What is taken in by contemplation
must be given out in love
Meister Eckhart
Meditation.dk Manifesto
What is meditation? With an open mind, it is the act of feeling, seeing, and
reflecting inwardly with the same passionate persistence that one possesses
after mastering a musical instrument over many years.
Meditation.dk is free from organized thought systems. Religions, sects, and
great spiritual leaders are for those who follow the herd. The time for such
phenomena has passed. Like a tiger, a free individual carves their own path.
It is up to you to determine the framework in which meditation should be
incorporated. It is your responsibility to design your own spiritual interface.
If you blindly follow the crowd, you will never be able to surf your soul's
tsunami.
However, this does not mean you must journey alone in your quest for freedom.
There are free communities that are not governed by power and economics. In
these communities, we are each other's teachers, united in friendship and equal
openness. Such a community resembles a flock of birds in migration.
You were born with wings.
Why do you prefer to crawl through life?
Rumi
Hello, out there! Let me state my position.
I am not a guru. I am not 'enlightened'. I am not interested in teaching
Spirituality or Meditation. I have no commercial interest in this website.
My goal is, as far as I know myself, to inspire and be inspired.
I have been doing all kinds of spiritual practices continuously for 45 years
now. I lived in India for more than six years in search of 'spiritual software'.
Now at the tender age of 65, I feel better, stronger, and happier than ever
before.
Why is this important to mention?
Should I not be more humble and less bragging?
Let me clarify, as far as I can see and know myself. I write this to inspire. If
I can 'survive' my own life in this way, it might also be possible for you!
When you are young, you have a lot of energy, but no wisdom. When you become
older, you might become wiser, but at the same time you tend to loose your
energy.
Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano
Without wisdom and high levels of energy, there can be no true Meditation. The
cultivation of super awareness can only happen in a sound mind in a sound body.
If you are able to maintain your energy, health, and liquid intelligence into
older age you can be lucky to arrive at a sweet spot zone where you will be
gifted with a kind of astronaut overview of life and yourself. Here in this
liquid perspective, many exciting things can be observed.
The first I want to mention is that the age of gurus and religious institutions
is fading.
In spite of hermits and Himalayan cave dwellers, the cultivation of
consciousness has always been a collective project. Without a culture of
meditative isolation, there would not have been any yogis living in caves for
decades or Christian monks and nuns living in various degrees of renunciation.
The various religious and spiritual organizations have, however along with all
their good intentions also been political power institutions. In the verticality
of power the trade-off for social security and suitable infrastructure is
depersonalization at the buttom of the pyramid.
For a modern individual, this is not longer functioning.
We cannot any longer take responsibility for our own divinity in a spiritual
hierarchy. We have become too individual. This, in my eyes precious
individuality has now to be taken to a higher level of collectivity.
Go all the way
First of all, we have to stand in our own pillar of life. It takes a lot of
courage to reach that point.
Everything is changing faster than ever before. We live in a global world of big
data and disruptive flux. Hence the old ways of new age spirituality have become
more obsolete than ever before. They have served their time in the evolution of
consciousness. Surfing the current tsunami of change is only possible in an
independent, vigilant and liquid state of awareness. In that fearless state, I
say goodbye lovingly to the spiritual teachers of the past. The best of them
still inspire me deeply, but not as a follower.
To my pleasant surprise, I find that I am not the only free surfer. I don't want
to end up like a Bukowski. When I stop searching in the sky for spiritual
leaders to tell me what to do but look horisontally around, I see kindred
spirits.
A shared field of consciousness
When we are free and independent, only then it is time to reach out and share in
cloud-like relationships with kindred souls around us. We can inspire each other
in spiritual information circuits where up and down, in and out, back and fourth
changes all the time in a state of flux. Here we are all each other's gurus and
devotees. We exchange spiritual information in a way similar to open source
technology. In this open field, we enter a collective and ampified field of
shared consciousness.
The collective cloud of super-consciousness is however, not for everybody - yet.
The unfoldment of the collective cloud consciousness can be compared to the
evolution of the Athenian democracy. The Athenian democracy was not for
everybody. It was only a privilege for the citizens of the city-sate. Tom,
Harry, and Dick had to wait around 2000 years before they were included in the
club.
My guess is that there are several newly formed democratic fields of
spirituality all over the globe by now. Each of them has a distinct rainbow
color and 'mission'.
Are you a Chosen One?
So how do you know if you are the chosen One, evolutionary ready and eligible to
be a part of a new exclusive brother and sisterhood?
A genuine club of consciousness will never exclude you.
You will exclude yourself by your lack of interest.
Meister Eckhart says:
Whoso is unable to follow this discourse, let him never mind.
While he is not like this truth he shall not see my argument.
However, I am not only talking about my 'club'.
My words might not inspire you,
and yet you will be attracted
to another cloud with a different signature.
For It's Too Simple
The main reason meditation is so difficult to understand is because of its
simplicity. For an innocent and noble person, there is nothing to comprehend.
Everything will reveal itself intuitively, not as knowledge, but as wisdom. In
these fantastic but overly clever times, most of us have lost touch with what it
means to be a noble and wise personality. Therefore, do yourself a favor and
watch the video below, where a man who just turned 97 shares his noble wisdom.
Meditation & the Noble Soul
In the video below, you can meet another noble
soul. It's my friend Shabdanand. At the time the video was recorded, in 1995,
Shabdanand was 80 years old. My question for those who take the time to watch
these videos... Have you seen such people in the West? I haven't... It seems as
if old age is perfectly suited for a final spiritual blossoming. However, this
blossoming only occurs in those who have nourished their body's soil throughout
their lives.
Those with an egocentric motivation behind their
meditation will eventually lose interest. My guess is that many of the young,
savvy professionals promoting meditation today will not be meditating themselves
in a few years. It may sound old-fashioned, but only a noble personality can
continue to meditate throughout their entire life.
Meditation.dk is
under permanent
construction
•
Everything that is written
on Meditation.dk represents
no absolute truths.
What is written here
is, of course,
limited by
my understanding.
I am a
fallible
human being.
For
No one can
jump over
their own
shadow.
Gunnar Mühlmann •
GOD
Any reference
to and use of the word
'GOD'
on Meditation.dk
is understood as
humanity's
personalized
projection of the most
unfathomable aspects
of our own consciousness.
The psychologist
C.G. Jung
has argued that
everything
that transcends our
conceptual world
and goes
towards infinity, in a psychological
sense, is religious.
When I often
incorporate quotes
from Meister Eckhart,
it is partly because his
formulations can make
sense on both levels.
He is so quiet,
so free of any kind of knowledge, that no idea of God is alive in him.
Eckhart
For år tilbage havde jeg en gymnasiekollega der også arbejdede som som astrofysiker på universitetet. Manden var erklæret ateist, men sagde ikke desto mindre følgende:
'Når jeg en stjerneklar nat kigger op i himlen, så gyser jeg i ærefrygt.'
Måske havde kollegaen læst følgende citat af Einstein:
'The most beautiful
thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all
true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who
can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as
dead: his eyes are closed.'
Albert Einstein
Prøv en gang for eksperimentets skyld at læse nedenstående citat vinklet ud fra Einsteins verden:
'When a man delights to read or hear about God,
that comes of divine grace and is lordly entertainment for the soul.
To entertain God in one's thoughts is sweeter than honey'.
Eckhart
At mødes med 'det ukendte' er efter min mening kilden til al personlig og sjælelig udvikling.
En ateist har måske ovenikøbet den fordel i dette møde at han ikke på forhånd har alle mulige fasttømrede religiøse holdninger.
Alle fasttømrede holdninger, hvad enten de er af religiøs eller ateistisk natur forhindrer blot det friske møde mellem os og det ukendte.
The True, the Good, the Beautiful ... and the
Dried Out
A life in what I would call true
Meditation is reserved for the few.
I do not belong to the club of meditation experts who make a living by telling
people that meditation is for everyone. I can afford to tell the truth as I see
it:
The truth does not sell tickets. The more something is for sale, the less truth
it contains.
Let me, before I proceed, elevate this claim to a meta-level, where I become
visible to myself. Such a statement implies that I believe that I myself live a
life in genuine meditation and am thus able to distinguish between true and
false introspection.
One thing is certain. It's not a humble statement. For millennia, religious
people have been conditioned to see and practice humility as a sine qua non.
Humility without truth, however, is hypocrisy.
I have played guitar for most of my life, but I'm not supposed to say out loud
that I'm better than most at playing the instrument. I have meditated every day
for 40 years, but I break a taboo if I openly claim to know more about
meditation than most who ride the trendy meditation wave, teaching teachers to
teach meditation.
Why can't I say out loud what I'm good at if it's true?
At the same time, I am willing to talk openly about all the things I am not good
at.
For example, as this chapter amply demonstrates, I am often judgmental. Seeing
this perhaps less flattering survival strategy without judgment, however, is all
I can do. We cannot change ourselves with understanding and willpower without
paying a correspondingly high price. Instead, I can be changed beyond myself
when I am ready to see myself.
Mr. Jante used to say, "You shall not think you are anything."
Today he has a new buzzword in his vocabulary. He says, "You are a narcissist if
you talk about yourself."
In my view, the greatest enemy is the person we see in the mirror every morning.
Every time I try to examine and understand this enemy, they point accusingly at
me:
Narcissist!
That puts a lid on self-examination. No "who am I" here! Be something for others
rather than focusing on your own navel. Meditation is narcissistic!
Apart from a straight right from Jesus when he talks about the beam in our own
eye, the movement is entrenched in our Western culture. Look out! From
scientific to purely academic disciplines, we always look outward to fix things.
The inner persona, so busy fixing, is rarely taken into account except for some
occasional psychology. No one sees the eternally hungry monkeys behind the
sensible suits in Danske Bank's boardroom until it's too late. At the writer's
school, a bunch of highly cognitive word-juggling author monkeys fight for power
and the right to who can violate whom while writing literature that should make
us wiser about life.
This labeling could hinder a person's willingness to engage in self-exploration,
which is essential for personal growth and self-understanding.
However, it's of course important to differentiate between healthy
self-awareness and narcissism. Narcissism is generally characterized by an
excessive focus on oneself, accompanied by a sense of entitlement, a lack of
empathy for others, and a constant need for admiration. On the other hand,
healthy self-awareness involves understanding one's thoughts, emotions, and
motivations without an inflated sense of self-importance. This requires courage
to truth.
THE COURAGE TO TRUTH
A prerequisite for wisdom is our ability to
accept an inherent 'messiness' in our explanation of what is going on. Nowhere
is it written that the human mind must provide a complete explanation of
creation in all dimensions and at all levels. Ludwig Wittgenstein had the idea
that philosophy should be what he called "true enough." I think it's a good
idea. True enough is as true as possible. Imagination is chaos. New forms are
drawn from it. The creative act is to submerge the net of human imagination in
the sea of chaos that we are suspended in, and then try to bring ideas out of
it. Rupert Sheldrake
I now ask the question: What separates the sheep
from the lions?
It is the courage to truth... to honesty. For without honesty, no
self-awareness. And without self-awareness, no true meditation.
This pursuit of truth must not be made absolute.
The truth is found and lost and found eternally listening and searching for the
chorus of inner and outer counterpoint voices laid in our hearts, brains, and
genitals. The truth is a grain of sand on top of a sand dune by the North Sea.
Surfing the waters of the soul as well as possible in all our wonderfully human
fallibility is more than good enough.
It is, in Wittgenstein's words, especially in Sheldrake's wonderful context,
true enough.
The dried-out meditation veteran in search of satsang-soma
After this far-reaching overture, it is now time to focus the introverted eyes
sharply on Meditation. True Meditation is difficult.
Most people who start meditating quit after a couple of years of practice. Only
one in ten or fewer will continue. I belong to this group, and therefore, it
naturally interests me. In addition to nurturing my own little navel, there is,
in my conviction, a deep lesson to be learned from observing us in this group.
Perhaps new generations of young meditators can learn something from the old
fox?
Peace be with those who gave up. It can certainly be difficult to maintain the
spark. The question now is what those who continued have done to keep the
momentum?
What strikes me here as the biggest pitfall is the danger of drying out in
habitual eternal repetitions.
Meditation veterans have typically meditated for years under the shadow of some
meditative philosophy or organization. In the beginning, this insight and/or
organization created a new and wonderful opening into a hitherto unknown space:
a space full of spirit that the ordinary person has never entered. But as the
years go by, meditation solidifies into habits, rituals, and outwardly
'spiritual' sacred correct behavior. This type of meditator is now no more or
less alive than ordinary non-meditating people.
But the old routine meditator is sentimental... he remembers a time in ecstasy.
The sleepily habitual meditating person is well aware that the spiritual fire of
youth is on a low flame. As in Staffeldt's "Indvielsen," he longs for the
experiences that changed his life. That's why he seeks communities created by
like-minded people to revive the life-giving inner ecstasy.
For the sentimentally inclined meditator, the great past experiences all too
easily become curses. For as the drug addict longs for the needle in his arm,
the old meditator longs for his spiritual soma.
At home and left to himself, he falls asleep on the meditation cushion. But
there is hope ahead! A venerable back-Indian Guru or a new pop-smart New Age
preacher from America has announced his arrival in Copenhagen.
The old veteran smiles to himself. For in the more
or less sectarian community hype, he can reawaken his inner Tollund Man. In an
echo chamber of like-minded satsang zombies plus new innocent spiritual seekers,
his tired brain will be filled with dopamine, serotonin, and all the other
neurotransmitters the brain loves to bathe in.
The old meditator is willing to do whatever it takes to get this fix. Never mind
that the Guru is under suspicion of financial fraud and sexual abuse of his
disciples. It's just the mind trying to sabotage the ecstasy. Every time the
truth and reason present themselves with relevant questions, it is all dismissed
as mind fuck. This eternal enemy, the stubborn mind, with all its thoughts. Do
not listen to it! Instead, surrender to the Guru's grace.
It is here that the lie and self-deception begin to sneak in. True meditation is
difficult because honesty is difficult. Ibsen's wise words about the life-lie
are spot on.
To avoid this pitfall and maintain the integrity of one's meditation practice,
it is crucial to cultivate honesty and self-awareness. Be open to questioning
one's beliefs and practices, and be willing to adjust and adapt in the pursuit
of truth. Do not blindly follow a Guru or become attached to the past
experiences of ecstasy; instead, focus on cultivating a genuine connection to
the present moment and one's inner self.
In conclusion, true meditation requires the courage to face the truth and to be
honest with oneself. By doing so, one can maintain the vitality and authenticity
of their meditation practice and continue to grow and evolve on their spiritual
journey.
Det gode, det sande og det skønne - Satyam,
Shivam, Sundaram.
An additional irony is that the Indian word satsang, which is used to describe
the kind of spiritual gatherings I have just mentioned, means to assemble in
sat, which means truth.
In our Western culture, we talk about the trinity of the good, the true, and the
beautiful.
My guess is that this trinity, through ancient Greece, is derived from India.
The Indians call it: Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram: the true, the good, and the
beautiful.
I see a depth in the ancient Indian formulation that has been lost since. Satyam
comes first. Sat or Satyam means truth. The truth must and should come first.
Any ecstasy that does not build on a love for truth will sooner or later, like
the chemical industry, produce a deluge of karmic waste. Seen in this light, the
spiritual world is subject to the same rigor as mathematics: a statement is
either true or false. It is the small, accumulating everyday lie that dries out
the mind and eventually necessitates the hype-dependence on the untrue and
unhealthy satsang soma.
It is not my task to be loving.
I believe this writing has amply demonstrated that.
I see it as my task to be honest.
Being honest and prioritizing truth in one's spiritual journey is essential to
avoid falling into the trap of self-deception and attachment to superficial
experiences. By seeking Satyam (truth), Shivam (the good), and Sundaram (the
beautiful) in one's meditation practice and spiritual life, one can cultivate a
genuine connection to the present moment and one's inner self, thus facilitating
growth and evolution on the spiritual path.
