Q: Meditation is so often discussed as the central spiritual practice. So, why isn’t instruction in meditation much more widespread, especially when it comes to the education of our youth?
Not enough adults know how to meditate. So, they can’t even begin to comprehend its benefits for their kids. And those who do try to meditate are often inconsistent. When there’s no consistency, the results are not immediate, so many tend to give up quickly. Therefore, there’s a perception in the West that meditation is too hard to do and the benefits are too ephemeral.
A Westerner’s mindset is to do, to take action, to make something happen. What is required for meditation is to be in quiet, without looking for results.
Q: Has there ever been a time in human history when meditation was commonplace?
Historically, meditation was primarily practiced by specific spiritual groups such as monks and ascetics. It was not a widespread activity among the masses. You could make the case that in recent decades, awareness of meditation has become commonplace, but that doesn’t mean that the practice is yet commonplace. Knowing about meditation and practicing meditation are not the same.
Because meditation involves the unseen—working with thought processes, influencing the mind, and shaping how it thinks—combined with its spiritual component, I find that many people hold a significant number of misconceptions about what meditation is and what it can achieve.
Q: Why aren’t there more enlightened people stepping out into the world and helping to lead the way? It’s as if they are in hiding. Because there have to be many more of them among us than we are aware of.
In that state of enlightenment, when it is a permanent state, the desire for connection to the world dissipates. Because the connection to the All-That-Is, is all fulfilling. Nothing on earth can touch that.
Those who are enlightened also know that by revealing themselves they will be subject to pressures. People will want from them what they have, and are likely to be persistent in this wanting.
Most enlightened people choose to remain anonymous, knowing that they can do greater good for the world by remaining anonymous. They can contribute great healing, understanding, and wisdom. They can also reach people in the sleep state.
Q: How did those enlightened people get to that state?
They chose to live a spiritual life completely dedicated to developing the skills necessary to reach enlightenment. Primarily in training the mind to get out of the way. This is the hardest thing for everyone. We highly value our minds, not realizing that the mind is a destructive distraction, a tool run amok, a primitive remnant refined and heightened into total madness.
The human mind initially developed as a means of organizing the senses, a way to receive information about the environment, to determine safety, danger, friend, foe, etc. It was a survival mechanism that was tuned to identify and respond to danger. And when there was no more danger in that way, as humans organized in communities, that skill got turned to other uses. But the baseline work of the mind is always to be on the lookout for danger. Which is why negative thinking is more predominant than positive thinking. Because the danger wiring is all about “what if.” Where is the next potential threat going to come from? Who is going to hurt me next? What is going to get taken away next? Who is going to judge me next? It becomes a perpetual negativity machine. It needs to be directed and retrained, and not allowed to continue on with its bad habits.
Q: Can you offer some kind of a way to retrain a mind that is OCD?
The answer is always the same. Meditation. You are looking for a solution that, by using the mind, becomes part of the problem again. mind has to be bypassed. And it’s not hard to do.
Q: It sure can seem hard.
It is not. That’s your mind in avoidance mode. Avoiding discipline. Avoiding practice. Avoiding uncertainty. Avoiding change.
And here’s the thing. Until one releases oneself from outcomes with meditation, one cannot progress in meditation. It’s the old thing of digging up the seed to see if it’s growing yet. It can never grow because it’s never truly planted. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. “See, it’s not growing.”
Be aware also of the forces working against this effort. Others will be likely to respond to your positive reports of mediation and say, “Oh really? Show me.” And the progress doesn’t seem like so much. We question. We pull up the seed again to check.
Plant the seed and walk away. Begin the practice and walk on. No pulse checks. No, ‘Am I doing it right?’ No, ‘Oh that was a bad meditation.’ No, ‘I had a thought again, I failed.’ None of that. You cannot think your way out of this box. The only way out is to let go.
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