The Most Common Mistake in Meditation Practice & How to Correct it.

People come to meditation because they are stressed out.

They are stuck between their ears, disembodied. They want to arrest the feverish pace of thought and abide peacefully in the present moment.

Simply put, they want to get out of their head. But they don't know where to go. They don't know what it means to move beyond the thinking mind.

Getting out of the head means, for most, stop thinking. So they take a seat and try to silence their mind. But the only resource available to them is thought, so they start thinking about not thinking, which, needless to say, is a frustrating exercise in futility.

Mindfulness practice is not about concentrated attention. It is the thinking that seeks to concentrate the spectrum of awareness upon a single point. When we are navigating rush hour traffic at the end of a long day, the thinking mind reduces the multitude of sights and sounds down to only those features of the present moment pertinent to the task at hand, making it home safe. This is undoubtedly necessary but nevertheless stressful. It, however, is not the aim of meditation practice.

In the context of mindfulness, "mind" does not mean brain. We are not talking about brainfulness. "Mind" means awareness. Mindfulness is the fullness of awareness.

In mindfulness practice our awareness is relaxed, not concentrated. It's no longer monopolized by the thinking mind. Meditation enables our awareness to pour out into the fullness of our person, into the body. Only a somatic reference point, like the breath or posture, can interrupt our tendency to think about our own thoughts, enabling us to escape the claustrophobic world between our ears. Mindfulness is embodiment, presence.

Don't try to get out of the head. Just reconnect with the body. When you notice your mind drifting off, simply feel the breath, the heartbeat, the blood flowing through your body. No more, no less. Any more is elaboration and any less is lethargy.

To get out of the head is to return to the body. Meditation practice is about embracing the fullness of our life. The Life of the body is too rich and vast to be held within the tunnel vision of the thinking mind. However, the undifferentiated awareness of the body is expansive enough to include the life of the mind. In the basic awareness of the body nothing is left out. Thoughts arise and pass away, like any other sensation, but they are no longer the point around which our identity is centered. 

In the fullness of awareness the wholeness of our person is embraced. Our true life is resurrected.

It is not about abiding in that space continuously. It is about allowing our thoughts to touch the present moment, which we are anchored to by the breath. It is about grounding our point of view in reality as it is revealed in the naked awareness of the body. Meditation is about sanity. That's what it means to get out of her head.

Organic Spirituality vs. Fundamentalism.

There is a manner of living pre-ordained by my whole person. 

This manner of living is intuited in the body and this intuition is rendered at the level of consciousness as a journey. 

When the map is written in symbols which relate to the immediacy of my incarnation—the unfolding of my Being into the present moment—then the journey is first and foremost an inner-journey, reflected in the world I live in. 

When the map is written in signs, which fail to point past their obvious meaning, the journey is seen as some sort of obligation to the external world. This misunderstanding may lead to any number of detours and false assumptions, none more mutually destructive than the belief that the map emerging from our body is the "one true map."

This is the epitome of fundamentalism, the essence of which is hypocrisy. 

Hypocrisy is so violent because it ignores our non negotiable obligation to the inner life and transfers the balance of responsibility onto objects in our environment: either belief systems that suggest all has already been accomplished by some savior figure and/or everybody around me needs to get busy. 

The only truly universal path is the path that recognizes the integrity of each persons path, as it is revealed through their own unmediated, direct experience. On this path one's heart is the guide and there are no backseat drivers, not even what I think about the path that lays before me is taking into account.

This is the path of silence.

If, in the present moment, we consent to the fulfillment of our person by aligning our conscious will with the revelation of the body, then the journey is intentional and is often called the spiritual path. If, however, we deny our responsibility, then we separate ourselves from the ground of meaning and freedom, and life becomes dry and mechanistic. We feel as though we're being drug through the motions of life kicking and screaming, until it all comes to an end with one final 'meaningless' gasp.

What Language Does the Body Speak?

The body's first language is silence.

It speaks on a physiological or instinctual level. The transmutation of this energy into conscious understanding is facilitated by symbolism.

The most fundamental form of symbolism is what Jung referred to as the archetype. An archetype is the creative medium through which the unconscious or unformed mind shares itself with the conscious world of time and space.

The archetype does not refer to itself. The emphasis is not placed on the image or the pattern, but the principal form of energy, or instinct, that the motif is organized around.

A submission to these self-existing patterns of energy or mandalas constitutes the spiritual journey. The journey itself is a motif symbolizing the embodiment of the human life cycle.

Dr. King, Disembodiment, & the Death of Spirit.

Spiritual Death is a Mass Epidemic in Modern Society. 

God assured Adam that death would surely follow if he were to eat fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But the rationalizing serpent said, "You will not die." In this seductive moment, which we all experience many times each day, mankind was disembodied. We separate ourselves from the wakefulness and vitality of the present moment, as it is revealed in and through the body. We do this by thinking about our own thoughts. We create cold, lifeless worlds that are hundreds and thousands of thoughts removed from the immediacy and precision of direct experience. This is the "death of the spirit." Spirit refers to the source of "principle" or meaning. Next thing you know, a spiritual paralysis or shame set in, and the source of life—Eve—is exiled.

Dr. King waxes eloquently and poignantly on this subject.

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.
Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Biggest Misconception about Meditation Practice.

Just as the heart beats the brain thinks...

"As it is explained in many of the meditation teachings, first of all you cannot stop thoughts. It is impossible. And stopping thoughts is not our agenda. It is not doable. Even if were do-able it is not necessary, it is useless. Meditation actually is to generate the awareness of the thought. If you are supposed to develop the awareness of the thought, then you have to have the thought to be aware of! So you can’t really get rid of the thought and then try to look at something." ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Un-Created Creativity: The Union of Desire and Compassion in 137 Words.

Coming into Un-Created Creativity.

From the point of view of Buddhist tantra, desire is not a problem. Desire is desire. It is attachment to desire that proves to be problematic. Buddhist practice is about the liberation of desire, not liberation from desire.

In other words, how do we experience object-less desire—desire that isn't organized around some fear or ambition, which is just an addiction or in more traditional terms, passion. The object-less expressivity of desire is called, in Buddhist tantra, Compassion. True Compassion is the unfiltered expressivity of Life.

Compassion is un-created creativity. It is spontaneous and always appropriate. The only way we can come into True Compassion is by opening our hearts and minds and allowing our Self to be the vessel or the medium through which the universe expresses itself. Literally, compassion is the voice of the cosmos.  

Get Out of Your Head. Come Back To Your Body.

 Holy Fire by Alex Grey

*note: If you are interested in learning more about meditation and somatic spirituality, check out my book, Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West. It draws from a variety of different traditions—including Buddhism, contemplative Christianity, Judaism, and 12 Step spirituality—to present, not a smorgasbord, but a synthesized path and actionable structure that resonates with the modern Western mind. Click here to learn more about Finding God in the Body: A Spiritual Path for the Modern West.

"Do you not realize that your body is the temple?"

con·tem·pla·tion— that which is done in the temple.

The body is a place many of us have not been for quite some time. We have forgotten our bodies. In our modern world, the sensitivity and immediacy of the body is treated like a nuisance. It is almost as if the body is always interrupting the head, with it’s plans and strategies. With our ambitious heads in the driver’s seat, we push our bodies to the edge. As a result, we are plagued by aches and pains, fatigue, addiction, and illness. We seek escape from the prophetic wisdom of intuition, but the persistence of this wisdom reveals our plans and strategies to be a cowardly exercise in futility—preordained tendencies that seek to escape the inevitable reunion of mind and body.