme by Hare Krishnas

Experiential Meditation

What do you see when you have your eyes closed. It's not pure blackness, is it? In fact, there's a kind of field of waving, effervescent light there inside your eyelids. Dim, vibrating, alive. There's a sort of dance of particles. The lack of light, or the remains of light, creating fields of color, of energy, that erupt and move across your inner vision. It's a kind of process, perhaps at an electrochemical level, that you can actually witness with your eyes closed. It's not just dark.

What makes you breath, and makes your heart beat? It's involuntary. We could say that it's the same power that's behind the heartbeat of the Universe- the pulsing evidence of the very moment of creation. While the best efforts of our intellect to describe it only lead us to Frankenstein, if you just sit quietly and concentrate on your breathing, you are immediately grounded in the inexplicable mechanical process of Being.

You breathe in, the breath makes it's cycle, and you breathe out. A small space, and you breathe in again. This happens whether you focus on it or not, but if you do, you'll notice that little else enters your internal dialogue, which might go something like this: "I breathe in slowly through my nose, my breath turns the corner, and I breathe out slowly through my mouth. In through my nose, out through my mouth. I breathe in again from my stomach drawing in the sky, and breathe out down through my hips, anchoring to the earth. I breathe in the pain all around me, and breathe out loving kindness."

Now try the same kind of focus on your heartbeat, which you really don't beat it- it beats you. Like the taut membrane of a drum. Feel the tension and flow of your circulation out to your hands and feet. Filling your face. Tingling through your body in perfect unison with your breath. Focus your perception inward on these automatic mechanisms of Life that we normally pay so little attention to; that connect us directly with all consciousness in the Universe.

Look behind your closed eyes to that point in the center between your brows that a swami calls your "third eye," or Sixth Chakra. Enter into that center of internal illumination, if you can, with practice, feel the energy course through you following the solid rhythm of your breath, in and out. "Pull" the string at the top of your head to straighten your spine- sometimes your vertebrae will 'pop' in succession, releasing more inner flow and awareness.

In this state, externally oriented thinking is suspended as we enter unified consciousness.

Now just sit, and focus, and watch, and be, and as you get used to practicing these three methods, you'll find that they merge together, as they should. Elements of Analytical Meditation enter your inner dialogue, and you can direct these 'thought packages' towards objects of your devotion- towards Love, as you sustain the underlying foundational thought: "...breathe in receiving, breathe out giving..." for example. Watch the energy cascade across your inner screen, and realize a surrender into the power beyond "normal" consciousness. An energy that enfolds, supports, and animates All. Now sit and listen, not to your thoughts, but in between them, because what questions we ask in prayer, are answered in meditation.

I hope that these techniques are helpful- they're the best I can do to describe what has worked for me. And what is that, what have they done? To paraphrase, when Buddha was asked "What have you gained from all your meditation?"

"Nothing at all."

"Then what good is it?"

"Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana."


Start this two-part "Tips for Meditation" with Part One...

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!