Instant Advanced Meditation

I said “WOW” about how many people responded to my email about why you meditate and what challenges you’ve faced.

But now I want to say THANK YOU. I am so honored to read your honest and revealing replies. I hope my answers can match what you’ve given me.

Out of the 4 or 5 biggest meditation challenges that people shared with me, here’s number 2:

Can’t focus / Can’t still my mind / Doze off / Distracting thoughts

Tell me about it! I know this one well.

When I was a “serious” practitioner, I would spend 14 hours a day, for 4-14 days just to get the mind quiet enough to even DO the actual meditation practice.

Sometimes, I was in the groove after 2 or 3 days. Other times, at the end of 2 weeks, I was still watching relationship movies in my head and trying to turn down the volume of the song Feelings!

Read the bios of meditators who went to the tops of mountains and got still minds… when they come off the mountaintop and back to the marketplace — kids, jobs, little league — they all talk about how they can’t sustain the quiet mind!

(I know that some people will read this sentence and shout, “But MY teacher…!” and, if that’s you, I’m not saying your teacher isn’t walking around Wal-Mart without a thought… what’s more important is: How are YOU doing in the “stopping thoughts” department?)

When you closely examine the teachings about concentration practices, and read the biographies of those who’ve engaged in them, you notice that to really find focus, or stop thoughts takes TIME, a lack of distraction, and a special combination of relaxation/effort. It’s incredibly difficult in our Western lives.

Concentration is like trying to tame a wild animal… or play Whack-A-Mole with your thinking.

But concentration isn’t the only way to still the mind. And the odds are really good that you’ve already experienced what I mean.

Think about your own life … can you remember a time where you got really caught up in something interesting and your mind becomes clear, quiet, focused. Where you felt a profound “oneness”… naturally?

Of course. We’ve all found that sometimes. The only glitch is that we usually don’t know how, or can’t reproduce the effect.

Well, the practices in the Instant Advanced Meditation Course seem to recreate that effect with great reliability.

For each I AM technique, you get a simple mission. For example: attending to some aspect of our experience or of how we perceive reality that we typically haven’t noticed or have tended to overlook.

And when we pay attention to that subtle aspect of reality — and it’s quite easy — the mind can become incredibly still.

But, more importantly… the idea that meditation is about quieting the mind is only one perspective.

There are entire lineages where having a still, focused mind is not the goal at all. There are other types of practices — one friend of mine, who is a lineage holder in a major meditation tradition once said to me, “Oh, I’m not built for concentration. Most people aren’t.”

And here’s the perspective from these other traditions:

Is the sky affected by the clouds? Does the ocean care about the waves?

Nope. The sky is the vastness through which clouds merely pass. The ocean is the totality of waves/stillness.

Imagine experiencing life as if you were the sky or the ocean so that when thoughts do arise, they aren’t a problem. Just clouds passing through, or waves that recede back into their original source. Imagine no longer fighting with your mind.

The implications of this are quite staggering. Like, if you’ve had issues with negative thoughts, or other difficulties that seem to arise repeatedly… maybe you could experience them like clouds passing by. And if you could do that, maybe you wouldn’t need to “work on them” or “resolve them” or “process them.” Maybe they would, really, just pass… or maybe, they would still show up, but they wouldn’t pull you off-balance. Now that’s some radical self-acceptance.

In the I AM Course, some of the practices are like the “interesting attraction,” where you easily become absorbed in a simple, fascinating mission. Others are like the sky/ocean, where you identify more as the spaciousness in which perception arises — more like the ocean than the boat getting tossed by the waves.

But here’s the funny thing that totally surprised me.

After doing the I AM practices for a while, I had the thought, “I wonder if I can do that old practice of mine?” I thought that it probably wouldn’t work very well since, in the past, I could take a week or two of practice to kind of build up some “depth.” Well, I sat down, took about two breaths… and had a deeper practice session than I had ever had, even when I was on a long retreat!

I’ve found that the I AM practices greatly enhance any other type of practice… in fact, one of the instructions in the course is how to create a “container” out of I AM and then “pour in” some other practice (if you have one).

Anyway… I’m having some computer problems that need my attention (why do I still believe these things should WORK properly?)… I’ll post the next big responses to “what are your challenges” asap. And, in the meantime, consider this: What if your mind couldn’t be a problem?

               
Tags: Questions //