Meditation

I started my sitting meditation practice in 1999 and started teaching meditation in 2010. Through the years I have come across some indelible discoveries that I wish I’d known from the start. Here are just of few of those findings…

There exist many traditions and methods of meditation, and the number of traditions keeps growing with the number of new teachers and with the changing and evolving cultures throughout history. Many of the ancient practices and methods are still relevant and effective in today’s world because they address the core of our human-ness – which is timeless.

Yet, it appears that most of the world has lost or does not fully comprehend the fundamental aspects of these traditions, and so the deeper functions of yoga and meditation are seldom understood and often misinterpreted, misused, or thrown into a watery soup of inconsequential and confusing practices. These practices are sold to us as effective paths to awakening, yet give no real results and often leave us feeling like we’re doing something wrong, or we haven’t tried hard enough yet, or we’re somehow not good enough to do the practice right, and so we feel like giving up, because..what’s the use?

Perhaps most importantly, once we do find an effective practice that we resonate with, whatever practice that may be, we must keep it simple if we want to experience its benefits. Because simplicity is the goal, simplicity must also be the path – as Chögyam Trungpa used to say, ‘the Path is the goal.’ And as Lester Levenson often said, ‘keep it simple sweetheart’ (the K.I.S.S. theory). Correspondingly, we also need to leave behind those practices which we do not resonate with, however much someone may insist to us that they will work for us. We must to follow our own intuition with regard to any spiritual practice.

In terms of purpose, the art of meditation – whatever type of meditation is, whatever tradition or teacher it comes from – has only one objective: to still the mind so that we are able to see clearly our already existing Self. Our apparent individuated souls then merge with the true Divine Self, or universal consciousness. By seeing clearly, we realize that we already are that which we’ve been seeking…that we are the One Universal being (insert preferred label here).

And to this singular purpose, there is one basic fact of our apparent, individuated human existence that we cannot ignore if we are to have an effective meditation practice. That fundamental, basic, underlying fact, is this: the egoic, thinking, intellectual mind cannot calm itself down or shut itself up. It can never silence itself or make itself still, no matter how hard it tries. As well, trying improve your mind using your mind will lead to a dead end road – any attempt at using the intellect to better oneself on a spiritual level will never bring lasting results. It will only bring frustration, confusion, or suffering to you and to those around you. Because what we seek to experience lies beyond the mind, we cannot access it with the mind. The mind can only point the way.

Instead – with any practice of meditation – we need to learn how to let go of the thinking mind. Because true meditation is merely the Self enjoying the Self. This, I believe, is key to any meditation practice. Very simply,‘meditation’ is taking your attention off of what you are not (ego) and putting it on what you are, which is your beingness, and that which is beyond beingness – the infinite Oneness.

When you begin to understand that the mind cannot meditate, that it cannot be mindful, that it cannot become awakened – that it is, in fact, the obstacle to awakening – when you come to know this on an experiential level, your meditation practice will become much easier. You can directly access that part of you that is already whole and complete, and you can abide in that sense of presence, that essence of completeness that exists within you permanently and eternally. Then, ‘just being’ becomes blissful and easeful. It will get deeper and deeper, more and more ecstatic the more you are in it.

This ‘pure being’ approach is a direct and profound path to realization, and is, in my experience, the simplest path to awakening.