Going Within (8 page)

To begin to think seriously about one’s own inner being is the most profound step we tan ever take in the process of maturing. It can obviously be painful and can be even more so when we decide to question old assumptions and beliefs. We are all full of hurt, wounds, and scars. The negative baggage we carry
around with us can be alleviated by meditation, but it means being prepared to face some ugly truths, and then to have the courage to fly free of them. Flying free means losing the security of familiar landmarks (even negative ones) or habits through which we have kept ourselves structured and limited. Again, the image you know is one you want to hang on to, no matter how miserable, not only because it is safely familiar but because unconsciously you realize it allows you to blame others for what you are. Desiring to be free within oneself is a serious step to take because with it comes complete responsibility for everything we do. Meditation is not an escape or an indulgence. It is an act of inner responsibility. It takes discipline, hard work, time, effort, and patience with self—which I personally find is the hardest patience to sustain.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of all, though, is the
continuance
of meditation if it becomes depressing, a letdown, or even frightening. What was at first fulfilling for me became a chore. What seemed so easy in the beginning became more full of obstacles than it was worth. My concentration wandered. My body was uncomfortable. I was impatient. The “light” was not there anymore.

When that happened to me it was a warning signal, a natural stopping point for me, telling me to balance my external world with my internal world. It was necessary for me to re-establish and maintain that balance.
Both
aspects of my experience of reality
were required. Inner reality strongly affects outer reality. It should not exist as a reality separately and on its own. In fact, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton declared, “Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life.”

So the basic purpose of your meditation is to nourish and enrich your physical everyday work, your relationships with people, and your life in general by putting you in touch with your own internal power, through recognition of your spiritual strength. During deep meditation an alignment of mind, body, and spirit occurs, placing each aspect of the self into a better condition of well-being.

This is obviously easier said than done. I have found the most trying aspect is to refrain from
judging
whether I’m doing it right. I expected it to be easy at first. Because I
wanted
to go within immediately, it would happen: if I am responsible for creating my own desires, why not? It didn’t work that way. Many things got in the way of my desire to meditate—that is to say, I spent a lot of time being disappointed over my progress. Distractions occurred with disturbing frequency, and not the least of these distractions was my own mind. I couldn’t stop thinking. My mind was a motorized machine out of control. I wasn’t thinking;
it
was! The mental associations bounced around in my head. One image would lead to another. Why did I think about that first performance at the age of three when I held the apple? I was wearing a little green costume. Immediately I
associated the green with the Indianapolis 500 speed car races, where they don’t like anyone to wear green in the stadium because it’s considered bad luck. That led me to think of the people who die in those races, which led me to whether they
really
died, which led me to the power of gravity, which led me to Sir Isaac Newton, which led me to books I had read in childhood, which led me to wonder when I had first experienced mystical feelings, which led me to my father and some of our conversations, which led me to my parents’ marriage, which led me to my own marriage, which led me to why I was meditating in the first place!

Finally I began to learn just to let my thoughts be. Let them find their own place. I remembered a Zen priest saying that whenever distracting thoughts “invaded” his mind, he made no attempt to cast them away. He simply waited until they left on their own. “Let them follow their course,” he said, “and watch dispassionately as you recognize why they are coming to you. The more one struggles with pushing away a thought, the more power we give it.” He said that sometimes he would brush a thought aside as though it was not allowed center stage in his mind any longer but was still allowed to be in the light of the sidelines. With this procedure he allowed room on center stage for a new thought or perhaps even the desired “nothingness” of thought.

An ancient Buddhist master once said that in order to meditate well, “one should learn to be intimate
with the unfamiliar and distant toward the familiar.” Wandering thoughts are a basic problem in meditation as they are with anything on which we want to concentrate.

When intrusive thoughts are bothering me and refuse to go away, I use the device of focusing on a small object—a button, a flower, or (the scoffer’s favorite) my navel, whatever, as long as it is small enough to focus on. Others prefer not to think of any particular object, but instead simply direct their concentration on the images or random lights that appear right behind the eyelids, especially if you open and close your eyes a couple of times. “Watching” those gently shifting lights, trying to make one hold still, looking deep into the darkness beyond—all serve the function of leading your mind away from tensions and into a central channel of concentration that is very relaxed yet completely pinpointed. All the time watching the central focus behind the eyelids, think about your breathing and make sure it is relaxed, deep, and even. This concentration of focus eventually calms and frees the mind: the brain is flooded with oxygen from the deep breathing; the inner eye is concentrated on that spot behind the eyelids; other thoughts, other images, other feelings—all gently slip away. You are flowing with the universal current of now, unperturbed by anxieties relating to what you have done in the past or what you might do in the future. As a result stress
is reduced. Eventually, with repeated meditations, worry becomes foreign to you, and your physical health improves.

Remember also that there are many processes of meditation.

In fact, everyone meditates to some degree, whether they realize it or not. Daydreaming is a kind of meditation. Listening to music is a meditation. Certain kinds of light sleep can be a meditation. For some, walking or running is a meditation. For me, doing my hatha yoga has become a meditation. Whereas I used to do it while watching the evening news, now I respect it more and use the physical postures of yoga (which means union of mind, body, and spirit plus strength, balance, and flexibility) to calm my mind while I align with body and spirit. I find that I need a notebook and pencil beside me because I have such inspired ideas as a result of this type of meditation—and I don’t want to forget them!

Sometimes forgotten phone calls, or letters I should have written months before, come up for me as a reminder when I’m in my yoga meditation. However, even though yoga, mountain climbing, dancing, and athletics are forms of meditation, they are really more of a procedure for putting the body in alignment with mind and spirit. Since meditation includes the
quiet
use of the body while the mind explores itself, a
higher level of attunement can occur if the body is not engaged in a highly active occupation.

Again, the object of meditation is to conduct a dialogue with the highest source of our faculties and hence tie in to the universal sources of strength. Calming the body and the mind helps us to connect to the answers that await our questions.

So meditate. I have found that it is best to do it at the same time every day. Your body, mind, and spirit will actually anticipate the scheduled time when the alignment with the Universal Energies takes place. And bear with any difficulties you may encounter, for you will eventually be rewarding yourself from a source that is literally unlimited and to which you are making an important contribution. You will find that you are more than you realized.

With calm, single-minded, relaxed concentration, you come to the core of your meditation. You are going to have an encounter of a very personal kind, with your Higher Self.

5

Superconsciousness and the Higher Self

We are all part of God, and God is part of us.
Nothing can come between us and God.
We are one.

T
he Higher Self is exactly what the words imply—the best positive elements of your own being, the most reassuring aspect of your own inner strength, your personal expression of the Divine in you. It links you with everything else that exists: it is your channel to the enormous resources of the human potential.

Your Higher Self is of paramount importance in your meditational dialogues. Many, if not most, people find it difficult to tackle problems, to examine their own failures or mistakes, without an exchange taking place. The Higher Self is the aspect of yourself with which you can have an actual discussion about whatever is troubling you. Your concentration on focus is what frees you to do this. The focus removes you a little, creates a small distance between you and your self, gives you the room to explore from a more objective position. Your Higher Self can
provide the perspective you need to make fresh assessments of situations, relationships, and your self.

When you are connected to your Higher Self, you are aligned with your spiritual heart center, put in touch with the central source of strength. When you are motivated to proceed from that center, to make decisions, to act, to change, you are functioning in the light. The Higher Self is your personal friend, the guide within, the heart center, the link to your own best real feelings. In listening to it, trusting it completely, and acting on that trust, conflicts can be resolved or simply subside.

To be cut off, or to ignore that heart center, is to intensify conflict, ultimately causing us to be so much out of alignment with ourselves, or out of ease with our God-within, that we become, as the word implies, dis-eased. So many of us don’t know about this innate power, or we ignore it or simply find it incredible. Instead, we search for it in our relationships with other people or in our positions in society. What does Joe, or Mack, or Sheila, or the boss, think of us? We are constantly looking for ourselves in other people’s eyes. The real question is, What do I think of me? All the time, the only true arbiter, the only referee, the only creator of values has to be the very core of our own being. The Higher Self, the best that is in us, is the real judge of who we are.

So, connecting with your Higher Self is what enables you to see within, and listening to its guidance
can provide you with direction in every aspect of your life.

I have found that whatever may be bothering me, whether it’s a work-related problem or a trauma in a relationship, I go into meditation and allow my Higher Self to reveal itself to me, and I actually carry on a discussion with it because I know it will never steer me wrong. The way I know that is because its suggestions and ideas are
always
loving. If not, then I haven’t connected with my Higher Self; rather, I am connected to my negative ego. Directions coming from the Higher Self are by their very definition attuned to harmonious love and light energy.

Whenever I feel real stress and deep conflict or extreme suffering, I go within myself, into a meditative space, and ask, “What is it I have forgotten about myself?” Meditation is a form of reconnecting with your own inner strengths, of reaffirming who you really are.

When meditation becomes a daily practice, it does not necessarily become easier, but the welcome calm and peace that result from the rituals, from the concentrated focus, become more and more attractive. Meditation becomes an enormous
relief.
The recognition of our higher consciousness becomes more familiar. When we are better acquainted with our higher faculties, they begin to serve us in relation to what we are doing with our lives, and with the larger purpose of our lives, because they link us with our own higher harmony.