#768 BASICS #3: What are We Actually Doing during Meditation?

      The way our mind normally works by default, is as if we were drowning, desperately trying to grab anything nearby, to keep us from sinking. It takes some level of introspection & insight to become aware of this chronic tight, cold, jittery uneasiness.
      Occasionally, we feel expansive, at ease, "blessed." But very quickly, this turns to worry - "This can't last - how can I hang onto this?", or "How can I make this even better?" Because it's our "normal," we're not generally aware of our "anxious quiver of being."
      When we sit down to meditate, our self-centered obsessional self-talk keeps running as always. The big difference: during meditation, we become aware of this endless self-centered obsessional self-talk! 
     This imaginary identity & world that the mind creates is nothing more than a bit of electrical current passing through our brain! It has NO objective reality. YET, we unwittingly maintain & amplify it by obsessing over it & conversing with it. AND we let it govern most of our lives! Our imaginary identity - "ego" - keeps most of us convinced that if we don't continuously obsess about our own survival, we will die immediately. Western psychology refers to this unhealthy situation as a "noisy ego" up to "narcissism."
     During meditation practice, we practice persistently LETTING GO of all unhelpful mental games (compulsive planning, worrying, regretting, wallowing, daydreaming, slipping off to "our happy place.") Initially, letting go of an unhealthy, noisy ego can feel like impending physical death. But we're NOT trying to "kill" anything, or even to completely get rid of our ego. We're only taming an unhealthy, hyperactive ego "down to a dull roar" ie to a healthy, quiet, functional state. So we keep fully showing up, EMBODYING Mind, Heart & Gut - ALL of who/what we truly are, in the here & now. This has many names & levels of maturity: from "quiet ego" all the way to wisdom, awakening & enlightenment.
     Bottom line: during meditation, we consciously, intentionally, repeatedly CHOOSE to practice letting go of "normal" robotic autopilot state, and instead, consciously, intentionally, repeatedly CHOOSE to practice visiting, & gradually stabilizing in, direct intimate engagement with actual reality.

     “Either you try to transform yourself for the sake of serving others and everybody wins, or you stay inside the bubble of ego and everybody loses. Because by desperately trying to be happy just for your own sake, you don’t help others or yourself.” Matthieu Ricard
     Matthieu Ricard, Christophe Andre, Alexandre Jollien. “In Search of Wisdom. A Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on What Matters Most.” Sounds True, 2018.

 

Sharing Silence by Gunilla Norris

Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.
When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.
In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.
The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
This is especially true for shared silence.
Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.
Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.
We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.
Each of us can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.
That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
“Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children’s children.
Let us practice for life’s sake.

#767 BASICS #2: The Heart of Mindfulness

     “Mindfulness can be thought of as moment-to-moment, nonjudgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific way, that is, in the present moment, and as non-reactively, as nonjudgmentally, and as openheartedly as possible.” Jon Kabat-Zinn. “Wherever You Go, There You Are.” Hyperion, 1994.

     Moment-to-moment means continuously ie all the time - we intend this to become our stable way of being in the world.
     Non-judgmentally doesn’t mean detached – quite the opposite. We’re learning to cultivate a friendly, kind, even loving attitude, toward ourselves, others & life in general, as life keeps unfolding for us in each present moment.
     One way to help achieve this is to instead of compulsively analyzing our thoughts & sensations, to simply notice if they feel pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. This counterbalances our tendency to become lost in our heads thinking, and helps bring us back down to earth, into our bodies, right here, right now ie back to reality.

     All of us have sustained different traumas. The more severe the trauma and the earlier in life it occurs, the greater the impact and the less we may be consciously aware of it. All of us are at least somewhat armoured, and therefore, we have more in common with military veterans with PTSD than we realize.
     "Whoever you're looking at, know that that person has been through hell several times." Christian Bobin
     So we automatically behave qualitatively differently, as if we were totally different people, when for example, we face a hostile stranger vs when we rock a beloved one-year-old to sleep on our chest. The hostile stranger 'triggers' us! We 'react' by hardening (armour), become 'stone cold,' ready to fight, run or shut down ('fight, flight or freeze instinct'). With the baby however, our heart opens wide, radiating warmth, safety, nurturing, unconditional love ('tend & befriend instinct').
     This radical difference is 'normal' ie common, but not optimal! A person competent in negotiating with enraged people will show relaxation, concern & curiosity towards the hostile stranger, will get to know them (no longer a stranger), find out why they're upset, maybe give them a hot drink, and hold them in safety & unconditional kindness. This is what we all need, especially when we're triggered!
    Triggered people unfortunately usually trigger others! When two triggered parties confront each other, things don't go well (eg when mentally ill people are killed; the many ongoing endless religious / tribal / racial conflicts). INSTEAD, we CAN cultivate the mindfulness required to face all situations far, far more skillfully: with an open mind & an open heart.

                              "We are fools to make war
                               on our brothers in arms."          Mark Knopfler

     “… in any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist, or you will soften, open and yield. If you go with the former gesture, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you stay with the latter regardless of the outer conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost being, and through it, divine being can reach you. Spiritual practice at its no-frills simplest is a moment-by-moment learning not to do anything in a state of internal brace. Bracing is never worth the cost.
     This does not necessarily carry over into an outer state of surrender, or ‘rolling over and playing dead.’ On the contrary, interior surrender is often precisely what makes it possible to see a decisive action that must be taken and to do it with courage and strength. To ski down a hill or split a piece of wood, you first have to relax inwardly; only then can you exert the right force and timing. It’s exactly the same in the emotional world. Whether it’s a matter of holding your ground in a dispute with your boss, handling a rebellious teenager with tough love, or putting your life on the line for an ideal you believe in like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., action flows better when it flows from nonviolence, that is, from the place of relaxed, inner opening.
     Remember that memorable scene in the first Star Wars movie when young Luke Skywalker had to guide his space cruiser through a narrow passage and release his missile at exactly the right time? ‘Feel the force, feel the force’ – that powerful mantra his teacher Obi-Wan-Kenobi had impressed on him – captures perfectly the relationship between inner surrender and effortless action. It’s a secret the great spiritual masters have always known.”
    Cynthia Bourgeault. “The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming An Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart.” Jossey-Bass, 2003.

   A useful meditation PRACTICE: http://www.johnlovas.com/2021/01/768-basics-2a-heart-of-mindfulness.html