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Tag: meditation
Loving Kindness Meditation Invitation
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I am certain your heart is full of love on this beautiful day. Thus, it offers the perfect opportunity to do something meaningful on a global basis. Click on the URL below and join us in expressing that love towards others.
Torrey Pines beach early in the morning
A New Year Resolution: To Be or To Do?
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” — Lao Tzu
This is the perfect question for anyone interested in spiritual growth as you begin a new year, especially after what the past year has brought: Should I learn to be and sit in stillness till something happens or should I beckon my creativity and do? It is the perfect question for new beginnings. No doubt that the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has brought much pain and suffering to the entire world. It has created an underlying anxiety prompting us to want what we had before the pandemic, namely, normalcy. You hanker for what you took for granted: the ability to be with family, friends, even strangers. You want to exercise your creative nature, which seems stagnant after a year of waiting. So, you ask, should I be or should I do as 2021 begins? As Lao Tzu, philosopher, author of the Tao Te Ching, and founder of philosophical Taoism noted many years ago, painful endings often disguise the opportunities for new starts and new growth.
To begin, although one cannot beckon the muse of creativity at will, you can certainly try. More often than not creativity and our ability to do shows up only when the ground of the mind is tilled and ready. The question, then, is really how you prepare this ground to allow for new, meaningful growth? Paradoxically, it requires stillness. Thus, the question is not a choice between doing and being but to first understand beingness and practice that and out of that practice arises the right doing. So, what does it mean to be still?
The stillness I am referring to is not related to physical action. It is not stopping of motor movement and motion. Instead, it is a psychological, and even more, a spiritual disposition. For those who meditate, it is a common experience to sit in meditation, a physical stillness, without really being still. It is the stillness of the mind that is important. So, you must really understand what a still mind means in order to practice it.
Mind stillness does not require stopping thought or thinking by suppressing or masking it. Were that even possible, it is certainly not recommended.
The stillness you are aiming for is an attitude, a perspective that you take. It is a way of evaluating information and circumstances that you experience. The perspective is that life is “perfect” as it is at every moment, and to accept that in a loving manner. Not perfect in an ideal or Platonic sense but as the only possibility given the history and circumstances of that moment. Accepting reality in this way is the basis for mind stillness. Life is what it is and cannot be otherwise. Thus, you need not lean right or left (meaning that if you accept that things could not possibly be anything else at that moment you don’t worry about alternatives). You are simply present to that reality and accept it fully. That is stillness.
Such an attitude can occur whether meditating or living the bustle and tussle of daily life. Spiritual teachers, such as Eckhart Tolle call it being present, in the moment, or in the now. I would agree and add that it means having situational awareness in every moment. It also means becoming aware of the stillness inherent in nature, from which you can learn. When you practice stillness, your actions flow in concert with your life, with nature, and that flow is the muse or creativity itself. Being and doing at this point are the same thing.
Having accepted the reality of the moment does not mean you are resigned to what life brings. It does not mean you do not try to change negative moments or circumstances. The mystery is that having accepted reality as it is, lovingly, causes the enormous creativity of the universe to engage and provide you solutions to wisely change what is negative, damaging, hurtful, inappropriate, and corrosive. It is a supremely intelligent, self-correcting system.
I encourage you to practice mind stillness in 2021. Adopt this new perspective, practice it, and if after a few weeks of dedicated practice, it does not feel positive or right then stop. I guarantee, however, that if you truly touch stillness, even briefly, you will not want to stop.
Please be safe.
Beyond Metaphors
In my attempt to understand the mind beyond metaphors, I began exploring other alternatives in addition to science. One path led me into meditation and the spiritual realm. At some point in the 20 years of this exploration, the boundary between science and spirituality gave way. What became obvious at that point was that the thing I was searching for and trying to understand (mind, consciousness, God, Buddha-nature, enlightenment) was in fact the world I inhabited. I recognized my true nature in the life around me. And this new world stared at me as it had always been staring me in the face. This realization, as anyone who experiences it will tell you, is both funny (Is this a joke?) and infinitely “enlightening.” Funny because it seems so obvious in retrospect. Infinitely enlightening because it is but the beginning of our real journey of discovery.
The most immediate change I experienced was a lessening in my need to achieve in terms of my career and professional goals. The self-evident purpose of my life wasn’t to achieve anything per se but to enjoy my beingness. Having studied to be a scientist, I had convinced myself that achievement drove my work. Accolades, grants, publications, and other aspects of research appeared to define the importance of who and what I was. Now, that discernment was reversed. I saw scientific knowledge for the sake of knowledge and as having its own unique beauty without the need to make anything out of it. Everything else became secondary.
Along with this experience, I sensed a developing confidence. I knew this realization was not a temporary state or another creation of the mind that would be soon forgotten. It was a real awakening to and appreciation of life. I developed a sensitivity to the “sacredness” of all things. Sacredness in the sense of appreciating the beauty and uniqueness of everything, while appreciating their role in the larger unity of which I was part. Since that recognition, quiet moments and meditation have become my engagement and appreciation of this new sensibility. These changes in perspective and awareness do not mean I am no longer interested in doing my job, attend baseball games, make friends, or make love. Rather, it’s the motivation for doing these things that’s changed. The doing to achieve a goal is no longer important, just the doing is enough. Thus, an intrinsic joy in being human and doing normal things came to the forefront and was very satisfying. The experience reflected a natural flow, without the anxiety I had felt previously.
I also sense a paradox in all of this. The desire to know the unknown motivated my paths in both science and spirituality. But the closer I got to understanding the true nature of being, the self-centered motivation to know and to do faded and disappeared. Replaced instead by an intense desire to let whatever exists unfold without interference. Further, I learned to be content without having to do anything to garner such contentment. Since childhood, I have had an inner drive giving me the energy to excel and outdo others. It has motivated my desire to learn and explore science, but also facilitated my dissatisfaction, anxieties, discontent and fears. In my old skin, I felt guilty at not being productive. Following my realization, that driving energy still exists, but the sense of movement or needing to move and to do does not. I am calm, yet still motivated to learn and explore, but do not experience the anxieties and fears that accompanied my earlier life. I am not guilty resting. Instead, I am energized by rest and relaxation, by not-doing. As I write this I recognize how “normal” this all sounds, which is the whole point. Recognizing who we truly are, both the small swirl in the stream of consciousness and the stream itself, is as normal as normal gets.