Meditation For Now
This moment of now is all you have. We try to hold onto the past, we try to imagine the future, and
all there ever is is the ever present moment of now. Time is a conundrum. In the Western world, we believe it to be “linear.” That is our direct experience. My alarm goes off at a certain time, I get to my appointments at a certain time, we agree to meet at a certain time, etc. The sun comes up, lights up the day, the clouds pass by, and night comes, all in their appointed time. So, it’s linear, right?
Well, not really. You already have had plenty of experiences when time flew by, like in the joyful company of a best friend in a full-on exciting encounter. Or when time seemed to slow to a snail’s pace, like when waiting for a family gathering to be done when an unpleasant relative is being either self absorbed or ill behaved. We “lose track of time” when we are captivated by an encounter or event that literally takes us “out of time.” These are not hallucinations: they are literally altered states that seem normal, but are actually a direct experience of how malleable time actually is, regardless of what your watch or smartphone or your culture may tell you.
Your mind will discount the reality of how you already have experienced time in an altered way. Our culture will dismiss such notions as “abnormal.” All cultures depend on norms for the cohesion of that culture. Is our sense of time, then, just a norm of our culture? Some cultures embrace a wider perspective than others, typically in Eastern civilizations. And then there are the modern physicists. When I was in India, there seemed to be two norms active at the same time: one was the Western sense of being “on time,” and the other was a sense of time as fluid, malleable, non-linear. Sri Kaleshwar noted, “Time is one of the most powerful illusions faced by human beings.” What that means is that we, as humans, have the capacity to work with time in ways that go beyond our
understandings of time as simply linear. But first we have to be open to understanding that the world is made up of much more than earth and rocks. It is made of light. But I digress.
Take the notion of “spending” time, or “saving” time: is time some kind of commodity? Or the notion that time is our enemy: is it “slipping away” from us, out of our control? Or, is it simply another construct of our mind, albeit a rather complicated one? And if so, what is the real reality of it? Is time in fact just another way we experience ourselves “in the world?” And are we simply in the world, or are we more? The answer to that will have to come from your own personal experience, otherwise it is just another belief system layered on top of other beliefs.
Those beliefs are there because they serve the agenda of your mind. There are great benefits to beliefs that inspire us to compassionate and courageous acts. There can be drawbacks to our beliefs when those beliefs serve to keep us afraid or stuck or insulated from the rest of our world. That is where self inquiry can help. And, the proper practice of meditation is a great way to begin to feel safe enough in your world to directly experience the witness capacity of your conscious awareness to deepen that practice of self inquiry.
When you find a meditative practice that gives you a direct experience of something larger than the limited experiences of your five senses and the three dimensions you are used to in your “waking state” reality, your world begins to shift, your world begins to open to new possibilities. You begin to develop your capacity to discern between your monkey mind just making up some new construct or belief out of its own delusions (hallucinations), and the direct experience of something way beyond the mind, for instance, the intuitive knowings that come from your heart and from your soul.
I used to believe that meditation would still my mind. I was wrong. I tried dozens of different kinds of meditations, over decades of years. My mind was still very busy, most of the time. Each meditative practice had its own protocols and techniques. In June of 1996 I finally experienced the Absolute Stillness, the One Without Another, on account of a weekend workshop, and that experience grew exponentially over the course of the workshop, and my whole world changed. I did not know how those techniques worked, at the time. I came to understand that different techniques have different capacities to help us to have different direct experiences in different meditative states.
The smorgasbord of choices in the wide world of meditative practices can be overwhelming. Your heart and you soul will be whispering to you which one to try next, so your job is to learn to hear that, rather than listen to the voices from your monkey mind which will not be as reliable. Your mind is a wonderful servant, and it is a horrible master. Mastery comes from your heart and from your soul. It was in 2008 that I began to have a direct experience of the reality of my soul, based on meditative practices and direct experiences in those meditations.
Those meditations were and are in the context of processes developed by Sri Kaleshwar, and his senior students. I had the great good fortune to work with Sri Kaleshwar personally and with his senior students between 2008 and 2012, at which time Sri Kaleshwar “took his mahasamadhi.” That is, he “died,” “passed,” except that the ancient knowledge of the science of the soul provides techniques to the adept which allow them, under the proper conditions, to literally take their soul out of their body, and in “mahasamadhi,” the body dies, yet the soul evolves in a very enlightened way. And, again, I digress.
Fast forward to 2017 and now you have the opportunity to learn mantra meditations and processes based in ancient, practical science and wisdom. They are based in what my teacher, Sri Kaleshwar, called “the science of the soul.” And they are evolving on account of my association with one of Sri Kaleshwar’s senior students, Nadira Seeram. These mantra meditations reach directly to your soul,
and beyond. Your mind can observe, your heart can calm, and your soul can inform. Your capacity to be in the world in a way that you have never experienced before can become manifest. When your soul energy is flowing, you can restore your soul's capacity to know and deliver truth. This is the state of the soul at peace.
As I have noted before, if you are curious about how to make this real in your world, check out my website and make contact with me. Today would be a very good day for you to do that.
https://healing4now.wixsite.com/healing4now/events