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
Years
ago, I had
a high school colleague
who also worked as
an astrophysicist at
the university. The man
was a declared atheist,
but nevertheless said
the following:
'When I look up at the sky
on a starry night,
I shudder in awe.'
Maybe the
colleague had read
the following
quote by 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
Try once for
the sake of the
experiment to
read the quote below
angled from
Einstein's world:
'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
Meeting with
'the unknown'
is, in my opinion,
the source of all personal
and spiritual development.
An atheist may even have
the advantage in
this encounter that
they do not
in advance have
all sorts of rigid
religious beliefs.
All rigid beliefs,
whether they are of
a religious
or atheistic nature,
merely hinder the
fresh encounter between
us and the unknown. Gunnar Mühlmann •
Meditation.dk is
under permanent
construction
What is taken in by contemplation
must be given out in love Meister Eckhart
Beloved reader, dare to explore the realm of the unseen. Close your eyes and
descend into your inner sensory darkness. As Meister Eckhart astutely suggests,
it's a state one must experience to truly grasp.
Whoso is unable to follow this
discourse, let him never mind.
While he is not like this truth he shall not see my argument.
Hello, out there! Let me state my position
To call a man enlightened as we sometimes do, means little. Eckhart
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 47 years
now. I lived in India for more than six years in search of 'spiritual software'.
Now at the tender age of 70, I feel better, stronger, and happier than ever
before.
What is mine, belongs to you.
Transitioning from Knowledge to Wisdom through Mantra I frequently recite assertions as if they're mantras.
While the intellect may assume understanding after one
exposition, it quickly shifts focus due to its inherent
restlessness. However, genuine comprehension, termed
"innerstanding," evolves differently. Through a dynamic form of
repetition, we navigate from surface understanding to deeper
wisdom.
A Glimpse Through Heaven's Door: Exploring the Enigma of 'Redness' Behind the door of perception lies an infinite labyrinth of Pandora's doors.
As a young student, I delved into an Indian meditation book and,
with a self-invented mantra, disappeared into a timeless, spaceless void. Upon
reopening my eyes, the world was bathed in beautiful white light. I dropped out
of university for two years, exploring unknown worlds within myself, each step in
nature sending waves of love and happiness through my body.
The most enigmatic 'phenomenon' I encountered was consciousness, which may not
even exist in the traditional sense. Since antiquity, no one has provided a
satisfying answer to what 'redness' is or what within us perceives it.
Despite this, we use 'consciousness' casually in everyday language as if we
fully comprehend it, extending the term to race, class, and gender
consciousness, among others. But a glimpse into our inner worlds reveals how
little we truly know.
I adore words, but I concur with mystics throughout time: words can only capture
a fragment of the mysteries unfolding within an introspective mind.
Why is this important to mention?
Should I not be more humble and less bragging about my spiritual experiences?
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.
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
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 Bukowski-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.
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. 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.
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.
