Stephen Hawking
In the classic pastor's handbook The Star Book for Ministers pastors are advised that "pastoral counseling involves much more than just answering a few 'What shall I do?' questions. Sometimes a person seeking help merely wants information that is relevant to his or her problem. More often, however, the need is for understanding or insight . . . "
This is very true, and this statement provides an opportunity for me to talk about the meditation and why it is almost indispensable for holistic recovery to occur. It will also explain why some people fully recover from the most debilitating issues and addictions, and others never do.
Most people are so lost in their head that they can't see the forest for the trees. Down there in thinking and imagination, they are separated from the Light of Reason, and they remain subject to unconscious programming. They react with negative emotions to notions and suggestion that come in from the outside. They are not really in control of their life, though thinking makes it seem so.
A proper meditation helps that person get out of being lost in their head and involved in the undercurrents of negative emotion and thought, and permits the person to come back to awareness in the here and now, mindful of the now instead of lost in thinking about the past or worrying about the future.
Awakened and aware as a result of the meditation, they are freed to be open and receptive to sound instruction and they may gain the insight by which to solve their present dilemma and undo past traumas, as well as move forward with confidence to joy, now armed with insight and perception to face future issues or prevent them.
In the subjective state, where most people spend most of their day, they get caught up with the minutiae of things--personalities, circumstances and words, on the outside; and ideas and feelings on the inside--to which they react and in which they become absorbed. People soon notice that they are distracted or hyperactive; and their "solution" is to focus and concentrate harder.
Though the hyper vigilant or concentrating person may indeed become more focused, this only leads to a deeper state of involvement and eventual fatigue and loss of control. Why? Because it was concentrating and focusing in the first place that led them into the hypnotic state of immersion in thinking and fantasy. This immersion, also known as psychosis, caused them to make mistakes in reality. It's like walking along a forest path and being so careful not to twist your ankle that you bump your head on an over hanging branch.
So concentration and focusing are just more of the same common but erroneous way of dealing with life's issues. What is needed is to de-focus and learn how to stand back mentally from external pressures and also from internal thoughts and imaginings.
The mind cannot be in control of emotions or calmly poised in wisdom when it is immersed in thinking and imagination.
There is no understanding or insight available in thinking and imagining. That is why whenever we try to solve our problems with raw knowledge and then plan and scheme using that knowledge, we always end up worse off. Our plans and schemes backfire and leave us guilty, because they were devoid of understanding. We applied what someone said or what we read to the problems in a rote arbitrary application, often with wrong timing too.
No wonder people's lives are a mess and their kids are rebelling. This also explains why humankind's efforts to solve problems with technology, social experimentation, pharmacology, and other scientific methods only increase problems and the need for more meddling problem solvers.
What is needed is insight--the kind of insight that comes from getting out of thinking and emotions and then hearing sound explanation or advice--the kind that leads to seeing the principle that is involved. In light of the principle, we can then see how we erred and got ourselves into the mess we are in. And we can see how the application of the principle in our life will prevent the same error from happening again.
The good math student does not just learn a one time solution to a problem. He or she learns a math principle that can then be applied to all such problems to solve them. Once having seen the principle and grasped it, the math student is free to use it forevermore to solve problems.
Many people resent constructive criticism or having their error exposed, but the good math student is glad to see the error, because it leads to problem solving.
In a similar way, when it comes to life, we need to see the principles, even if it means a little pain when we have our nose rubbed in our error. It is only in light of the principles that we can understand how we erred, and we then also see the wisdom of applying the principle to our lives.
Incidentally, that is why no one can truly change, repent or make any permanent positive change without insight. Some people become aware that they are messed up and then emotionally accept someone's suggestions or program. All they are doing is feeding their mind with outside suggestion and carrying it out with emotion.
They temporarily benefit from outside direction, but unless they actually see their error in the light of truth, their new lifestyle will need to be reinforced forever. Their lifestyle is better, but they are still hypnotized and not free.
Most of these people, sadly, will fall off the wagon and go back to their old ways when they again encounter associates or circumstances that trigger former behaviors and rekindle old thinking and emotion patterns. Others will continue on their new program, but only because they have become zombie converts to external direction.
Many parents, who pressured their kids to act a certain way, will discover too late the effects of rote knowledge without understanding. When the kids go out in the world they are ill equipped to handle the pressures because giving in to pressure is what they have been trained (pressured actually, by unenlightened parents, church leaders, and teachers) to do. They never really understood deeply because they were debilitated by the pressure.
If it is true that people need understanding and insight, then logic dictates that they must therefore also be presented relevant principles. And the principles must be presented in such a way that the person can grasp them and see that they are true or wise.
This is the "explanation" part of the meditation. But first the person must be in a state of awareness where they can grasp and see the principle. Obviously they cannot be asleep or unconscious; nor can they be delirious in a fever, drugged, or inebriated.
By now, you may have already surmised that people must also be aware in such a way that they are not lost and submerged in excessive thought, hypnotized through excessive study or concentration, lost in feelings or lost in worry, planning or reminiscing.
In metaphysical terms, the psyche must be free of the fog of emotion or drug driven reverie and the squirrel cage of thinking. The psyche must be free to perceive and understand spiritual principles (the kind of common sense and wisdom that is useful for living). The psyche must not be fused to thinking or submerged in fantasy.
Now you know why the proper meditation is almost mandatory for the average person to be able to rise in awareness to the rarefied state of consciousness where he or she can receive and benefit from sound instruction.
The average person nowadays is dangerously lost in a fog of thinking and imagining. And when they are not absorbed in feelings and thoughts, they are absorbed in stimuli from the outside.
The purpose of the meditation is to free the consciousness to see wisdom and realize principles. This does not involve blanking thought or withdrawing from the world. The former--blanking thought--is dangerous because it leads to oblivion or even to leaving the mind unguarded.
The second--withdrawing from the world--is not practical or helpful. Just as a ship was made for sailing and a plane for flying, the human was made for living. We must be out in the world going about our business, discovering things, and being with people.
Without life experience to try and apply our newfound understanding, it remains sterile and useless. There can be no courage without danger, and no virtue without temptation. Our faith and our patience must tried and not found wanting.
The secret is to learn how to be in the world without being absorbed by it. The secret is to think and even imagine, without being absorbed and subject to thinking and feeling. Thinking is natural and beneficial when it flows from understanding. But most of us put the cart before the horse. We are mis-educated to acquire gobs and gobs of raw knowledge, and we become lop sided and all knowledge and no common sense. But when we have understanding, our thinking becomes truly creative and productive because it is founded in wisdom.
Just as people are lost in imagination, they are also lost in emotions and negative thinking (that result from negative emotions). Anger blocks reason, for example. Have you ever tried to reason with someone who is angry? It is well nigh impossible.
Similarly, alcohol and drugs interfere with calm detached reason. Emotions such as anger or fear lead to wrong or paranoid thinking. Under the sway of emotions or various drugs, our tricky imagination leads us down rabbit holes.
Negative thoughts and emotions stress the body and contribute to a variety of stress based ailments and symptoms. This is especially true of such emotions as anger, resentment and suppressed rage. Migraine or ulcer, anyone?
In order to be prepared to listen to sound instruction and gain the extremely valuable problem-solving mind set we call insight, the person must calm down and get out of negative thoughts. Unfortunately, the bigger the issue, the more people retreat into thinking, worry and escaping into music, drug or alcohol driven imaginings.
Secondly, the person must learn to de-fixate. Have you ever tried to warn a friend about the person she is getting involved with? "That person is no good for you," you say. But they won't listen. They are "in love" and won't heed your warning.
People who are involved with personalities, leaders or entertainers are also fixated and captivated by that person. Whether in love or caught up with some leader or group, it is actually hypnosis--an emotional fixation that is unhealthy and blocks reason.
Of course we are all prone to fall in love (hopefully it will lead to a life long happy marriage), but I am just making the point that it is an emotional hypnotic state, and people have done some very foolish things because it precludes reason.
I do not have to state the obvious negative result when a whole nation gets caught up with some leader like a Hitler. It is pure mass hypnosis and definitely not something a reasonable and prudent people would want to foster.
Many a parent has gone through the hell of having their son or daughter come home one day somehow changed by some neighborhood good for nothing they are all caught up with. Your once beloved son or daughter now looks at you as if you, the parent, were bad for disapproving of their new friend with whom they do weird things.
Such parents must be very wise and thoughtful. They must be wise enough to see the harm and danger of the wrong influence on their child, and they must be strong enough to separate their child from the bad influence until he or she has recovered from the infatuation and regained their senses. It must be done with firm resolve, but without histrionics, blaming or emotions, however--or it is likely to drive the son or daughter further away.
Our consciousness is also submerged and not fully aware when we are involved in excessive study (even of some "good" subject), lost in daydreaming, or caught up in the Internet or gaming. These are all mild to moderate hypnotic states. Sure, they may be pleasurable--but be aware that you cannot realize truth or perceive delicate principles when involved emotionally or fixated to study or distractions.
Detached awareness and an attitude of friendly neutrality describe the unencumbered consciousness of which I speak. You knew this type of awareness when you were a little child, before you were emotionalized and driven into the imagination. This is the state you must again find.
As I said, the average person is walking around in some level of trance--caught up, as I have described it, in thought and emotion, fueled by involvement with external personalities, stimuli and words. The trance state is not detectable and most people do not even know they are caught up in an unhealthy way--all they know is that things go wrong, and unpleasant surprises sneak up on them.
They don't know why things keep going awry (because they were caught up and unaware), and then they respond to the mishaps and issues like they always have, escaping even deeper into thought and hiding in imagination. It's a vicious cycle.
And even if they are not involved in struggling with issues, the average person is nevertheless in a mild hypnotic trance state much of the time because study, music, television, Internet and even daydreaming are mild forms of emotional fixation (hypnosis).
Perhaps now you can see that just plain open eyed awareness can help you avoid the next mistake you were poised to fall into. The meditation helps a person de-focus and return to a healthy unfettered state of awareness.
In the fully aware state, the mind is free to receive sound advice and process it in a way that leads to problem solving and resolving insight.
People who are under the influence of some hypnotic fixation are suggestible. As previously stated, whether it's a Hitler, a neighborhood ne'er do well, a deceitful lover, the peer group, some organized religion or ism, or the pop culture, you can see with your own two eyes just how suggestible people can become under such influences.
Because of a quirk of human nature, when we pick up a suggestion from some external source and act on it--we then defend it as if it were our own idea. People just refuse to admit that their ideas and actions are not their very own. Hence all the excuse making after someone does something wrong or foolish.
Meditation, when it helps people return to awareness, permits them to be able to observe "their" ideas or acquired often destructive habits, and instead of defending them, look at them objectively. Now seeing something odd about them and no longer being in agreement with them, the aware person can easily let them go.
That is why some people can all of a sudden just let go of a 20 year habit, like smoking for example, and from that day forward never smoke again, with no regrets or withdrawal symptoms.
Without realizing it, the person was in an aware state, and upon looking at their habit in the aware state, they just saw the error in the clear Light of Reason to which they were now receptive. And they changed as their habit let them go.
In a recent class I taught, a man said that after 30 years of drinking, he just give it up. I asked him why and he said "I just saw all the destructive effects alcohol was having on people I know." I knew he would be okay from now on because of the key word "saw" that he used to describe his enlightenment. He suddenly saw--in the Light of Reality--the harm, and this profound and penetrating realization changed him for good.
He was not meditating--just ready. And somehow being ready for truth, he rose in awareness and saw. I'm glad for him. It came to him naturally without the proper meditation (probably because of the softening of his soul), but the average person does not have the luxury of waiting to accidentally trip into aware state.
It is much easier to meditate to find it now than to wait for what might never come. Nevertheless, most of us do occasionally have the wake up call the morning after the night before. We exclaim "OMG. What am I doing here?"
We have the classic moment where we realize we are involved with a bad or wrong person. This is a positive thing if we heed the warning and make good our escape from wrong association and activities before it is too late and we get hurt.
There is the proverbial close call with death because of an accident or a heart attack. "Nothing clears the mind like a hanging in the morning" said Samuel Johnson. Most people sober up from their close call and clean up their act for awhile, letting go of debilitating practices and reaction to stresses that had led them to various troubles. But many will later return to their former ways and slip back into old habits and lifestyle.
Once you find the meditative state of awareness, it is yours forever unless you exercise a free will choice to return to your old ways and consciousness lowering practices.
The meditation potentially restores a person to a de-fixated consciousness, free from the accepted prejudices of the subconscious and now free to recognize how and why we err, leading to insight about the person's own issues in light of the principles presented and explained.
Nothing should be more natural and empowering than hearing the truth about error and seeing how this truth applies to one's own errors.
A proper meditation may restore a person to a fully awake state by teaching them how to stand back and observe thought and fantasy, as well as de-fixating from external sources of direction. In this fully awake state the person is now free to hear good advice which corresponds to an innate intuitive sense of right and wrong, which we call common sense.
Sound instruction, if it is present, awakens the person to intuition, the inner apprehension about the truth and rightness of things.
Now the person is capable of and free to apply the principles because he or see sees they are wise. This brings us to the second part of the meditation: the presentation of simple principles of life, which may now come to life and confirm what you know in your heart.
This also leads us to ask: why doesn't everyone take advantage of and benefit from the meditation and sound principles for living? A discussion of this question will be useful to elaborate on why the meditation works, as well as why many people cannot meditate properly or reject it.
The first reason why some people cannot take advantage of the meditation is because they are so lost in thinking and imagination that they are hard to reach. They hear good advice or helpful information, bit mixes in with preconceived notions or is overpowered by emotions and a hodgepodge of implanted notions and imagination.
Many such people prefer to live in the imagination because there they can imagine things to be more in accord with what their ego wants, rather than facing the truth of their failure in reality.
Likewise, thinking about truth is a way of avoiding the real Truth which awaits in reality.
There some of such people, however, who are lost in imagination and negative thinking who would like to come back to reality, but no one has shown them the way. The proper meditation, though available and revealed to mystics throughout the ages, has been suppressed or else it has been altered and mis-taught by unenlightened or wicked people so that it is stripped of its simplicity and power.
Without the help of the proper meditation, such people are left to fend for themselves and try to find a way out of the Alice in Wonderland fantasy world they are subject to. Some will come back to reality out of their sheer love of truth, but some will get side tracked by improper meditations, of which there are many, or way laid by their improper intent when they are looking for comfort or peace for their ego instead of a pure love of truth.
Other people would like to come back to reality. They do love truth, but they have never heard a credible messenger of truth or one who speaks truth with love.
Either people have talked at them instead of to them, pressuring then or scaring them with words of truth, or they have been offered false reassurances and positive suggestions. Many people fall victim to cruel pressures on the one hand, or false assurances on the other. Both are hypnotic and lead to being caught up with external sources of direction.
Those with a keen sense of justice or who see through the hypocrisy are tripped up by their resentment of the hypocrisy and lack of love in the world. Their resentment makes them feel guilty and they shy away from reality truth.
Many so-called insane people are really only in a deep hypnotic trance, where they are subject to their imagination. Such people may be reachable if they were to observe real love in another--love with the power of truth, completely credible and without guile. Such people have never ever seen such love, and should they see it, they may be awakened from their nightmares like Sleeping Beauty was by the kiss from the prince.
Many people may be restored through coming back to being fully awake, to a state of awareness whereby they are restored to self sovereignty and a principled and happy walk if they can but hear a message of truth spoken by someone credible, spoken with clarity, and by someone with enough love to tell them the truth.
It also helps (and may be necessary for the type of full recovery we see in the New Testament with a return to God and a reparation of all manner of serious issues) for the truth to be spoken by someone who himself has a raised consciousness and coming from a good place.
You simply cannot wake another up if you yourself are caught up hypnotically with study, even religious study, knowledge, personality or ritual. The truth speaker must also have the intent of setting the other person free and not wishing to get them caught up with himself.
In order to further explicate the proper meditation, let me continue with a discussion of the types of people who cannot or will not mediate properly.
For example, people who are in strong denial--because of resentment or pride--do not want to hear or acknowledge the truth (about their own wrong). Such people will not hear or accept the truth, and will find away to duck it. They will look for any means to defeat the truth and remain caught up in study, work, substance, or goals. If they try to meditate, they will not succeed because of their wrong intent.
If they appear to be meditating properly it is only because they are using it hypnotically--temporarily caught up with me or the meditation. Eventually they will find it is not working, and they will then resent and blame me and the meditation.
Some such people will simply be opposed to the whole idea of meditating.
Some people try the meditation but then become alarmed as they become aware of issues or wrongs they had been hiding from. They quickly drop the meditation like a hot potato. Others become angry at the meditation when all it does is make them aware of their wrong--which is the last thing in the world they want to know.
Yet other people start the proper meditation and do indeed make some positive changes in their life and begin to benefit from a better lifestyle and choices--being less reactive, letting go of resentment, dropping substance abuse and so on. But at some point they encounter something about themselves they are not yet ready to see. And they stop meditating at that point and begin to slip back into old patterns.
It is not uncommon for people to get caught up with the meditation as they do everything else--getting caught up in technique or words hypnotically. Or they caught up with my personality, again just like they do with everyone else--and this defeats the purpose of the meditation, which is to become progressively freed of encumbrances. When the meditation doesn't appear to be helping them, they then become angry with it or angry at me.
Fortunately, if your intent is sincere, should you get stuck or temporarily caught up--the meditation, which is marvelously self correcting, will make you aware of the fact that you are. Once aware of it, you will be able to get beyond it and move forward, making progress again.
This might be a good place to briefly discuss the many other meditations, which are, for the most part, false because they do not lead to true enlightenment, but away from it into imagery, fixation, and self absorption. Such meditations or relaxation techniques are not at all helpful for regaining self control or for problem resolving insight. They can even be dangerous because they appear so innocent, yet lead away from reality and awareness.
Because false meditations do not have the intent of restoring the person to the authority of intuition and self governance, they are hypnotic by nature. Most employ visualizations, symbols, focus on breathing, relaxation techniques such as deep breathing exercises, music, repetitious prayer or chanting--all of which are hypnotic by nature and lead to excessive use of imagination and subjection to external direction through the feelings and word based suggestions. Just the opposite of what the true meditator wants.
There is a true meditation which combines the proper technology with the right intent. While both promise peace, the true meditation leads to reality and peace with God and peace from God, a reward for the person who loves truth and wants to know the truth regardless of the consequences. The false meditations, of which there are many, offer peace apart from God, where the ego can feel holy because there is nothing negative about himself or herself to see in the Light. Therefore watch your intent. And if you elect to practice the meditation, do not add any other techniques to the simple meditation as presented here.
Click here read more about true vs. false meditation practices.
After this brief introduction to proper meditation, and an expose of improper techniques and why some people cannot meditate properly, you may try the 5 minute meditation if you wish.
A very simple 5 minute meditation is presented in this blog, along with a short 20 minute lecture. Try it if you wish. If you like it, you may also wish to go on to the longer version which is at http://www.commonsensecounseling.org/
