The current world energy could be summed up as a “Do Not Enter” sign with its red outer circle and horizontal bar. But if you look with a shifted perspective, you can also see that the bar can also be viewed as a handle that can be used to push the door open.
Presently, many people are experiencing a kind of holding, where they don’t know how to proceed or believe they cannot proceed because they take at face value the sign, which appears to be “Do Not Enter.”
It is a time to look past face values and see with new eyes. And to test reality before you decide what it’s trying to tell you.
Q: How do you know the difference between what you should push through and what you shouldn’t?
No force is required. A gentle touch with light pressure is enough to see that it is a handle and not a barrier.
Anger turns the sign into Do Not Enter. Letting go reveals the handle. Innocent curiosity rather than aggressive forcing of one’s views is the most helpful approach.
Q: How do we better achieve that state of innocent curiosity? How do we get there?
Re-embrace the child’s mind. When you give a tool to a young child who has no preconceived ideas, they will find multiple uses for it. They will turn it upside down and sideways and use it in ways not intended but also valid.
Move away from “form” as the right answer. Instead, rediscover playful curiosity, “If I do this, what happens?”
The adult mind is weighed down with fear of consequences and losing ground. In a child’s mind, there is nothing to lose because the child brings nothing in terms of expectations.
Many adults try to meditate the same way. They try to approach what appears to be the Do Not Enter sign and then try to force their will on the object until it is subservient so that they can “accomplish,” in a limited task-oriented view of getting things done. There is almost never an enjoyment of the process. It is too frequently about getting the next thing done.
Meditation is the opposite of that mindset. It is not about doing. It is about undoing. As well, intuition, creativity, and spirituality are about undoing or not doing, and letting what is before you reveal itself to you.
By clearing the senses and just observing, the simple act of paying attention shifts awareness in the energy field to one of connection and union, rather than division and control. So that more opens up more quickly.
And the more that opens up more quickly, the more delight the experiencer and the experience share. The more the individual is able to continue to enjoy opening rather than closing.
There is always a way through, but the way through cannot reveal itself through pressure. It only appears when one shares joyful curiosity. There’s no sense of competition or winning or achieving the one right answer. It is about the multiplicity. If I do this, this can be used this way. If I do that, that can be used that way. It is the process of discovery without fear.
From an adult perspective, there is almost always fear and the worry of consequences, the dread of consequences. Because to the adult mind, almost all of life is a power struggle to exist, to stay in place, to not lose ground. Never mind gaining ground. Such thoughts don’t occur to the creative child.
This is what meditation can do for an adult. By learning how to remove pressure and tension, to be willing to simply experience the process without measurement is where the ability to remove oneself from distracting thoughts occurs.
The thoughts are there, like the birds in the trees. They will flit and fly but one need not focus on them. There is just an awareness that they are there.
In that settling of the mind, the heart begins to settle. The body begins to settle. And a feeling of peace fills the space.
People are tempted to do something with the peace. They will think: How can I keep this peace? How can I make more peace? How can I not lose this peace? Does this peace mean I have become awakened? Instead of just letting themselves be within the peace. This is how the peace becomes them.
As soon as they start thinking about the peace, they have separated themselves from the peace and have made it external again. Another balloon to catch and tether to the earth.
It’s only when we look at the external world that all the difficulties arise. The troubles of the world, the wrongdoings, the sadness?—?those are always there. And they are reinforced by billions and billions of thinkers thinking thoughts daily. Until the world has become a Do Not Enter sign.
Do not participate in those thoughts. Do your best to disconnect from news and outer distractions that cause upset and mental overstimulation.
Focus now on the joyful, curious child. Allow happiness to be the normal state of being. Invite happiness and peace to settle. Let what flits around flit, while remaining mindful. As in the mind is full of happiness and peace. It is as easy a feeling to feel as sadness, worry, and fear.
Our culture has made these states of being devalued. Because our culture values the intellectual, the hard-pushing-past person, the get-things-done person.
Whereas those who reside in peace and happiness are often seen as simple and lightweight. And, in fact, trigger the people who are the cultural guardians to try to pull that being out of happiness. “See, this is a lie. See, I can press this button to make you angry. See, you don’t really understand what’s going on.”
And yet the only way to fully understand what is going on is to reside in peace, where awareness and knowing radiate out to touch all beings, to know all things. Even so, that peace remains. Because from that peace is also the knowing.
Nothing can be changed through the doing/forcing energy. It can only be changed by residing in a state of peace.
Q: In addition to meditation, what are the other secrets to getting to a place of stillness and peace?
It is all the same. The process is all the same.
It is learning how to stop time. When one can stop time, this is the meaning of being in the Now.
It is not a matter of saying OK, now I am in this moment of Now. That is not the Now.
The Now is a timeless place of being. Where all is. From the timeless place of being, in that all is, in that union, one becomes aware of the connection to All That Is. And so is able to begin understanding the communication from the All That Is.
It starts very gradually in what appears to be linear ways. Exercises can be set up to cause these types of experiences. To fully observe a flower until one merges and becomes the flower. This can be done through any and every sense.
By releasing the desire for control and accepting the presence of the timeless Now, where all is, without separation, this is the true purpose of meditation.
Q: There’s so much momentum that we have as we become adults to be a different way than what you’re talking about. It almost seems like there needs to be a deprogramming.
True.
Q: What’s the way to accomplish that deep programming?
The way this reality works is that thoughts lead. Thoughts lead to feelings, to actions. So begin practicing the thought of happiness.
Start where you are. Most people are in non-stop thought. As often as you are able, make all thoughts be on “I feel happy now, I feel joyful now, I feel peace now.” By repeating these thoughts over and over, again and again, they can begin to take root and grow. They can begin to push other thoughts out.
Most adults have a problem with believing it could be that simple. Or that, so what? I tell myself I feel happy now and so on. This does not make my problems go away or change the troubles of the world.
But those thoughts arise from allowing oneself to remain unhappy, unjoyful. They have the Do Not Enter sign firmly slapped on the brain.
It’s easy to intellectually understand the concept, and science can back it up by proving that thinking happy thoughts creates healing in the body, changes brain waves, and so on, but so much of the world has become about the momentum in rushing toward “the inevitable future” that many would feel it is too much to ask. It is not believable that if I think I am happy, if I think I am at peace, that will become reality.
This is not an instantaneous switch. But truly thinking “I am happy, I am at peace,” over and over, will eventually become the reality.
People want a quick fix. There is no quick fix. Because the deeply ingrained habits won’t allow a quick fix. But in truth, could this become a permanent instantaneous change? Yes. Are you capable of allowing that to happen? No. The construct of reality that you have accepted as “what is” prevents that.
In the beginning, the work is about chipping away at that reality. As one progresses, the work becomes walking away from that reality. As one progresses further, it becomes about walking through that reality. As one progresses further, it becomes dissolving that reality into the All That Is.
Any of these stages can happen spontaneously and permanently. But it requires the underlying belief to structure crumble.
Q: I’m wondering how to take that to the next level? To make it more of a full way of being.
When you notice yourself slipping away from that, interrupt yourself immediately and bring yourself back to the present Now. Replace the unwanted thought with a wanted thought.
If it is difficult at times to think “I am peaceful, I am happy,” and feel those feelings, then think of thoughts or memories with images that trigger those feelings. Or any experience that you know makes you feel happy and joyful and thankful.
It doesn’t matter how you generate those states?—?thoughts, emotions, memories. It just matters that you generate them frequently until they begin to outweigh all other energy patterns.
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