(5-minute read) – The world is in a mess. Hatred, conflict, religious fundamentalism and bigotry of all the worst kinds seem to be on the rise. The environment continues to get raped by rampant consumerism and capitalist greed. Dumbed down media gets instantaneous clicks, while matters of substance are boring. It’s dire.
We need a solution. And it’s not a new social, political or economic paradigm.
Evolving human nature
It’s a change of people’s minds and hearts. We need to work on human nature, one mind at a time.
The world needs people who are quieter. Quieter in mind and quieter in body. Detached from desires. We need people to change everything about our consumer orientation, about our tribalism, exclusivism and triumphalism.
Quieter minds are minds that don’t have the individual ego programs playing. They don’t have establishment norms firing habitually in their neurons. Quiet minds are free from everything that holds us on a self-destructive path. They are open. And into that openness flows compassion. In flows love. And through it and only through it can we save this world.
The time is now or never
The time is now or never. We are at a crossroad. Either we continue on a path of barricades – a path of rising nationalism and populist right wing bigotry; either we continue to find any excuse to hoard our piece of the consumer economy. Or we let go. We leg go and we mix, we connect. We become poor like the man who has less. It’s a tough ask. It’s radical. But it is needed if we want to avert the disastrous alternative.
We need a deep spiritual movement of letting go of everything we hold dear. Everything we think is important but is in fact keeping us chained to a set of norms that is making us depressed and that is destroying our planet’s resources. This movement of letting go is at the heart of all the mystical traditions. It is as natural as silence. As simple as sitting quietly.
Only we’ve forgotten how to let go because we don’t have silence. We’re overcrowded and we’re over stimulated. So we have to be taught a method to help us let go. That method is meditation.
Meditation
The best meditation is simple. It is a simple intent to quieten the mind; to wipe the slate clean. We do this by using a mantra or a sacred word or symbol. Something we can gently return to when our monkey minds start firing their neurons down the habitual pathway of old thoughts and emotions. This returning is ever so gentle. Thomas Keating the Trappist monk said we return to our sacred word as gently as a feather falling on a pillow.
We will always have thoughts and emotions because we are physico-chemical beings. The art of meditation is to gently let go of them. To not attach to them or become mindlessly carried away by them. So we are mindful instead – mindful of our thoughts passing by and mindful of our transcendent nature unattached to the mental and emotional programs that run our physico-chemical manifestations. We are aware and conscious of our minds – watching from an all-seeing mountain with an all-seeing eye. And each time we ‘see’ the runaway train starting we hop off – we gently repeat our word and return to our mountain.
The meditation each day may be enlightening and a wonderful experience or it may not be too great. That’s not important. Meditation itself is a means to an end. It is a way of building a reservoir of silence over time. It affects lives over time and changes the way people react to the world. Regular meditators develop a certain centeredness that enables them to refer life’s inputs inwardly before they react to them from their outer layers in habitual ways that they might have done previously.
An invitation
You are invited to stop analysing your thoughts, your feelings, or your meditation. Instead prepare yourself to know less. Paradoxically it is when you stop the rational mind’s quest for understanding that you will know more. In the words of Rumi: “I have thrown away all learning and in knowing love I have learnt everything.” This all-seeing vantage point inspires fresh analysis and new insights.
The brain needs meditation to clear the slate. Meditation is the re-booting of the software. And cognition is altogether faster and clearer after a reboot. That is why meditation increases focus, concentration and creativity.
You are invited to sit in trust and follow the method. Sit modestly and trust in the long term benefits to your mind, body and emotions. Know that millions of meditators before you have experienced benefits for their psyches, their communities, their societies and ultimately the world. You are not embarking on a new fad. You are embarking on an ancient experience. A simple experience of a clear reality clothed in silence. A reality we often don’t know because it is veiled by the clothes we wear, by the masks we carry – by our egos fighting it out in a noisy world of a billion other egos.
You are invited to choose a sacred world as a sign of your intention to see beyond the clothes and the masks; to open to universal love at your centre. Connect to real self behind and beyond. Experience the oneness of reality. Replenish your soul. Reboot your mind.
You are invited to return ever-so-gently to your sacred word whenever the runaway train of your programmed thoughts and emotions threaten to carry you away in a wave of mindlessness. Gently let that wave pass you by. Another wave will come and another. You may feel battered. But keep on returning to your sacred word.
You are invited to meditate for twenty or thirty minutes twice a day.
Do it now
Let your journey begin. Let us change the world one mind at a time, starting with our own. Share your experiences with us by entering your email below and keeping in touch. Share your experiences of meditation. And share your changes in life as you become a long-term meditator.
So sit comfortably now. Choose a sacred word. It could be anything but stick to it and don’t analyse it once you start. Acknowledge now that your intention is to let go and have the mysterious loving reality enter your life. Now say your word in your mind and keep returning to it gently. Say it again. Say it. Again. Nothing.
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