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lighten our darkness

“I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God”
T.S. Eliot

Meditation:

“Each repetition of the word is like a hachure stroke towards perfect darkness.”

Via Negativa

lighten our darknessThe purpose of meditation is not to control your thoughts – they cannot be tamed – but to lose control. To shift out of the constant stream of thoughts that animate our every waking moment. To rest in the still small voice of silence. To give yourself – your frantic posturing self – a break and allow the natural self to rise up from the ground of your Being.

The word ‘meditation’ comes from the Latin ‘medio stare’ – to stand in the middle. In the middle of what? In the middle of stillness … in the middle of darkness.

There is a wonderful visitor attraction on Lanzarote created by Cesar Manrique called Jameos del Agua which some say is the eighth wonder of the world (probably the Lanzarote Tourist Board). It is a natural volcanic grotto with a lake home to a unique species of blind white crab – ‘munidopsis polimorpha’. I guess they’re blind because there was no natural light in the cave until it was turned into a night club. It’s a great place to visit – I created the ‘Via Transformativa’ audio meditation there. But its not dark.

If you want real darkness, in your face darkness, just across the road on the way to the Cuevas Verde caves there is a hidden cave with a kink after the entrance so in a short walk you are in total darkness and total silence. Take a torch. Take two. And a candle and incense and meditate in utter darkness for half an hour. You can even keep your eyes open – not a single photon disturbs your gaze.

At first its a bit scary … but do you know what? After a while it is the most natural relaxing way to just ‘be’. A bit like a womb without a view.

“The final goal of being is the darkness and unknowability of the hidden divinity, which is that light which shines but the darkness cannot comprehend it.”
Meister Eckhart

 

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I see you

“We are the mirror as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste of eternity. We are pain and what cures pain. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.”
Rumi

Meditation:

“Saying the mantra is like fingerprints on a steamed up bathroom mirror until you can see clearly.”

Via Transformativa

AvatarPair43In James Cameron’s movie Avatar towards the end of the film when Neytiri is holding the real Jake in her arms, not the avatar Jake, they say to each other, “I see you.” Of course, they could have said “I love you” which is what we might expect – but our Hollywood notions of ‘love’ are too romanticised for real communication these days. Jake is the one she loves, the real him, regardless of his avatar. She sees through to his soul and loves him.

In modern love you may as well say “I need you” … we are accomplices in projecting onto the other what we need to make us feel good about ourself, to feel accepted, to feel loved. This is proxy love. No other person can give you the love you seek. Only wiping away the illusion of separateness … from others, sure, but crucially from your True Self will allow you to see into the truth of who you are … the beloved. Meditation dissolves all known illusions.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.”
1 Corinthians 13 v.12

 

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alchemy

“We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.”
Meister Eckhart

Meditation:

“Meditation is like a chocolate soldier slowly submerged in a river of hot chocolate; or a mercury cop in Terminator crossing a river of molten mercury.”

Via Transformativa

The goal of the alchemist is to turn base metal, typically lead, into pure metal – gold. An early form of quantitative easing … if it ever came off. Many have tried – including Sir Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle – without success as far as we know – unless you count the Bank of England’s £375bn money printing festival.

The Philosopher’s Stone – the legendary alchemical substance capable of transforming base metal into gold was also seen as the ‘elixir of life’ with healing and rejuvenation properties – like Nigella’s chocolate. It is the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, purity, enlightenment, and heavenly bliss.

Central to the Hermetic tradition – the body of alchemical knowledge – is the idea also prevalent in Indian mystical cosmology – that the ‘microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm’. Newton states it like this in his translation of the Emeral Tablet:

“That which is Below is like that which is Above and that which is Above is like that which is Below to do the miracles of the Only Thing. And as all things have been and arose from One by the mediation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father; the Moon its mother; the Wind hath carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse.”

This may sound very strange coming from England’s leading scientist and committed Biblical Christian. He saw his experiments with light as an experiment in difracting the very Word of God.

We can see our own journey as one of alchemical transformation – from the base idea that we are nothing more than an accidental concatenation of atoms – a body – to the refined idea that we are nothing less than the recepticle of the One essence.

Re-scripting our lives in this sense we are all on the journey of The Alchemist.

“If there hadn’t been a sixth day, man would not exist; copper would always be copper; and lead just lead. It’s true that everything has its Personal Legend, but one day that Personal Legend will be realized. So each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new Personal Legend, until, someday, the Soul of the World becomes one thing only.”  Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

 

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entropy

“God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.”
Meister Eckhart

Meditation:

“Meditation is like Windows Task Manager allowing CPU usage to fall to 0%.”

Via Negativa

On a riverside walk recently (today actually) I was musing on where negativity comes from. Is it our ground zero … our natural state? The total absence of positive energy?

And like all closed systems, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics states, the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time … as we inexorably move towards increased entropy. Sounds pretty bleak to me.

But then I thought – maybe this only applies if we see ourselves as separate entities … separate from others, from Nature, from the Universe and we muster maximum positive energy to maintain our separateness.. Whereas, in reality, we are One with all that is … so we can’t ‘leak’ and maximum entropy is where the silence of God is loudest.

Muse have had similar musings recently in their latest album catchily titled ‘2nd Law’ …

“All natural and technological processes proceed in such a way
that the availability of the remaining energy decreases.
In all energy exchanges,
if no energy enters or leaves an isolated system
the entropy of that system increases.

Energy continuously flows from being concentrated,
to becoming dispersed, spread out, wasted and useless.
New energy cannot be created and high grade energy is being destroyed
An economy based on endless growth is…

Unsustainable
You’re unsustainable

The fundamental laws of thermodynamics will place fixed limits
on technological innovation and human advancement.
In an isolated system the entropy can only increase.
A species set on endless growth is…

Unsustainable

Muse – The 2nd Law: Unsustainable

 

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neti neti

“Once you label me you negate me.”
Søren Kierkegaard

Meditation:

“The more you abandon all images, all words, all imaginings and the more you allow the silence to overwhelm you … the more powerful you become.”

Via Negativa

My favourite guru in the annual spiritual supermarket sweeps in Tiruvanamalai in Tamil Nadu every December and January was a dreadlocked Jamaican kindly bear of a man from Brixton called Mooji.

I chose to spend most of my seven weeks in Tiru attending his ‘satsangs’ – open meetings in a rice mill including a five day silent retreat.

One of the little exercises he set us was to walk about town observing everything but resisting the temptation to label anything … ‘tuck-tuck’, ‘cow’, ‘chapati’ … but rather seeing things for what they are. As soon as you name anything you negate its true essence – a bit like the collapse of the wave function in quantum physics when an object is observed. It was playing hide and seek with you until the very moment you observed it when it crystallises into the familiar object you give a name. Names are useful but merely socially conducted concepts or taxonomies to help us impress a matrix of meaning on an otherwise chaotic sense-world.

In every mystic tradition there is a form of meditation called apophatic – from the Greek ἀπόφασις from ἀπόφημι – apophēmi, “to deny” – which takes as its starting point the fact that God is not what you can say about him. “We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.” John Scot Erigena (9th century)

In India this is called ‘neti neti’ which is a Sanskrit expression which means “not this, not this”, or “neither this, nor that”. You arrive at a closer affinity with God by a process of taking away. In the Christian mystic tradition this is called the Via Negativa. Try observing without naming; reducing everything to its ‘isness’ which is God.

“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21

 

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hidden in plain sight

“The shell must be cracked open if what is inside is to come out.”
Meister Eckhart

Meditation:

“Saying the mantra is like giving a prisoner in a cell a syllable spoon and little by little digging themself free.”


Via Integrativa

We come home to ourselves when we realise … there is nothing missing. We can call off the search. The place we were looking for is the place we are looking from.

In India, meditating on the roof near Ramana Maharshi’s ashram in Tiruvanamalai, an image came to me that made me laugh out loud. Imagine a boy straddling the neck of an elephant. The boy is looking for the elephant. “Any sign yet?” asks the elephant. “No, not yet”, says the boy.

The boy is the ego-self; the elephant is the universal-Self. He can’t see for looking … hidden in plain sight.

Until we come home to ourselves …

“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
TS Eliot

 

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I am the Walrus

“In the Kingdom of heaven everything is in everything else. All is one and all is ours. We are all in all as God is all in all.”
Meister Eckhart

Meditation:

“Saying the mantra is like dismantling the wall that separates you from your true Self – union with God … ma – ra – na – tha … each syllable a brick, each repetition a course until the wall of separation falls.”

Via Transformativa

If you are The Walrus “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together,” according to The Beatles. Then we are all walruses.

According to John – the Beatle not the Apostle – The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. They certainly had the best tunes. But Jesus had a similar turn of phrase when he said “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14:20) A sort of reciprocal Russian doll thing going on there – and very mystical.

This is what is called ‘panentheism’. The term panentheism is Greek for “all-in-God,” pan-en-theos. A panentheistic belief system is one which posits a god that interpenetrates every part of nature, but is nevertheless fully distinct from nature. So this god is part of nature, but still retains an independent identity.

It is true that both panentheists and pantheists (see below) share the view that the universe and every natural thing in it is pervaded by divinity. However, since panentheism postulates that the universe is contained within God and not God in the universe, panentheists believe in a God who is present in everything but also extends beyond the universe.

In other words, God is the universe but is also greater than the universe. Often panentheists also believe that this God has a mind, created the universe, and cares about each of us personally. Pantheists on the other hand believe that the universe itself is divine and do not believe in personal or creator gods.

If there is God then nowhere can be outside of God. Meditation deconstructs the dividing wall that keeps us separate from the divine infusion. This TEDx video says it best:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0–_R6xThs]

 

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between the ‘I’s’

“Where there is isness, there God is.” Meister Eckhart

Meditation:

“Saying the mantra – ma-ra-na-tha – is like walking on the slats of a rope bridge acrosss the divide from ‘I’ to ‘I Am’.”


Via Positiva

Next time you wake up watch out for your first thought – play a game of thought tag with yourself. Can you tag your first thought? What is it? It will invariably have a sense of ‘I’ about it. “I wonder what time is it?”

The first thought is an ‘I-thought’ and re-inflates our whole sense of ‘me’ – this ‘I’ in a body … embodied. But if you could squeeze the input valve of this blow-up dolly called you between finger and thumb BEFORE the first I-thought rushes in … who are you?

You are pre-thought … yet awake. Pre to-do lists in the head … yet alert. You are literally without a thought in your head. Yet conscious. Ask: who is the ‘I’ in this state – before the thoughts rush in? And who is this ‘I’ in between thoughts? What is your natural state before the constructed ego re-inflates?

You are Being. Awareness. Isness.

Try it out next time you wake.

 

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Meditation:

“Meditation is like lowering yourself in a bucket into the centre of your soul.”

“Think of the soul as a whirlpool and you will understand how we are to sink eternally from negation to negation into the One.” Meister Eckhart

Via Negativa

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

Do we? Do we, indeed? One of the great paradoxes of the spiritual path in contrast to other avenues of human endeavour is that in order to ‘add’ to our knowledge of the divine in us we need to ‘deduct’ what we already know. It is a process of unlearning not adding new learning. So we can welcome all circumstance into our life as an opportunity to let go of our old understandings and sink into the nothingness we may call god.

There is no new knowledge, new teacher, new technique, new practice which will ‘get us’ to god for we are already in the place we seek. It’s just hidden from plain sight. We do not need new knowledge … we need new eyes. The kingdom is both within you and amongst you. Luke 17:21

“The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you’re supposed to go up and down when you’re supposed to go down. When you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there is no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness. ‘I am he and/ He is me:/ Spring nightfall.’ Abandon the self, and there you are.”
―  Haruki Murakami,  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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the sound of silence

“There is nothing so close to God as silence.”
Meister Eckhart

Meditation:

“If ‘Om’ is the sound of cosmic background radiation
‘ma-ra-na-tha’ is the sound of the heartpulse of god’s love
in the cosmos.”

Via Creativa

Studies in neuroscience reveal a surprising relationship between thought and action. You might reasonably presume that thought is prior to action. “Just one more sip” precedes picking up the wine glass.

Not so.

MRI  scans of brain activity reveal a sleight of hand – the arm moves to pick up the glass before the thought flickers in the brain as detected by the scanner. Intriguing. So who’s pulling the strings? What precedes thought? No thought? Maybe the same no-thought that animates our Being in deep sleep or meditation. There is no Do-er ultimately … only a Be-er. All our doings, thinkings, actions and creations spring out of pre-thought silence which, according to Meister Eckhart, is next to godliness. Shhh … can you hear the sound of silence?

“Sit quietly and do not move your mind or intellect. Then observe the observer. This is your true nature, from where everything else comes. It is your own nature, don’t forget.

If you make any effort or use any method of trying to achieve something at some distant future, this will bring you into time. And time is mind. So this will be the play of mind only. But your original nature is empty.

If you follow any thought that arises in the mind, you will find it arises from emptiness, from its source. And when you are aware, when you see “I am that source itself,” then there is no need to practice anything. No need to go anywhere. And you will see that you have always been that. This is called freedom, and you are not to achieve or attain it in some distant future. It is already there.”

H. W. L. Poonja (Papaji)