November 29 - Meditation

After today’s dialogue, I feel I need to let loose and just write a stream of consciousness. So here is a waterfall of what I am pondering and wondering and shall just let the rivers flow and see where they shall lead…..

What is meditation? Meditation can be used for many reasons. Can meditation be used to wake up? Just like the dissolving ego in a psychedelic experience, meditation can also transcend the ego boundaries. Today, a certain member led us onto an exploration of what this means. To listen in through meditation can breath space and quiet, joy and connection. One can feel expansive at times and deeply relaxed.

Meditation can also be very difficult and can be dark. For on this journey, one is confronting the armored egoic domain, the very structure of oneself. The question then remains…. Can one stay with the challenges and not run away and directly be with what is being brought to the surface? The tricky part is not having a goal in mind or expectations, but in being totally serious and present with what is going on within. The question then becomes - is darkness a bad thing, or just the shadow that we habitually turn away from?

In this presence, where is the ego? When the ego dissolves, beliefs are shed like mist, what remains? In this place, can there be fear? Can there be hate? Or is there something else that is way beyond anything that we can define or measure? And when this barrier dissolves…What happens to beauty, to love, to connection when they are released like wildflowers upon a spring morning?

If each one of us can pause - even right here - now and just be and begin to dive into that space more and more - to begin questioning societies motivations, and begin to let our minds quiet, and really listen to oneself, to each other, to the birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, all of life, what would happen?

This is what meditation can do….in that listening, in the underlying discomfort, something frees and exposes the lies that society shares and begin to wake us up - and in that place, breaking through society’s matrix, fearless to live in ways that are true and connective such as love, such as compassion, such as beauty, such as sharing in community where no one is greater or less, to truth and freedom