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Death Wish: A Meditation Dream

Go ahead, make my day…

The gun didn’t scare me, nor did the guy holding it that was going to kill me. In fact, I was intrigued, curious to the nth degree – what would death be like? What would I experience? Would I experience? Who would experience, if there was experience? If there was experience, would there be a transition from one state of awareness and consciousness to another?

I leaned into the gun until the muzzle was touching my forehead – directly at the third eye. “Go ahead,” I invited. I relaxed and centered my focus and on simple being – breathe grasshopper…

Did the gun fire? Is my body dead while my awareness/consciousness remains? If death was instantaneous, I probably wouldn’t have registered the event. “What’s my experience now?,” goes through my head(?), mind(?), consciousness(?).

“If my brain is dead,” I think(?), “then I probably wouldn’t be thinking like this.” What would the experience be?

My state is suddenly much more subtle – not so much heavy self-reflective thinking, more like deep, relaxed meditation. I recognize this state and am aware that if grasped at, it will disappear. Relaxing more (who/what relaxes?), the state envelopes me(?) more – absorbs me(?) – just the state now. A self-aware state. No where to go, no where to be – a simple experience, complete in itself.

“Wait a sec,” I think(?) “What about all those different planes/dimensions of existence that many spiritual traditions speak of?”

I realize that I am dreaming and have the freedom to explore possibilities beyond the limits of waking life. I head out for the far country where I can be many, any I(s). Where living, dying, flying and enlightenment are possibilities.

I wake up on Easter Sunday, I’m a year older. Now there is a miracle – overnight, I aged a year!

April 6
What is Meditation?

Origin of the English Word Meditation

‘Meditation’ – derived from the Latin meditatio, from a verb meditari, meaning “to think, contemplate, devise, ponder”.

Interesting that the word’s English origins point toward more engaged mental activity than I tend to associate with meditation. To me, even contemplation involves less active thinking and more pondering or a daydreaming (floating thoughts) quality. I’ve never been interested in meditation for stress relief or feeling better about myself or life. For me, meditation is about allowing what is more subtle and real to rise more to the foreground of experience – to the point where the meditator and the meditating are one.

In the Old Testament, hagâ means to sigh or murmur, and also, to meditate. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, hagâ became the Greek melete. The Latin Bible then translated hagâ/melete into meditatio. The use of the term meditatio as part of a formal, stepwise process of meditation goes back to the 12th-century monk Guigo II.

Sighing and murmuring link meditation to the breath and chanting or mantras in my thinking.

The Tibetan word for meditation “Gom” means “to become familiar with” and has the strong implication of training the mind to be familiar with states that are beneficial: concentration, compassion, correct understanding, patience, humility, perseverance, etc.

For me, ‘to become familiar with,’ points to absorption and the nondual – knowing by being.

‘Meditation’ was introduced as a translation for Eastern spiritual practices, referred to as dhyana in Buddhism and in Hinduism.

Dhyan is a state of pure consciousness, which transcends the inner and outer senses. The climax of Dhyan is samadhi. In Indian tradition, it is used for inner soul growth. Western psychologists link it with mental concentra-tion and consider it a special state of mind. But this is only the early phase of Dhyan.

The term ’Dhyan’ comes from ’dhyai’ dhatu used in ’lat’ pratyaya. Its meaning is contemplation or the natural tendency and direction of senses. Patanjal Yogashastra links it with ekagrata or concentration. According to Sri Aurobindo, Dhyan is that state in which the inner mind tries to see the reality behind things. Ekagrata means focusing the consciousness on one point or object and keeping it steady in one state. In yoga, ekagrata is achieved when the mind is deeply engrossed in a special condition like quietude, or action or aspiration or resolve. This is called meditation. Read more»

History of Meditation

Some of the earliest references to meditation are found in the Hindu Vedas (1500 BCE). Around the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, other forms of meditation developed in Taoist China and Buddhist India.

In the west, by 20 BCE Philo of Alexandria had written on some form of “spiritual exercises” involving attention (prosoche) and concentration and by the 3rd century Plotinus had developed meditative techniques.

Philo’s primary importance is in the development of the philosophical and theological foundations of Christianity.

Plotinus developed a complex spiritual cosmology involving three elements: the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that all existence emanates, according to Plotinus.

The Pali Canon, which dates to 1st century BCE considers Indian Buddhist meditation as a step towards salvation. The Vimalakirti Sutra which dates to 100 CE included a number of passages on meditation. Around 1227, D?gen wrote the instructions for Zazen.

In his “Universally Recommended Practices for Zazen” Fukanzazengi he says, “The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice [in the traditional Buddhist sense]. It is simply the Dharma gate of peace and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated awakening.” Dogen’s zazen is a ritual expression and celebration of awakening already present. He repeatedly emphasizes the oneness of practice-realization, in which practice does not lead through one’s own efforts to some subsequent realization. For example, in 1241 he said, “Know that buddhas in the buddha way do not wait for awakening.” Read more»

The Islamic practice of Dhikr had involved the repetition of the 99 Names of God since the 8th or 9th century. Between the 10th and 14th centuries, hesychasm was developed, particularly on Mount Athos in Greece, and involves the repetition of the Jesus prayer. Christian meditation progressed from the 6th century practice of Bible reading among Benedictine monks called Lectio Divina, i.e. divine reading. Its four formal steps as a “ladder” were defined by the monk Guigo II in the 12th century with the Latin terms lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio (i.e. read, ponder, pray, contemplate).

Secular forms of meditation started appearing in India in the 1950s and migrated to the United States in the 1960s.

Reading about the etymology and history of ‘meditation’ gives me some insight into how the meaning of a word evolves through time and cultures, but also how the mind reifies concepts. It’s also interesting to note, my opinion, that as meditation became more secular, it seems to have lost much of its spiritual, transcendent and transformational power. A daily sitting practice can be one of the simplest, yet challenging forms of meditation.

Simply sitting and meditating is not necessarily practice. Practice requires true intention, true motivation, true devotion to the truth. Otherwise, we are not practicing or engaging the work. A. H. Almaas – Runaway Realization

April 4
Do We Really Want to Know Ourselves?

How little personality really wants to know

“….don’t worry if, at the end of any day, you suddenly realize that you can’t remember a word I’ve said. That doesn’t matter. It’s the journey itself that’s going to change you.” Ishmael – by Daniel Quinn (A gorilla comments on the current state of affairs)

It seems obvious – our attention is skewed by our enneagram fixation AND it functions in a manner to reinforce and perpetuate the fixation. When we are blind to so much, how can we ever hope to see? Our personality, ego structure, and false self always function with an agenda.

This agenda, whether positive or negative, and the underlying motivation for it is habitual, unconscious, and insidious. But, we are addicted and though we protest otherwise – refuse to let go of the pain and suffering and story associated with it. The pain, the suffering and the story are inseparable from it – they are part and parcel of one manifest phenomenon– who we take ourselves to be.

….”I know of no such story,” I told him at last.
“You mean you’ve never heard of it?”
“That’s right.”
…”That’s because there’s no need to hear of it. …Every one of you knows it by heart by the time you are six or seven. …And you hear it incessantly, because every medium of propaganda, every medium of education pours it out incessantly. And hearing it incessantly, you don’t listen to it. There’s no need to listen to it. It’s always there humming away in the background, so there’s no need to attend to it at all. In fact, you’ll find – at least initially – that it’s hard to attend to it.” Ishmael

The desire to actualize our potential; the longing for freedom and peace; the hunger for love and contentment arise from within the soul as an optimizing force which is quickly co-opted by the ego – incorporated into its agenda and activity for self-improvement. Improving the self is self-defeating – a point of appreciation I owe to Claudio Naranjo’s presentation of the enneagram.

Our understanding of self is a Gordian knot – the more we struggle with it, the tighter it gets. So, how does one unravel this knot? How can we help to align our exploration with the optimizing force and relax ego-activity? How can we avail ourselves of the wisdom of the enneagram without perpetuating the fixation?

We need to get below the surface of the self – surface that includes all of those great characteristics and traits so wonderfully articulated in the enneagram of personality types. We need a crack or two in the shell of the self – for we have been existing for a long, long time as a bounded entity. When a bounded entity turns inward – that movement of attention is, at first, also a movement away from the true self – another conundrum on the path of self-improvement.

What we need is to NOT do. Allowing our self to see the truth – our situation as it actually is – invites the optimizing force into our experience. Developing the capacity to be in full contact with our experience while not acting out the ego’s agenda – our story – is being in the service of the soul. (Appreciation for the work of A. H. Almaas)

Our intent is not to do but to be. Our motivation is not self-improvement but freedom and authenticity. Our desire is not to define and explain our self, but to clarify the transparency of the soul. And – believe it or not – knowing your fixation can help – but, as usual, one must take the road less traveled.

Wanting
To be, to become, to know
Is torture
Sitting in the Night
Being revealed
Is the sweetest
Satisfaction
jh

The Obvious

The enneagram is a treasure-trove of insight and information for a self-improvement campaign. I mean, my God, we have your strengths and weaknesses, our high side and low side, our movements toward integration and disintegration. We have our existential issues, our chief feature, our passion, our delusion, our…well, you get the point – no need to write another book.

But how do we work with that information in a real way? Go where we don’t want to go – meaning let our attention go there – feel it fully and immediately. When the mind tells us – that makes no sense, when anxiety rises, when we notice places we avoid – we need to get a clue! The personality (ego), according to Freud, is basically a defense – the whole enchilada. It’s a collection of semi-successful ways in which we have learned to cope with life, to survive, to manage our affairs while increasing our pleasure and avoiding pain.

Take one of your type’s favorite or dominant characteristics or traits and explore its opposite. Love strength? Give some attention to helplessness. Prefer being in control? Explore powerlessness.

Here’s a way to explore this:

Get a pen and paper. For 30 minutes answer this question with whatever comes to mind.

“What’s right about not being ___________?”

(Fill in this blank with something you avoid, something your personality has learned to compensate for – weak, needy, wrong, stupid, and etc.)

Right now, some personalities have already rejected this exercise or are in the process of modifying it – say ten minutes instead of thirty. Well, there you have it – just how little it really wants to know about itself.

In the process answering (be sure to write it all down), make the answers short. Be sincere, get the ego’s position paper on this issue. Anything over a few words is just more story that helps to avoid the full power of the exercise.

To continue the exercise after answering the question for thirty minutes, explore your family history with what’s in the blank. See how family attitudes and values influenced you on this issue; how they supported you to be a certain way or coerced you to be another. Then, specifically examine your judgments around what is in the blank. Do this by feeling or observing how the judgment affects your level of energy or vitality.

To complete the exercise: now that you have all of this insight and information, do nothing with it. Oh, and don’t do ‘nothing’ with it also. Observe how you react – your thoughts, feelings and actions. Don’t reject or stop anything – unless it is totally inappropriate, illegal, or dangerous to yourself or others. Remember, do not use this information to improve yourself or as a hammer to beat yourself up.

The Unfamiliar

The enneagram talks a lot about the three centers (head, heart, belly) and most people are dominant in one. Explore your least developed center. Observe how it is to function from this center. How does it affect you? What comes up in you – thoughts, feelings, motivations for action? Allow yourself to be a total klutz or ignoramus– no judgments needed here. Take this center out for a test drive.

Explore your history with this center. Explore the judgments. Explore the personality’s position – How do you explain your position to others?

“….you assembled this explanation like a mosaic from a million bits of information presented to you in various ways by others who share that explanation. You assembled it from the table talk of your parents, from cartoons you watched on television, from Sunday School lessons, from your textbooks and teachers, from news broadcasts, from movies, novels, sermons, plays newspapers and all the rest.” Ishmael

Again, for the time being, avoid acting on the desire to become “a whole person” by integrating your three centers. Intrigue yourself for a while with how it has been for you to run on one or two cylinders instead of the three you came equipped with.

The Unspoken

This is more subtle and difficult. This is in the realm of pre-verbal experience and deals with knowing our personality at a very deep and uncomfortable level.

Did you know that the foundation for who we take ourselves to be is mostly in place by age three – way before the capacity for abstract thought develops? This foundation exists in us as an energetic charge – a pattern of tensions and a comfort range of energies. When we start poking the light of attention into this area, we are very likely to get a rapid response along the lines of: “Well, this is just who I am. This is what I prefer. I like myself this way. And, etc.”

An easy ways to gently rattle this cage to see just how sensitive you are to being outside of our energetic comfort zone (habit) is to change your driving habit. For a whole week slow down ten miles an hour or, depending on our personality type, speed up. If we’re not sure, experiment with both. It will be obvious within a day or so. Do it all day, every day and just observe yourself. Watch how you will attempt to create other situations and venues in your life to bring your energetic sense of self back into the comfort zone. Observe how irritable, antsy, and uncomfortable you can be over something so simple.

(See Chapter 20 – The Pearl Beyond Price by A.H. Almaas for more insight into this)

So there you go, a way to explore personality to see just how little it really wants to know about itself, but how it always has grand designs on how to improve itself – like that is really possible when it is so blind to reality.

An important point to keep in mind when poking around into this personality and ego is to be gentle with yourself. Be kind, but steadfast – appreciate the fact that this bounded entity has been working its little heart out as best it can for survival and well-being. Treat it like the sensitive three-year old it is.

The superego, the inner critic, the internal judge is another story all together. Learn how to kick its ass out of your experience. Otherwise, life will always remain a prison and we will always be confined to a type.

Why resist
The unraveling
Of the great ruin
Your life
Has made of you
God has sent His
Wrecking-crew of angels
To renovate
The dog house you call home
Into an exquisite palace
Crystal fountains
Jeweled domes
Diamond spires
And walls of Divine Transparency

Why resist?
This Architect’s Plan
Always includes
The razing of
Existing structures
jh

October 10

The Abandoned Meditator

Does Meditation Need Me?

Is your day ever like this?

I wake up. Lie in bed a bit. Sense, Look and Listen.
I get out of bed, go to the bathroom, brush teeth, put some water on hair and comb, splash some water on face…
Now it’s time to meditate. I go to the meditation chair and get situated. I do an Om salutation and I meditate.
My meditation practice ends. I rise from the chair, leave the bedroom and…

I had many of those days until I looked more deeply into the process and considered a different perspective. Here is the rub with that whole scenario – ‘I.’

Do you see it? ‘I’ wake up. ‘I’ get out of bed. ‘I’… I’m even meditating!

My whole day begins with ‘I’ and chances are it’s going to tend to stay in that groove.

Consider this: everything is already enlightened. This would include us. Perhaps we are not aware of this and this is part of why we meditate – to ‘do’ our part toward waking up.

What is meditation?

From a dictionary: Meditation – the action or practice of meditating.

Note: there is no ‘I’ in that definition. Can action and practice happen without an ‘I?’ Every nondual teacher says so. Let’s take them at their word. Our ‘I’ automatically inserts itself into any action or practice. I believe I’m needed!

These days I think of meditation and meditating as something that is always happening, like enlightenment. In fact, I think enlightenment is meditating me. Every moment of my day, I’m in meditation – whether I’m aware of it or not. I’m being meditated from the inside out, the outside in and every other way possible.

Waking up, brushing teeth, sitting to sit – it’s all meditation happening.

The perspective of everything is already enlightened and meditation happening at all times helps to end the divisiveness that ‘I’ provides. With this, I can simply sit, or walk, or brush my teeth and let meditation do what it does. Meditation is more relaxed, more open to influence, more curious about mysteriousness.

It’s true – I still wake up, do those things and wind up in that chair, but each movement has less ownership by ’I’ and more inclusion.

My Ass

I used to have
The most obnoxious
Worrisome, and stubborn
Ass
It was a bother and burden
I would wish on no one
So, I could not
In all good conscious
Rid my self of it
Then, a Friend
Told me of a method
To break my ass
Of all its contrariness
So, I bought a chair
And every day
I made my ass
Sit in that chair
Oh! what fights and struggles we had
That lazy ass so resistant to ever
Going anywhere or doing any real work
Now, could not and would not
Sit still
But, my Friend
Had warned me of this stage
So, I persisted
In putting my ass in that chair
Ignoring all of its
Childish braying and petulance
Slowly over time
That chair
Responded to the weight
Of my ass
Molding itself
Into the only place
My ass was ever
Really relaxed and comfortable
Now
I could not get my ass
Out of that chair
It refused to be
Anywhere else
So, I left my ass
In that chair
While I went about
My daily affairs
Until one day
My ass
Disappeared
And
Took me with it

July 25

Continual Practice

Going Nowhere Meditation

One gift of continual practice is that stopping and starting, beginning and ending our practice is no longer relevant.

All practice involves awareness and presence. As we know, these aspects of True Nature are fundamental to experience. Attending to and cultivating awareness and presence is practice. What difference does it make if we attend and cultivate when we sit or move, in silence or in chaos, at morning or at night?

I used to think I needed to quiet my mind to meditate and practice – ha! Presence and awareness are just as much a part of both. When I meditate in this chair with the window open, what difference is it to me if a truck goes by, or people walk by talking, or birds sing or it is the middle of the night and dead calm? Practice is being with awareness and presence.

And, it’s not like there is only 10% presence in cacophony. There is 100% presence in any situation or circumstances. Practice is not to go from 10% presence to 100% presence because there is nowhere to go, it’s all 100%, but I may not experience pure presence as I am there to some degree. What I can do is bring 100% of me to whatever degree of presence I am experiencing and forget about changing anything.

If our mind is chattering, why not tend to the presence in that experience? If our mind wanders, instead of leaving that experience and starting over, why not simply tend to the presence in the wandering?

So as we learn to value not arriving, we arrive, for true arriving is a matter of not leaving, not departing. Usually, we are always leaving ourselves, always departing; and we think we are going someplace. When we try to go someplace, all we end up doing is separating from our true nature. We are always trying to find our true nature by going away from it. So inquiry takes us to the point where we simply recognize how we are leaving—and the ideas and beliefs that make us feel that we should leave. When it truly reveals its fundamental ground, inquiry teaches us not to go anywhere—because there is nowhere to go. – A. H. Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry

Think of continual practice as a river. As we move through our day, the river flows. When we sit, we are like a pool in the river. The water is presence, the state of dynamism doesn’t decrease water being 100% water.

On this planet, water flows according to topography and gravity. Water doesn’t care about obstacles, why should we? If we encounter an obstacle, why not be like water behind a damn – let our awareness of presence build in the immediacy of being with the obstacle. Eventually, we may discover the obstacle is merely presence, or the obstacle will no longer be able to hold back the presence or we will simply reach a point where we overflow the obstacle.

Why concern ourselves with outcomes when we can simply be with presence and allow nature to take its course?

July 22
Tantra of Everyday Life

Beyond Sex Tantra and Tantra & Yoga in Everyday Life

I’ve been working with the Ridhwan School to help promote their upcoming 5-day retreat on Tantra of Everyday Life. My initial efforts focused on distributing the flyer and getting it posted on Facebook and a PR release.

The next step was working with others to help create this video interview by Tami Simon (Sounds True) with A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson.

Then I turned to getting the retreat listed on online event calendars and reaching out to blogsites with comments and emails to bloggers. While doing this I found this great article from 1995 by Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati – Tantra and Yoga in Everyday From the article:

In yoga we gradually open all the doors of our personality. Therefore, jnana, understanding and awareness, is the first principle, and sadhana, systematic practice, is the second principle or practical aspect of tantra. But we are not confined to a meditative process in which we sit and internalize and begin to observe the body, mind, emotions, nature etc. Tantra is also living meditation – it affects how we live moment to moment. The instincts that manifest within and control our actions and behaviour, instincts of love, desire, security, fear and sexual satisfaction, are all to be observed and known.

There are many misconceptions about tantra. Tantra is generally seen as indulgence, as a way of life which allows total freedom. But the practical yogic components with which we work in tantra in relation to our daily life are awareness and meditation. Tantra and yoga are complementary. In tantra you will find a very broad system which allows you to understand and accept your life as it is without imposing change. Rather you allow transformation to gradually happen as you become intensely aware of your experiences and expressions.

I also came across Beyond Sex Tantra by Tanja Diamond.

My definition of the concept of Tantra is: “Tantra is the ultimate love affair with yourself and all of your existence. In the process of igniting your internal flame, you come to experience all ordinary moments as extraordinary experiences. Immersed in that experience, you realize that you are the divine, there is nothing else to need or want, but that moment.”

Only 3 percent of Tantra is even related to sex. Yes, you say, but sex is the part you want to learn about.

Well here’s the thing. You can not have a truly spiritual sexual relationship with another until you have a truly spiritual life with yourself and others with your clothes on.

Then I created another video and posted it on FB and the web.

I suppose, like many, I associate the word tantra first and mostly with sex, Kama Sutra and such. I guess this is the the result of good advertising by sexual tantrikas over the years and the erotic and exotic attraction of far-east mysteries.

A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson authored The Power of Divine Eros last year. I’m assuming that Tantra of Everyday Life will delve deeper into the subject matter of that book and take Quasar2014 attendees somewhere revelatory within themselves while keeping their clothes on.

March 27

Blog

Death Wish: A Meditation Dream

Go ahead, make my day…

What is Meditation?

Origin of the English Word Meditation

History of Meditation

Do We Really Want to Know Ourselves?

How little personality really wants to know

The Obvious

The Unfamiliar

The Unspoken

The Abandoned Meditator

Does Meditation Need Me?

Continual Practice

Going Nowhere Meditation

Tantra of Everyday Life

Beyond Sex Tantra and Tantra & Yoga in Everyday Life