04-07-2016, 07:06 PM
It's easy to find inner peace and joy while sitting in meditation. In meditation, the pressures and worries of life vanish, and the mental chatter that normally pulls and shoves us this way and that is not allowed to stick - like the famous Bobo doll, we bounce right back to centered beingness.
Yet it is the experience of many that, as soon as meditation ends, the world returns and begins depositing its various gifts of catalyst at our feet. And when this happens, we can slowly and gradually begin to lose our joy. Unless something changes, we can continue experiencing life as a see-saw of post-meditation highs and between-meditation lows.
How to get off the seesaw? Well, many don't meditate at all, and this produces a sense of stability. Not happy stability, but without experiencing the joy that a clear life-energy system provides, they do not know what they are missing and remain discontentedly placid.
Once the spontaneous joy of spiritual/energetic clarity is experienced, however, one tends to wish to capture and maintain that lovely state.
The answer is "living meditation": taking meditation with us, out of the peaceful seclusion of the mountaintop into the catalyst-rich bustle of the marketplace.
But what does that mean? Clearly one cannot walk through life, work, and family duties with half-closed eyes and legs crossed into the lotus position (not that these are essential aspects of meditation, or even necessary) - but that is precisely my point: what are the essential features of meditation? How does one bring meditation into every activity?
The answer, I have found, is simple but profound: Love. To avoid unnecessary confusion: The outflowing energy of the heart chakra is what I mean by "love".
Love has the unique ability - magical, in fact - to bring anything in Creation into harmony with the self. Harmony is resonance; resonance is oneness or wholeness; and wholeness is health. Love heals by harmonizing all it touches; another way of expressing the same idea is this: love brings Oneness into Manyness, Truth into Illusion. By filling Illusion with Truth, it transforms it back into Oneness. This capacity is very, very profound.
The most fascinating part of all this, to me, is that it doesn't matter what you are loving (by this, I mean "radiating love towards" or "focusing on while radiating love from the heart chakra") - healing still occurs, probably because Love is the energy of Unity, and therefore it does not matter what it's directed towards. All Love is presumably always directed towards the One, and the particular form being focused on does not matter.
So far, I've found that Love is capable of 1) producing joyfulness, 2) healing past traumas and unprocessed catalyst, and 3) overcoming fearfulness of all kinds. Of course, also, love creates a bubble of protection.
How does one utilize this? The process is simple but may require lots of practice.
First, practice loving on demand. I will avoid metaphysical language here to make it simple, which it is. Think of someone or something you feel warm fuzzies toward, the melty feeling - this could be a pet, a child, spouse, a picture on Reddit in /r/aww - whatever creates that particular feeling will do. Everyone has experienced it. Animals are great in this regard because our love for animals is generally very uncomplicated, it's pure rather than the mixed emotions we might have in our complex human relationships. So if you are the type to cuddle up with a pet, start with that feeling right there.
Second, practice finding that same emotion when thinking of other things. Towards a random tree, random person walking by, yourself. Practice turning it on on demand.
Once you're there, you can start doing real work with it! Edit: radiating love is real work - it's the work of finding and spreading joy and harmony, inside and out. It's the work of polarizing positively, just by virtue of radiating love to the Universe. But it can also be applied to in-depth healing, which is what I meant to say. Whenever we have a negative emotion that seems excessive or out of place, it's a sign of a distortion in our personality shell that needs healing. Notice it - focus on it - turn on the Love. Boom! (in case of deeply entrenched distortions, the "Boom" may take multiple sessions, but the benefits should begin becoming apparent fairly quickly).
So I'll just leave this here and move right along.
(Incidentally, can we get a green heart emoticon? That's not quite so girly? For more liberal sprinkling around the forum than the current hot-pink one lends itself to? Just a thought!)
Yet it is the experience of many that, as soon as meditation ends, the world returns and begins depositing its various gifts of catalyst at our feet. And when this happens, we can slowly and gradually begin to lose our joy. Unless something changes, we can continue experiencing life as a see-saw of post-meditation highs and between-meditation lows.
How to get off the seesaw? Well, many don't meditate at all, and this produces a sense of stability. Not happy stability, but without experiencing the joy that a clear life-energy system provides, they do not know what they are missing and remain discontentedly placid.
Once the spontaneous joy of spiritual/energetic clarity is experienced, however, one tends to wish to capture and maintain that lovely state.
The answer is "living meditation": taking meditation with us, out of the peaceful seclusion of the mountaintop into the catalyst-rich bustle of the marketplace.
But what does that mean? Clearly one cannot walk through life, work, and family duties with half-closed eyes and legs crossed into the lotus position (not that these are essential aspects of meditation, or even necessary) - but that is precisely my point: what are the essential features of meditation? How does one bring meditation into every activity?
The answer, I have found, is simple but profound: Love. To avoid unnecessary confusion: The outflowing energy of the heart chakra is what I mean by "love".
Love has the unique ability - magical, in fact - to bring anything in Creation into harmony with the self. Harmony is resonance; resonance is oneness or wholeness; and wholeness is health. Love heals by harmonizing all it touches; another way of expressing the same idea is this: love brings Oneness into Manyness, Truth into Illusion. By filling Illusion with Truth, it transforms it back into Oneness. This capacity is very, very profound.
The most fascinating part of all this, to me, is that it doesn't matter what you are loving (by this, I mean "radiating love towards" or "focusing on while radiating love from the heart chakra") - healing still occurs, probably because Love is the energy of Unity, and therefore it does not matter what it's directed towards. All Love is presumably always directed towards the One, and the particular form being focused on does not matter.
So far, I've found that Love is capable of 1) producing joyfulness, 2) healing past traumas and unprocessed catalyst, and 3) overcoming fearfulness of all kinds. Of course, also, love creates a bubble of protection.
How does one utilize this? The process is simple but may require lots of practice.
First, practice loving on demand. I will avoid metaphysical language here to make it simple, which it is. Think of someone or something you feel warm fuzzies toward, the melty feeling - this could be a pet, a child, spouse, a picture on Reddit in /r/aww - whatever creates that particular feeling will do. Everyone has experienced it. Animals are great in this regard because our love for animals is generally very uncomplicated, it's pure rather than the mixed emotions we might have in our complex human relationships. So if you are the type to cuddle up with a pet, start with that feeling right there.
Second, practice finding that same emotion when thinking of other things. Towards a random tree, random person walking by, yourself. Practice turning it on on demand.
Once you're there, you can start doing real work with it! Edit: radiating love is real work - it's the work of finding and spreading joy and harmony, inside and out. It's the work of polarizing positively, just by virtue of radiating love to the Universe. But it can also be applied to in-depth healing, which is what I meant to say. Whenever we have a negative emotion that seems excessive or out of place, it's a sign of a distortion in our personality shell that needs healing. Notice it - focus on it - turn on the Love. Boom! (in case of deeply entrenched distortions, the "Boom" may take multiple sessions, but the benefits should begin becoming apparent fairly quickly).
So I'll just leave this here and move right along.
(Incidentally, can we get a green heart emoticon? That's not quite so girly? For more liberal sprinkling around the forum than the current hot-pink one lends itself to? Just a thought!)