The Weight of Words

Words have meaning. Words have weight. They have effects. They become short-hand for complex ideas and concepts. Sometimes they become barriers because their meaning becomes fixed. The short-hand may as well be a straight-jacket restricting any movement. I’ve become aware of two such words that carry a lot of weight. That extra weight, baggage if you will, makes them less useful than they could be. Those two words are enlightenment and meditation, which I will address individually below.

Enlightenment

My preferred term for this concept is spiritual evolution, which I’ve borrowed from Garry Zukav’s “The Seat of the Soul”. I’m certain I’m not alone in thinking I’m nowhere near to enlightenment because I still have those shadow thoughts. I still have petty and mean thoughts. Serenity is often very far away. Enlightenment seems to be equated with serenity and perfection. Enlightened masters are thought to have led perfect lives once they achieve it. Maybe they did. But I wonder if true enlightenment is ever possible when we are in human form. Do I do a disservice to the Buddha, the Christ, or any other enlightened master by believing they left behind all the human concerns and frailties? I’m not sure how to answer that, except by noting that perhaps making them out to be perfect creates too much distance between me and them.

To me, spiritual evolution suggests a process and allows for both imperfection and a range of thoughts, feelings and emotions. I’ve become more aware of human duality where I am very much a physical being but also a quantum being. My energy levels as shown by feelings and emotions can quickly jump levels. In some ways this is like the theory of physical evolution. Species don’t change overnight. Spiritually, I don’t either. It becomes useful to appreciate the whole experience, the ups and downs and that great space in between. Accepting that I still those petty thoughts becomes important. It doesn’t mean I should just allow them. Awareness means that I can try transforming them and try not being so judgmental of myself and others. This is a never-ending effort.

Meditation

The word meditation is similarly weighed down with great expectations and misconceptions. To meditate I am supposed to be still and quiet and I’m supposed to be able to achieve that in my own mind. I haven’t ever been able to achieve that. At times there is the illusion of stillness of mind, but I am becoming more aware that on some level there is always activity. I liken this increased awareness to a microscope. The early ones gave some detail to the inner workings of the cells, more than with the naked eye. As technology improved microscopes gave us more detail and brought us deeper into the inner workings. The work I do through meditation (and other things) increases the abilities of my mind, a critical ability being awareness.

I’ll never claim to be a meditation master, partly because of the old saw, “The more I learn the less I realize I know.” The closest I’ve come to quietening the mind is quietening a part of it. I had to learn how to let go of the need to be in control. Everybody, I think, goes through that where part of the mind is always vigilant and when untrained and feeling unsafe will just snap back into place when sensing the drift away from conscious awareness. This is a safety issue. Having a sense of security is important.

A good place to begin a meditation practice is with something I call micro-meditations. This is only a recent revelation to me and is not how I began. A micro-meditation is simply a short breathing practice, for lack of a better term. For even as short as 20 seconds, I’ll close my eyes and try focusing attention on one thing. It might be following my breath in and out, or trying sense some part of my body, just any small thing. It is imperative to feel safe when doing this. Closing my eyes helps, so, walking down a busy city street doesn’t work well. It’s that simple. Part of what I’m trying to improve is returning to focused attention. My mind will wander, so I’m trying to teach myself to come back to that focused attention. The opposite of focused attention is open awareness, which is different than aimless drifting. With open awareness I follow my thoughts in, watch them and watch what they do including how one new thought gets replaced by another. Balance between both can be achieved. Each has their place. But for now working on focused attention and returning to it are valuable skills to learn.

Open awareness might deserve its own post. This one is still a work in progress, which seems true of everything.  But I think my next posts will begin exploring “The Shadow”.

The River of 7 Billion Souls

The incident I call the River of 7 Billion Souls occurred a few years ago. I hesitate to call it a vision for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that there was nothing visual about the experience, just a possibly other-worldly sense of this thing happening. The second reason is that I feel like visions don’t happen to people as inconsistent and imperfect as me.

As an aside: I’ve been thinking about both signs from the universe and this particular post. I’m not convinced yet that all things happen for a reason and that there are signposts all over the place suggesting my direction, if only I’d look. But I did read an e-mail this morning that referenced seven billion souls. I don’t know if this is a sign, but it was time to compose the next post. So here I am writing about 7 billion souls.

The event occurred as I walked home from the bus stop along a route I rarely traverse any more – changes to bus routes, not the home address. I hesitate to call the thing a vision because as I looked to my left and right, the fences and houses were still in clear view. The trees remained in sight, the same as they always do. Nothing shimmered around me. The only music came from the earbuds in my ears.

But I had this sense of the whole mass of humanity, both those with us and those long passed, walking with me, beside me and all around me. I didn’t sense it as being a river until later but comparing this to a river was apt.

Most of the river of souls traveled in the same direction and mostly at around the same speed. Some were faster, some were slower. It seemed as if people from countless different eras accompanied me. Individuals and even some groups moved against the current. Some became like eddies in a river spiraling with apparent cyclical futile motion but still moving forward. Others were like the small local currents that double back against the flow for awhile and then resume moving more or less in the same direction as the rest of the river.

Often times the proverbial 10,000 foot view and the one foot view of a river give the same general sense of a body of water moving in one direction. It is in changing perspective and distance that the river can reveal itself to be more varied and less monolithic than how it appears at first glance. By paying closer attention I see the differences and the varied patterns.

Humanity itself and my own little life reveal the same thing. What seems like a single direction (trying to be judgment free, as much as possible) turns out to be an illusion. Backward movement and the thing I’ve called giving back progress only seem that way in the heat of this moment. It’s just that I have to view things from different angles and time frames to see it.

As I contemplate this event with added perspective of what I’ve since learned, I return to my parenthetical thought above about being as judgment free as possible. A person’s physical appearance offers little clue about their journey. In this regard, comparing an obviously homeless person to student or a well-dressed business man is an exercise in futility and judgment. As long as I am human I’ll lapse and make judgement based on physical external clues. Learning to intercept and question these inevitable judgments is one key to creating deeper connections to all around me.