For those of you that have been read­ing Into the Cen­tre and brows­ing the web­site, you’ll not be sur­prised to see a series of arti­cles appear­ing over the next few weeks, con­cern­ing the ‘emp­ty­ing’ of body, mind and spirit.

There’s a great video online, assum­ing you’re read­ing the email ver­sion of this post. CLICK to view the video and read the article

Never Ignore Your Mind

The Sludge Lagoon

I want briefly to frame our dis­cus­sions for today. You’ll remem­ber that we’ve been talk­ing about pay­ing attention—this is the chief method for deal­ing with our men­tal games.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that men­tal games are not optional, and the best we can ever hope for is a bit of peace of mind, through focused atten­tion and meditation.

Indeed, this is the point of pas­sive meditation.

Pas­sive Med­i­ta­tion Stills the Mind…briefly

Often con­nected to a ‘mind focus,’ pas­sive med­i­ta­tion is also called, in Zen, Zazen, or sim­ply sit­ting. One Zen Sen­sei I know was dis­cussing count­ing breaths as a way of med­i­tat­ing. She said, “It seems sim­ple… count your breaths on the out breath. When you reach 10, start again. If, while count­ing, you dis­tract your­self with a thought, start count­ing again.“
She paused. “In 20 years of doing this, I have often reached 6…”

The Joy of Sim­ple Presence

Zen is con­cerned with one thing only. It is liv­ing with sim­ple pres­ence, or “being present.” The idea is, again, alarm­ingly simple.

• There is a ‘real’ world of which we are a part. It has no intrin­sic mean­ing, and is there­fore ‘empty’ of meaning.
• We inter­act with every­thing through our senses. We’ve men­tioned this before. Sen­sory data also has no meaning.
• We inter­pret the sen­sory data. Thus, the world you per­ceive is not the world—the world you per­ceive is your inter­preted ver­sion of the world. Our inter­ac­tion with ‘the world, then, is always sub­jec­tive, as we take the raw data and judge (inter­pret) it.

Zen Mas­ters (and quan­tum physi­cists) say that we can never know, nor prove, objec­tive real­ity. Every­thing we inter­act with is fil­tered by our sub­jec­tive experience.

Why Med­i­ta­tion (and life) is a Challenge

The sim­ple task of ‘just sit­ting’ becomes end­lessly com­plex, as our minds start prat­tling on. “I won­der how I’m doing. My foot is cramped. The woman next to me is pretty. I won­der when lunch is, and what we’ll be eat­ing. I won­der what time it is.”

And then we take another breath, and start count­ing at 1.

I started today’s arti­cle with a video on Sludge Ponds. I was amazed to come across that one, as it fits so per­fectly. Like it or not, Waste Treat­ment Plants deal with human waste. In the past, we buried it, think­ing “out of sight, out of mind.” No longer. We have come to see that our crap is always with us, and a more nat­ural approach was required, allow­ing nature to slowly trans­form the crap into some­thing use­ful. Nice anal­ogy for all of the mind-chatter, isn’t it?

The goal is not to stop the inter­nal chat­ter.
(Hint: you can’t. No one can.)
The goal is to notice it as it arises, and to get to a place where we ‘sim­ply notice’ with­out fol­low­ing the thought.
This is actu­ally a great improve­ment, and a wor­thy life-goal.

When I begin to get a han­dle on the way my mind works, I can get over myself, stop blam­ing, and let my thoughts come and go. As I do this, I begin to per­ceive at more depth. As I do this, I begin to let go of my attach­ments to my judge­ments, my games, and my avoidance.

About Active Meditation

This is the goal of active med­i­ta­tion, and R.A.I.N.

I men­tioned R.A.I.N. last arti­cle, and it bears repeat­ing, in short form.

Recog­ni­tion is being aware that my mind is doing its thing. Mostly we talk to our­selves (in var­i­ous voices, but it’s all us) con­tin­u­ally, and the voices lead us in direc­tions we might not con­sciously choose. So, if I learn to pay atten­tion to my mind-voices, I can ‘sim­ply listen.’

A is for accep­tance. What nor­mally hap­pens is the voice starts blam­ing, for exam­ple. We tune in after a while, hav­ing sub­con­sciously heard the judge­ments. We start off, then, in a dis­ad­van­taged state, and we buy in to the con­cocted story. “YES! Just like nor­mal, it’s all my husband’s fault. He is mean and cruel and never lets me do what I want. And besides, all he wants is sex.“
The accep­tance piece is: “Wow. I almost lost it there. I am frus­trat­ing myself because I judge that my hus­band is not act­ing right. I was going to blame him, and I just remem­bered it’s me get­ting me upset.“
In other words, accep­tance is tak­ing total self respon­si­bil­ity for all of my thoughts, feel­ings, and emo­tions. (Boy, I see you cring­ing out there, hav­ing to accept accep­tance…) Every sin­gle thought, emo­tion, and reac­tion I have is me, doing me. No one makes feel, act, or think. Accep­tance is com­ing to terms with how what I do, think, and say is the sole deter­mi­nant of, well, me. If you want to know why you are mis­er­able, I have a 100% accu­rate answer. Go look in the mir­ror. There stands your tormentor.

I is for inves­ti­ga­tion, and that’s what we’re talk­ing about in today arti­cle. If I ded­i­cate my life to watch­ing myself play games with myself, I can also (next step) let go and make other, per­haps bet­ter choices. But if I won’t inves­ti­gate, I am lost in a sea of repet­i­tive behav­iour, and noth­ing will change.

Non-identification, or non-attachment, is the method. Once I see my mind at work, I can let go of think­ing that, just because I think or have acted a cer­tain way, that I must con­tinue to do so. I can ‘own’ my thoughts, with­out iden­ti­fy­ing with them. What I soon see is that I am not a fixed per­sona at all, but an end­lessly ongo­ing process. My process is expe­ri­enc­ing, and if I sim­ply notice, the thoughts move along of their own accord.

Exer­cises in Consciousness

A few arti­cles ago I printed a few para­graphs from my book, This End­less Moment. I briefly men­tioned an obser­va­tion exer­cise. Let’s do it more formally.

I’m attempt­ing to get you to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between notic­ing and judg­ing. Notic­ing is a cat­a­logu­ing process. It’s essen­tial. It helps us rec­og­nize, for exam­ple, threats. A hot coil on your stove is ‘the same’ as a hot coil on mine—the cat­e­gory matches. I don’t have to burn my hand on yours to rec­og­nize it’s ‘like’ mine.

Judge­ment, on the other hand, is this. “Nasty, stu­pid stove. That coil is out to get me, and it burned my hand inten­tion­ally. If only I had bet­ter par­ents, I would live in a world where I never burned myself. Besides, if peo­ple loved me they’d see to it that I never got burned.” (Metaphor­i­cally, too, I suppose.)

The mind loves its sto­ries, and your mind is yours. As you notice your mind’s games, more and more you can detach from the story and return to the cat­e­gory. “Is this some­thing I must do some­thing about, and if so, what might that action be?” Do you see how dif­fer­ent this is from, “Crap like this always hap­pens to me. I am a poor, help­less victim.”

In Zen, we say that vic­tims
are always self-made.

Go Have a Judge­ment Party

In a prior arti­cle (and in my book,) I sug­gested that you go to the Mall or the beach and judge a whole lot of peo­ple. Nor­mally, we look at peo­ple and con­coct sto­ries about them, based upon con­jec­ture and how we are feel­ing at the moment, as well as our past expe­ri­ence with sim­i­lar people.

One might, for exam­ple, think, “All men want is sex. That’s why he asked me out.” A client said this, and deter­mined to not go out. I asked whether she might want to ask his inten­tion, rather than guess it. She decided to risk it. He said he wanted to go out with her to have fun and get to know her better.

I said, “Ask­ing often pro­vides infor­ma­tion we need, as our imag­i­na­tions are all about us. And besides, you don’t have to have sex with him if you don’t want to.” She replied, “Hey. I like sex. It might be fun.” Funny how the mind works, eh?

So, go find some peo­ple to stare at. Use the last exer­cise as the model. Look. Name. “Blond woman. Heavy man. Bald-headed old guy.”

(Hey! What am I doing there??)

Then, fix­ate on one per­son, and let your mind do its thing. “Wow. Look at the short skirt on that one! I’ll bet she just loves the atten­tion.” “Man, what a slob. I’ll bet he eats with a power fork.” What­ever. Then, back to ‘just naming.’

Now, fix­ate and hold the story you just con­cocted gen­tly. Repeat the main point. “Wow. Look at the short skirt on that one! I’ll bet she just loves the atten­tion.” Stop. Own the judge­ment by name. “Say, This is me, judg­ing this woman and lust­ing after her.” This is me, judg­ing this man, and reject­ing him, feel­ing repelled.”

This is me, this is me, this is me.

Go back to nam­ing, then fix­ate. “Wow. Look at the short skirt on that one! I’ll bet she just loves the atten­tion.” This time, flip to nam­ing, but sim­ply name the feel­ing or emo­tion. “Horny, horny.” “Repelled, repelled.” “Sad, sad.” “Happy, happy.”

You should, by this point, feel a relief and release. The feel­ing, the judge­ment, is just as tran­sient as all thought, pro­vid­ing you do not latch on to it. You begin to see that it is a ‘pass­ing thought’ and by def­i­n­i­tion, some­thing you have, and then do not. It is like your breath. You breathe in air, exhale air, and it flows through you, but it is not you.
What IS you is the process—breathing.
So, your thoughts are not you. What IS you is the process—think­ing.

Play with this for a while, and watch as your mind tries to con­vince you that your thoughts are real. Smile, and let each go. And notice, as you do, what is hap­pen­ing in the here and now. Life, events, processes, com­ing into being, and fold­ing into them­selves. Noth­ing lasts.
One thing, and one thing, and one thing.

This is Zen.