MEDITATION ...

"God The Organic" by Peter Van Straten

The following is a Q&A from a Humanities class taken at College of the Siskiyous in Weed, CA.

HUMANITIES Question:  Elucidate the link between meditation and spirituality. Why are spiritual disciplines, of which meditation is one, so often deemed necessary for spiritual development? How might meditation affect one’s thinking and sense of self?

In Truth there is no separation between Meditation and Spirituality, however, how it is being worded, or how it seems the question is asked, is as if they are separate. 

To have a link means that something isn’t connected.  However, the practice of Meditation, can reveal that all of life is in Stillness, that there is no separation, that there is only One (“Less than one because even the word one implies two.” ~Wayne Austin.)

The practice of Meditation is useful in quieting the mind enough for it to realize what it is in, and ultimately, to realize that there is no such thing as “mind.” 

If the practice of Meditation is to show up in your life than that is the tool that is used to point that one in the direction of itSelf.  However, Meditation is not the only tool, one can Awaken to theirSelf in any situation, “Truth uses whatever is available to reveal itSelf.” ~Wayne Austin. 

For the one typing this, Meditation was the tool used to place the crack in reality, however, in looking back there were many things, events, like using Mescaline as a teenager before the mind had become too rigid with beliefs, so many things had revealed about the world and how it is not how it appears.

Things that are frowned upon in the mainstream society - for this one were the exact things that came/showed up to open this one.  So if you find that the things that have opened your mind are not things you are able to casually talk about, you are not alone.  There are various different ways it will and can happen if it is supposed to happen.  No one can do anything to make Awakening happen, but what Awakening requires for it to happen, will.

So when one says “Awakening,” that is the same as saying “Spiritual.”  The Spiritual Awakening will happen and there is really nothing to do about it, your reading this is part of it, just like everything that shows up in what you call “your” life is all in the direction of Awakening to the Self.  It doesn’t matter where you are on the planet, what you do for a living (or don’t do) what music you listen to or make or what movies you watch, whether you like sports or don’t, whether you are in jail or a Caribbean island, when it is time for your Awakening, you will Awaken and it will not be like anything you thought.

After the Awakening here, during a quick 15 minute Meditation on a lunch break from work, it was so frightening that all practice of Mediation was stopped for almost 6 years, for fear of what had happened.  The “mind” could not grasp it’s undoing so quickly and what was the most beautiful thing that can possibly be offered was turned and flipped into something that one spent years running from. 

Why would one run from theirSelf?

Because the thoughts about who one is, are so solidly believed in, that the Truth of who they are seems too Big, too Beautiful and too Brilliant to be True.  

So the crack may show up for some and frighten them, some it happens to in Meditation, some in near death experiences, some hanging over a toilet in a drunken stupor, or as a mundane as writing a check, but if you have found that something happened that you cannot explain, but frightened you because you did not understand and didn’t know where to go or who to talk to, then know that Truth is kind, it is ruthless and brutal in its Wake, but it is kind in it’s unfolding and the undoing of what you have thought will begin to happen and those that will help to reveal it to you will show up. 

It’s like an earthquake and then everyone comes to clean up the rubble, except we are not rebuilding a “new” you.  What is cleaned up is removed and you are left with what you have always been.  What was there before you were born, what was there looking out of your eyes when you were a baby and didn’t have an “I” thought and it is what you are right now, before the thoughts “I am.”  It is there and it is not an it and it lives through the mask that is you until the mask drops and is left on the floor (whether that is in life or as you discard the body through death one way or another the mask comes off).

Nothing is wasted, so practice Meditation, but do it knowing that you already are whatever it is that you are attempting to be.  Begin to pay attention to the Stillness that everything appears in, as often as possible, continually be vigilant and redirect the attention back onto Stillness.  As this becomes a way of life, will begin to see that all of Life appears in Meditation.

Namaste.