I'd like to take a moment to talk about some things in regards to meditation,
About what it is and some difficulties that might arise with it,
Or maybe hopefully answer some questions that you may have about meditation.
First of all,
Meditation is actually a very simple thing.
It's hard to do at the beginning.
It takes practice,
But the idea of meditation is very straightforward,
Very basic.
What you're trying to do is you're trying to get to that state which you've already have visited thousands of times in your life.
You're trying to get to the deep sleep state,
Except you're aware.
It's like being in that zone between being awake and being asleep.
Something really magical happens there.
The scientific research is showing this more and more,
That all these systems in our nervous system get improved,
They get relaxed,
They get released of tensions when we're able to stay in that state,
In that zone between being awake and being asleep and letting go of any thoughts which arise.
What I've noticed over the years,
And I come from a psychology background,
Is that the human mind has a tendency to make everything so complicated.
So consequently,
The human mind has made meditation really complicated.
There's all these different kinds of meditation techniques.
Yes,
They're all great.
You find the one that fits your temperament,
But understand that underneath all the meditation techniques,
What it basically boils down to,
What it comes down to is staying in the present moment,
Letting go of thoughts,
And being very aware,
And just letting go.
Just letting go.
And just going deep into the present moment,
And you may have a sense that you lose your sense of time.
That's wonderful.
You may also notice that sometimes as you get into deeper aspects of meditation with more and more practice,
You may notice that sometimes your mind becomes really,
Really noisy,
And you'll struggle with that.
However long that meditation is,
At the end of that meditation with a really noisy mind,
You'll get dejected.
You'll get frustrated.
You'll say to yourself,
God,
What's the point of doing that?
You're looking at it from the wrong point of view.
What you need to understand is that meditation is a cleaning out,
And all this stuff,
All these buried emotions,
Buried pains,
Whatever they are,
Repressed emotions,
It's starting to come to the surface.
And by coming to the surface,
And by not reacting to these things,
You're giving it a chance to get cleared away.
So it's a cleaning out.
So that meditation which you thought was just really totally pointless,
It was so noisy,
No,
No,
No,
No,
No,
No,
No.
That was perfect.
It was wonderful.
The cleaning out process is starting to happen.
All the thoughts that we have that you've become aware of,
The monkey mind,
In Asia it's known as the monkey mind,
That thinking,
Thinking,
Thinking,
Thinking constantly.
The fuel for all those thoughts are the repressed emotions.
This is something that the field of psychology,
The field of psychiatry is not even aware of,
But this is something that the ancients in India,
The ancient yogis,
And also thousands of years ago they knew about,
And also in ancient China they knew about this.
If you look up,
If you study Taoism,
That's what they were really aware of.
That the thoughts are like the dark clouds that block the sunshine.
That the thoughts interrupt,
Get in the way of our experiencing the present moment fully.
So if I'm biting into a grape,
But I'm thinking about something else,
I'm not really tasting the grape.
So it's about becoming fully aware of the present moment and letting go of all thoughts whenever you notice that they've popped up and they're acting like clouds blocking your inner sunshine.
That's all it is.
It's a letting go and it's a hyper awareness of the present moment.
From the Zen tradition,
That's what Zen is all about,
About being totally awake right here,
Right now.
And another misconception with meditation is that you have to do it sitting down,
Cross-legged,
Or in this position.
No,
The meditation happens whenever you're doing something that you enjoy,
Whenever you're doing it without thinking.
So it could go to any other aspect of your life.
If you're listening to music,
If you're gardening,
If you're cooking,
You'll notice at times,
When you're driving a car,
You'll notice at times you'll get into the flow.
That's flow,
Spelled with capital letters,
F-L-O-W.
That's when the mind is quiet.
That's when you're really present.
That's when you lose your sense of time.
So that's the meditative state.
So it's not just when you're deliberately sitting down and meditating.
When you sit down and you meditate deliberately,
Then that ability to meditate spreads more easily into other aspects of your life,
Like when you're playing basketball,
When you're hitting a tennis ball,
When you're walking on the street,
When you're driving a car,
Whatever it is,
Everything improves.
In my personal experience,
I noticed that my brain power improved when I meditated.
I would go study when I went back to grad school.
I would go study in the library.
I was able to sit down and read for hours,
Five hours straight,
And absorb everything.
And then the next time I went to the library,
I was so shocked.
My efficiency dropped by 100%.
I barely could,
Was able to read three pages or four pages in four hours.
I was so stunned.
Then I remembered,
Wait a minute,
The other day I meditated before I came to the library,
And today I didn't.
You'll get realizations like that in your own life.
They're wonderful to experience.
They're the fuel that inspire you to be more consistent with this practice.
So be very patient with yourself.
Be very gentle with yourself.
But the key thing is be consistent.
You can't only go to the fitness gym once a month and expect to get in shape by doing that.
You can't go with meditation.
One more other thing I want to mention is yoga.
The practice of yoga,
In the modern world,
People are obsessed when they do yoga with the physical postures,
With the asanas they're called,
The acrobatics of it all.
There's a deeper purpose for doing yoga.
The purpose of yoga is to get stress and tensions out of the body so that you can go more deeply into meditation.
That has been known for thousands of years in ancient India.
So when you do yoga,
Whatever yoga practice you do,
Whatever style you like,
Whatever style of yoga appeals to your temperament,
Try to meditate before you do the yoga practice,
And you'll notice that your yoga practice will go deeper.
It will become more wonderful.
It will be like the sun is shining brightly on you.
So that's the purpose of yoga,
To get stress and tensions out of your body,
Out of your mind so that you can go more deeply into meditation.
The purpose of meditation is that you bring it into your normal everyday life so that you feel more relaxed,
More alive at every moment of your life,
At every moment of your waking hours.
So remember,
Be patient,
Be consistent,
Let go of drama,
Catch thoughts whenever they appear and they've got you consumed,
Let them go.
Well,
I hope that answers some questions for you about this practice.
And remember what Albert Einstein said.
He said,
The ancients knew something which we seem to have forgotten.
As I said before,
I come from the psychology,
Psychiatry background.
I have a marriage and family therapy degree.
And in my studies,
I realized that they were not aware of the deeper aspects of consciousness.
The hard question in science,
In physics is,
What is consciousness?
And only very recently have they been able to study just the fringes of the outside of this deep question,
The hard question,
What is consciousness?
Well,
The ancient yogis were completely obsessed with what is consciousness and they explored it at such deep levels,
Just like the ancient Chinese did as well and the ancient Japanese actually in ancient Asia.
You see that it was quite prevalent,
This hunger to know and explore consciousness at all its levels.
So have a wonderful day or a wonderful night.
Be patient with yourself and realize that no words can describe who you are.
When you start going down this path,
You start understanding,
You start getting a deeper sense that you are much more than you realize and that you are connected to all of nature and you're connected to all of existence.
Really chew on that.
Have a wonderful day,
Wonderful night.
Namaste.
