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He who seeks God in some way (read meditation technique
or ritual),
grasps the way and loses God, who dwells in the way. But he who seeks
God without a way, grasps God and lives with the Son.
Meister Eckhart
Man has to seek God in error, forgetfulness and foolishness
Meister Eckhart - Doctor Ecstaticus
Meditation is a Lifelong
Project
Meditation takes your entire life and gives it back to you in a
new form.
Of all the things I have done in my life, I consider the moment
I discovered meditation as a young man the most fortunate event
in my life. It was indeed a journey marked by error,
forgetfulness, and foolishness, but nevertheless, it has led me
to a life in old age where I can now sum it all up in one simple
word:
'Gratefulness.'
How do we arrive in that promised
land of thank you? What is the best meditation technique in this
respect? I would say all techniques and none of them. I tried
most of them but essentially, I arrived in that state by sitting
alertly with closed eyes and doing nothing.
Listen here to what Franz Kafka has to say:
"You need not
do anything. Just remain at your table and listen.
You don't even need to listen, just wait. You don't even need to
wait,
just learn to be quiet, still, and alone. And existence will
come to you by itself
and offer itself to you. It has no choice; it will roll in
ecstasy at your feet."
Here in that potent passiveness, I
realized that the repetititon of mantras are like running in
circles, not much different from the societal alienation
described in Kafkas books. However, a long as you enjoy your
routines while doing them, you should not call it a waste of
time.
For the one who sits with what is, without doing anything, not
even using a meditation technique, everything will be given in
the form of fine-tuned intuitions from within. These tiny
blessed 'innerstandings' will light up the next step on the
path.
However, I've often experienced impatience in myself and others.
This impatience does nothing but put the cart before the horse.
In this context, I think of Napoleon's famous words:
"Dress me
slowly, for I am in a hurry!"
This impatience stems from our
mind. However, the thinking-based ego-mind cannot become
spiritual in the same way that a caterpillar cannot become a
butterfly. The point is, the caterpillar dies on a cellular
level in the process where the butterfly unfolds. Not a single
caterpillar cell gets the honor and joy of becoming part of a
butterfly. It is not the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly.
It is something that has transcended the cellular life of a
caterpillar. At the point of metamorphosis, both the caterpillar
and the butterfly produce poison to kill each other. The
caterpillar-mind lives in the world of meditation techniques and
therefore, at a certain point, these techniques become poison
for the unfoldment of your spiritual life.
The mind in search of gurus, retreats, and more advanced
meditation techniques is like a caterpillar-person putting on
fake butterfly wings and convincing itself and the world that it
is the butterfly of the soul.
Therefore, at some point, we have to give up spiritualizing
ourselves. As ego-driven humans, we are caterpillars—nothing
more. One day, a butterfly will be born in us, but we will not
witness the birth. For the birth itself is our death:
"You must be willing to burn
yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise again, if you have not first become ashes?"
— Friedrich Nietzsche
I know such statements do not sell
tickets. But I'm not interested in selling meditation techniques
anyhow because they are created by an ego-mind that wants to
spiritualize itself through understanding and control.
The Business of Spirituality
The restless 'Californicated' Western mind loves ideas like
self-improvement. In this sense, meditation techniques have
become a kind of commodification of spirit. The more techniques
are seen as important, the more there is to sell in the form of
courses, retreats, mantras, and self-development.
What is the essence of life? It is peace and love. Can you buy
love from a prostitute? No, you cannot. Can you buy true peace
on a meditation course with a famous guru? No, you cannot. As
long as we are all clear about the conditions, there is, as far
as I am concerned, nothing wrong with prostitution or paid
retreats. We must, however, realize that these gratifications
are for our caterpillar life only. And at some stage, we are all
caterpillars.
That is why Meister Eckhart says:
"Merchants go
when the truth appears,
for the truth needs no merchanting.
Behold thy temple cleared of merchants."
My friend Johannes from Zurich,
who is a practicing Buddhist and fluent in Tibetan, says: 'Om
mani padme hum' has turned into 'Om money give me soon.'
Having said that, I now have to contradict myself. For every
viewpoint sees only half the truth. In this sense, meditation is
soul surfing. Spiritual growth is not linear and is often full
of paradoxes. It is each soul's task to surf the balance between
them.
EFFORTLESSNESS IN MEDITATION
That we are not able to meditate is however, not
contradictory to meditation. In the realization that we cannot
meditate, we can allow ourselves to be meditated. This is an
effortless process. In Sunyata's words, it is happening in
'joyous ease.' We could also say that to sit in joyous
meditation is to sit with grace.
"The bird of
paradise lands only on the hand that does not grasp."
— Zen Proverb
"God is in all things, urging us to give up our will."
— Meister Eckhart
Make as little effort as possible
in meditation. In my experience, this sentence contains the most
important meditation teaching.
Let me repeat like mantra: Let yourself be meditated.
Allow meditation to come to you; let it be a spontaneous,
natural process that the mind engages in simply because it
enjoys it. Let yourself be meditated!
Meditation becomes stiff when driven by conscious willpower.
When you actively chase the butterfly of the soul, you cannot
catch it. Only when you sit completely still, perhaps after
giving up the chase, might you be lucky enough for it to land on
your hand.
The "I," understood as the outer person, is as bad at meditating
as a cart is at pulling a horse.
What can be done, however, is to be meditated.
We are so accustomed to combining insight with action.
Meditation, by contrast, is about being aware and then conscious
without striving to do anything.
In a way, both awareness and consciousness must be cleansed of
intentions.
This will not lead to passivity! Action happens spontaneously
and effortlessly in awareness and consciousness without you
feeling the need to do anything.
For this to occur, it is important that any insight or
meta-insight into your behavior is NOT followed by guilt or
sharp divisions of what is good or bad.
You perceive and realize yourself supported by trust and
non-judgment.
Meditative meta-insight occurs in the clear light of love, where
there is nothing to change. Everything happens on its own in a
transformation process beyond your control.
Something for Something
We are used to the idea that we must do something to get
something.
Our entire external survival apparatus has been trained from
childhood to obey 'the necessary.' It’s about doing something,
becoming something, ideally becoming number one!
By doing things, we transform the world into tools. By using
tools, we achieve 'something.'
The Valueless Soul
One of the problems with turning meditation into a tool is that
the soul is entirely valueless, understood as value-less. It has
no value in the sense that it is the source that gives all other
things meaning.
An effortless Effort
To be meditated, however, I must do something. This is a paradox
I leave open. For the dynamically fragile truth lies in the
cracks between theses and antitheses:
"The Highest can only be reached through an effortless effort."
— Manav Dayal
So let me conclude by contradicting the first section: You must
make an effort if you want to proceed further in the text. You
will not get far in meditation without self-discipline.
Find where the balance between these statements lies in your
life.
You come with your own small light that can only show you your
next small step, often to step beside the narrow path leading
down to the primordial ocean.
Mistakes are, however, the most important thing to make.
Meister Eckhart even says that God prefers great mistakes over
small ones.
For good advice makes the head wiser, while mistakes make the
body wiser. Correcting the course after a mistake is also a
result of feedback.
The Knot in the Stomach
When I teach meditation, I often encounter people who report
feeling a knot or tension in their stomach or other parts of
their body during meditation. Their question is now how to more
effectively make the unpleasant knot disappear. Meditation is
seen here as a form of spiritual surgery, where the unwanted is
cut away as if it were a tumor.
In my view, however, there is nothing you should do with this
knot. There is likely a good reason for the knot being there; it
might prevent some intense feelings you are not ready to face
from surfacing.
I Am Too Dumb to Meditate
For this reason alone, it is important to do nothing in
meditation. The outer person's reasonable control apparatus is
too dumb to meditate. It is like trying to repair your computer
with a hammer. Trying to control your inner self in meditation
can also be risky. No one would dream of performing surgery on
themselves without medical training. We might as well give up
our attempts to constantly remove the irritating speck of dust
from our eye. The more we rub, the more irritated the eye
becomes.
"You are irritated by every rub,
how will your mirror be polished?"
— Rumi
The only thing the meditative tool-thinking does is get in the
way of the body's wonderful self-healing system. Only our innate
psychological immune system can uncover the different traumatic
layers of the psyche at the right pace and with the right
timing. This intelligence works best when you give up control
over yourself.
An English proverb says: "God takes care of the ignorant." By
being a fool inside yourself, God, understood here as the body's
own self-healing intelligence, is activated.
Everything is Already Perfect - Life's Perfect Imperfection
In effortless meditation, everything must necessarily be perfect
as it is. If everything were not perfect as it was, something
should be done about it.
In effortless meditation, the knot is therefore perceived and
'consciousized' as perfect. Why perfect? Perfect because it is
there—right under your nose. Some of the greatest wonders in the
world were created by people who had difficulties and blockages.
It was precisely because of the tensions that they achieved the
sublime. Creative people often had difficult childhoods. The
resistance itself created creativity as a survival response.
Therefore, the world is perfect in its imperfection.
Meditation is what happens, not something you do. For our old
ego-operating system, which is used to eating bread by the sweat
of its face, the fact that meditation only works without effort
is very difficult to relate to. The fact is, however, that you
cannot meditate with the old ego as the operating system.
Meditation belongs to the brain of the future, a brain that is
not controlled by the outdated programs we received as
ape-humans during the 500,000 years we lived on the East African
savanna.
The brain of the future functions effortlessly. Its operating
system facilitates a flow of bodily consciousness in awareness
and mindfulness. Everything happens here in a natural process,
where a true and honest core-personal 'soul' creatively and
intuitively stands in fluid connection with what lies beyond the
soul's fluid boundaries. This soul unit's motivation to move out
into the world in spontaneous interaction can be summarized with
the following keywords: joy, light, desire, love, motivation,
unpredictability, and spontaneity.
The day your "I" becomes a living, fluid soul in awareness and
mindfulness is the day you no longer strive, no longer over-plan
the future, no longer think strategically about friendships or
interactions with others.
Here, all work ceases. It is replaced with playful creativity in
flow.
Because you are fully yourself here, you will be extremely
effective. Other people who still operate from the old operating
system will think you work hard. They may envy you for your
energy. The secret is simply to be yourself, to have taken 100%
responsibility for your inner core personal being, and to have
the courage to live it out. It costs an enormous amount of
energy to constantly perform the outer person's theater, to be
someone other than who you really are.
Only your true self can let itself be meditated, only your
innermost hyper-individual atman-core can move out into the
world in the flow of awareness.
The day this operating system is in control is also the day you
no longer need to set aside time to meditate. Meditation is the
natural state for those who have entered this flow.
In the new operating system, simply realizing is enough for
change to spontaneously follow the desire that comes in the wake
of realization. Again, there is nothing to do, no effort
involved. Effort is a byproduct of the old ego-operating
system's difficulties in managing the human body.
Should We Then Be Passive and Not Act in Life!?
"The non-existent can penetrate where there is no space.
Therefore, I recognize the value of non-action.
To learn without words and work without accomplishing,
few understand this."
— Tao Teh King, Lao Tzu - 43
I am sure that many readers are now thinking: A life without
thoughts and action? Where will that lead in a modern society
like ours?
My answer is: Of course, there should be powerful action in
life!
However, the motive for action is of utmost importance. It
should not stem from the pursuit of pleasure and the fear of
pain. This polar action is created by our old ego-operating
system, and as long as we are stuck here, we will not be able to
upgrade to the brain's next evolutionary operating system, which
functions radically differently.
The old ego-based survival programs have long exceeded their
expiration date—so it doesn't hurt to give them some resistance.
In our modern, highly complex urban life, they are like outdated
computer operating systems that do more harm than good. The new
operating system functions lightning-fast, intuitively, and in
love and heightened conscious awareness. Most importantly: here,
actions do not stem from pressure.
"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in
you, a joy."
— Rumi
The new system is not motivated by fear and desire. Under the
command of this operating system, we are more like carefree,
playful, creative children in the permanent flow that emanates
from one's inner, felt self-love in awareness. Here, we act,
create, and play in blind but super-awake trust in ourselves,
others, and the world in general. Maybe you're now asking: is
this even possible? Yes, it is... I take myself as an example
for this. I walk the talk. And if I can, so can you!
When we act under pressure, especially permanent stress, we
cannot utilize the brain's latest evolutionary survival
response. The evolutionarily latest developed is also the most
fragile. The super-awake consciousness is humanity's most
advanced survival machine to date. It functions lightning-fast
and intuitively but is the most fragile as the latest shoot on
the brainstem. The prerequisite for the super-awake
consciousness to unfold its delicate mirror of consciousness has
been isolation, peace, and quiet. This is why people who have
chosen to cultivate consciousness have often chosen the easy way
out, namely withdrawing from the noisy and tempting life. The
super-awake consciousness likely first emerged collectively in
Buddha's time. However, it has grown a bit stronger and more
robust over the last 2500 years. We now have a new opportunity
to cultivate super-awake consciousness amid the battlefield of
life.
Here, we are what one might call spiritual warriors, allowing
powerful action to happen in awakened flow rather than, to
slightly paraphrase biblical words, eating our bread by the
sweat of our face.
Let Go of the Big Experiences
When people come to me and tell me about their enormous
spiritual experiences, I see nothing but an ego that has been to
a good movie. Truly profound changes are not the result of great
spiritual experiences. Great spiritual experiences are merely a
sign that you have not really let go. If you truly surrender,
lose yourself to find yourself, it will feel more like a gentle
summer evening breeze.
So, meditation is about practicing letting go—letting go of
great spiritual experiences and the longing for enlightened
perfect Masters. These self-proclaimed clairvoyants and
enlightened ones are actually Drama Queens and Kings.
Of all the spiritual inspirers I have not met but read, the Sufi
mystic Rumi and the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart are my
absolute favorites—yes, I actually feel as if they are here on
par with my best friends. So let's start with a few good words
from these two people who might now become your friends.
"He who seeks God in any way (read: meditation technique or
ritual),
grasps the way and loses God, who dwells in the way. But he who
seeks God
without way, grasps God and lives with the son."
— Meister Eckhart
(Let's not get hung up on Eckhart using the word God. For
Eckhart, God is merely a metaphor for the infinite and the
mind's incomprehensible.)
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find
all
the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
— Rumi
So do not cultivate the great dramas in your meditation. The
inner fireworks that can sometimes arise when one begins to
meditate should only be regarded as flowers on the roadside. The
real path to freedom lies hidden in constantly rediscovering the
small joy and freedom in the banal, the boring, and the
everyday.
MEDITATION IS PRACTICING LETTING GO
Although it sounds more dramatic than it is, meditation is
actually training in dying. This little death of the mind—la
petite mort—is the most life-affirming and mentally hygienic
service you can do for yourself and others. For out of this
death arises new and fresh life. The nature of the mind is to
cling to yesterday's experiences.
To die meditatively is to let go of these experiences so that
every time we open our eyes after a deep meditation, we can
experience the changing seasons with the eyes of spring.
To Be or Not to Be - That Is the Question
You need not fear the little meditative death. As you become
familiar with it, you will discover that who you are at the very
core, your core personality, your essence, cannot die. When you
let go of something, it is not your hand that falls off. What
dies in meditation are all the false notions and expectations of
yourself that you and those around you have.
The closer you get to who you really are, the more meditation
will be a completely natural part of you. Meditation is your
resting in yourself, your being. This rest in oneself is
constant when you and your core personality are one and the
same.
A Blooming, Humming Freedom from Prefabricated Thought Systems
Meditation, if practiced in freedom from organized religions and
other political belief systems, will deconstruct all your
prefabricated perceptions of what reality is and leave you in a
new and fresh world where, in William James' words, you will
re-experience everything in a state of blooming, buzzing
confusion.
Here, you learn to take the first baby steps into an innocent
world where you can figuratively walk without feet and grow
without roots. Here, you learn to become your own cause.
How the Body's Muscles React to the Little Meditative Death
Talking about the little meditative death is, however, more than
just metaphorical when it comes to the body's reactions. Our
heartbeat slows down during meditation; it can even almost stop.
Our breathing also pauses in the exhalation phase for longer
periods. Often, the body temperature drops, so you can
experience feeling cold after meditation if you haven't wrapped
yourself in a blanket.
Meditation puts the body into a state of hibernation that is
often much deeper than sleep. Muscle relaxation during
meditation is also more pronounced than in the sleep state.
This meditative hibernation can sometimes be misinterpreted by
the brain. Our instinctive animal brain can interpret the
hibernation as a sign that we are dying. Since large parts of
our brain are programmed for a life on the East African savanna,
the brain unconsciously retrieves its old survival strategies
from the closet: the muscles tense and prepare for attack or
flight. So, while we sit and relax more and more, paradoxically,
unconscious muscle contractions can occur, causing tension,
especially in the neck and throat area.
If you notice that parts of your body's muscle armor have tensed
unconsciously during meditation, it is a good idea to direct
your attention to these areas. Innocent but awake attention has
a healing effect in itself. Stretch both before, during, and
after meditation like a cat. Yoga is also an excellent technique
that can be used to preempt these unconscious mobilizations of
the muscle armor.
The Mind's Reaction - The Ego Counterattacks with Thoughts as
Artillery
The "I"—our ego—ceases to exist when there are no thoughts...
How does the mind now react to this survival threat? An
experience most meditators have is that during meditation, more
thoughts often press in. Meditation's "turning inward" disturbs
the status quo. When there are more areas of blue sky between
the thought clouds, our "thought muscle" (neocortex) reacts by
sending swarms of thoughts toward us, well-intentioned to
improve our chances of survival. As mentioned elsewhere,
thoughts in their deepest Darwinian nature are survival
strategies.
Never Fight Thoughts in Meditation
"I could be confined in a nutshell,
and count myself a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams."
— Hamlet, Shakespeare
When thoughts arise during meditation, it is very important not
to fight them. In an open confrontation with thoughts, you will
always be the loser in the sense that any attempt to push an
annoying thought away will result in it bringing reinforcements
from a swarm of new thoughts. So... If you can't beat them—join
them!
It Takes Energy to Think
It requires mental energy for the brain to produce thoughts.
This energy will be taken from the same energy source that your
consciousness draws power from. Imagine your consciousness as a
light bulb connected by a power cord. When thoughts draw power
from this cord, the light in the bulb dims. Because of this
"thought theft" of power, consciousness loses its clarity. When
there are many thoughts, we usually slip into a semi-awake,
daydream-like state, where the first thing to disappear is our
meta-ability to realize we are thinking. When thoughts grip us
in meditation, we are actually on a slippery slope into the
realm of sleep.
How to Relate to Thoughts in Your Meditation - The Secret
There is, however, a very effective secret weapon against
thoughts. This weapon is, moreover, itself a thought, a thought
that in its "meta-direction" actually betrays its own kind.
This thought is the meta-thought: "I am thinking."
The simple and ingenious thing about this little thought insight
is that the power of thoughts over you is significantly reduced
the moment you are aware that you are thinking. The moment this
clarity is present, the power returns to the light bulb of
consciousness, and you will be able to perform your next
ingenious move—namely, to see your thoughts as:
"clouds in the sky."
Without the light of your consciousness, you will instinctively
chase your thoughts like a dog runs after a bone. And in this
chase, you quickly get lost in the thicket of thoughts. The good
news is that the moment you are aware that you are thinking
again—the battle is almost won!
However, there is a small pitfall even after you become aware
that you are thinking. This typical pitfall is that you begin to
create a drama with yourself in the lead role as the one always
plagued by thoughts in your meditation. My advice here is: Do
not spend energy or time on this drama. Every time you realize
you have fallen into the thought ditch, just climb back onto the
path again. Do not spend time sitting and lamenting in the
thought ditch. Just climb back onto the path again. And when you
fall into the ditch again, just climb back onto the path again.
And after you have fallen in the first million times, which you
surely will if you make meditation a part of your life—just
climb back onto the path again. Look between the thoughts
instead of at them.
"The mind can make a Heaven
out of Hell or a Hell out of Heaven."
— Milton
Avoid Routine in Any Form of Meditation!
Many meditation teachers and meditation traditions emphasize
that meditation should be a daily routine in one's life. I
completely disagree on this point.
A successful routine life can become a sleeping pill, and a
difficult, chaotic life can be a blessing.
Zen Buddhists say: To lose is to win - to win is to lose.
Most meditation techniques develop a tolerance over time that
makes the mind immune to them. Habit and conscious awareness are
opposites. I have seen people who dutifully sit 20 minutes every
morning and evening and sleep. If meditation becomes a habit,
awareness will disappear from it. Where the technique initially
made one more awake, it ends up making one fall asleep.
Even if our lives run smoothly, there is reason to sound the
alarm and try to dance out of the treadmill. A creative life in
flow is the best recipe for keeping awareness young and awake.
The Armenian mystic Gurdjieff took his spiritual students into
war zones to break the dulling power of habits over
consciousness through shock. But much less can do it. If your
life, for reasons you cannot change right now, is routine, try
to make small creative variations in, for example, the way you
brush your teeth or walk to work.
Meditation routine resembles military drill and can be used in
the same way. Religious organizations share a secret with the
military: through physical drill, one can control the mind. Once
you get people to march or meditate in unison, you can also get
them to commit actions they would never dream of doing under
normal circumstances. A religious organization, a monastery, or
an ashram would have more difficulty exerting power over their
disciples if they only meditated when called to do so from
within.
So avoid habit in any form of meditation! Enter meditation in a
new and unexpected way each time it comes to you. Practice
meditation at different times and in different contexts. Let
yourself be surprised—especially by yourself. Make meditating as
creative and spontaneous as playing an improvisation on a
guitar. Practice a meditation technique in the same way one
plays a blues: The fixed 12-bar structure is given, the scales
and chords are given, but the good blues musician's solo never
repeats itself.
Meditation Is Not Spiritual Bodybuilding
The performance-oriented Western mind tells us that it takes
hard work to reach the goal. "No pain, no gain," says an
American workout slogan. In the USA, yoga beats all other sports
when it comes to physical injuries. When yoga is transplanted
from a culture resting in the moment to a restless,
performance-oriented "no pain, no gain" culture, it is clear
that it must go wrong. Our culture has difficulty understanding
that you can achieve more by doing less.
Do not meditate to achieve a result. The notion that one becomes
enlightened after many years of meditation is simply the most
harmful idea ever associated with meditation.
Expectations in Meditation
Routine also arises because we always have a desire to repeat a
good experience. Our Stone Age brain is geared to go to the same
place where we had a good hunt last time. There was food here
yesterday—so there must be food here today.
The Danish poet Schack Staffeldt had a spontaneous experience of
merging with the cosmos as a young man:
"A heart beat warmly and kindly in everything,
In everything, my own form beckoned me."
After this experience, the only thing Staffeldt thought about
was how to get back to this state:
"I know no peace
until I bring down the heavens!"
Staffeldt never returned to this precious state.
The paradox here is that the better a meditation we have
experienced, the more the memory of it will block a new, fresh
meditation. The same applies if we have experienced for a longer
period what the Indians call sat chit ananda, which means
silence, being, and bliss.
Meditation, however, is not like prey we must capture.
Meditation is more like an infinite, unpredictable, and creative
artistic process. Only the artist—the spiritual hunter—who is
also willing to look up at the sky for elephants will succeed.
But in fact, we cannot find meditation. It is actually us who
are the prey, and meditation is the hunter. This hunter's
preferred food is fat egos.
Meditation finds us and meditates us when we least expect it.
And where the prey animal always looks in the direction from
which the attack came last, the cosmic hunter always comes
unexpectedly and from a completely different direction.
So if you have had a wonderful experience in meditation, you
must be prepared to say goodbye to it. It is as Sting sings: "If
you love someone, set them free."
The Simple Is the Most Difficult
Meditation is primarily difficult to practice because it is
simply too simple for a mind schooled to complicate things.
Meditation is like a diamond hidden and forgotten in what we do
not notice because it is too familiar.
The great mystic Kabir said that people are like fish in the sea
who thirst for water.
In meditation, we are like the hare in Alice in Wonderland who
couldn't find its glasses because it was wearing them.
A story from ancient India tells of a beggar sitting on a
treasure of gold.
The mind loves to invent a God who can only be found at the end
of a complicated equation or as a pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow. Be innocent as a child when you meditate.
Practice Meditation with as Little Effort as Possible
Falling into Meditation Instead of Meditating
Meditation is a natural, organic, and innate bodily reflex. In
the same way one "falls into a reverie," one falls into
meditation. It is, in a way, more accurate to use the
formulation "to be meditated" rather than to say "I meditate."
In spontaneous meditation, you do not wait for it to happen; you
do not even wish for it to happen.
I could write much about TM (Transcendental Meditation). Here,
the organization should be praised for instructing meditators in
a crucially important thing: Avoid any form of effort in
meditation.
Meditation should be a creative, joyful play from the first
moment in your life you sit down with closed eyes. Meditate
without effort—because it feels good—because it feels
right—because your mind gets a taste for doing it.
Let yourself be meditated rather than meditate.
You are not the one at the helm when meditation happens. It
happens within you, and you simply allow it to occur. Meditation
is a natural, innate ability to fall into a reverie:
"A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare."
— W. H. Davies
Meditation Is a Spiritual Feast
Forget about working to become enlightened like Buddha. Such
dreams of greatness actually maintain our own hidden suffering.
Instead, feel the tiny freedom inside your inner dark space.
Blow on the small ember and warm yourself by it. Your brain will
quickly regain its dopamine and serotonin reserves depleted by
consumer culture.
Meditate as a kind of inner feast, focusing with gratitude on
the inner freedom that is within you and always has been. The
reason you didn't see it was always there is that you were so
busy with other things. You are not busy now, as you sit with
closed eyes and feel yourself. Our soul cannot be trained like a
bodybuilder's muscle. It is already perfect, but we left it when
we went out to find it.
In the past, food was not an everyday certainty. Consequently,
feasting meant eating in abundance. Today—where we have had
enough food every day for several generations—we still hold on
to old habits and eat ourselves into constipation when we
celebrate.
It is time for some new, updated celebration rituals. Group
meditation is my suggestion for a new way to celebrate. Sitting
quietly together with closed eyes is a very intense experience
and can create deep bonds between people.
Enjoy and flow!
Best regards,
Gunnar Mühlmann
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