Cultivating Ease

“This probably cannot be proven, but I just know it’s true."

Have you ever heard yourself saying that? It’s my go-to phrase when someone asks me about my beliefs anymore. It takes a lot of courage to declare your personal beliefs, especially in today’s complex web of opinions parading around as facts.

In my opinion, each of us has a nervous system that is as unique as our fingerprints, and it is constantly being updated. Keeping up with that kind of fluidity is our biggest challenge now. I don’t see that as controversial. Even if it isn’t entirely true, living as if it were true is the most valuable thing I have discovered lately. It frees me. It allows me to pick and choose what I am willing to do, think, and even feel throughout my day. That is called self-sovereignty, and it is based on the belief that freedom is entirely an internal state that one can learn to navigate toward ease in any situation. I know it’s possible because I am doing it, though sometimes less successfully than others.

One of the insights that lead me to creating a personal protocol to navigate life for myself was a drawing made by Meher Baba, an Indian Spiritual leader who I consider to be the Avatar – Christ – of this age. There are many books written by and about him, my personal favorite (where the drawing below is explained) is titled Creation and Its Causes. In it he explains that it is not accurate to envision opposites as the end points of a continuum. Rather, he drew a circle and explained it this way to those present at the time:

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Notice that the circle is open at the top. Intuitively, this indicates to me something that I feel I always knew but somehow forgot, some deep truth about how close perfection is, how wildly simple it should be to reach a state of profound contentment where nothing pulls us one way or another. That sounds like ease to me.

If ease arises in the completion of the circle by rejoining the end points, how does one navigate that critical tension between the opposites? That gap doesn’t look very big, but the tension between those end points is what creates duality.

So far, I have only scratched the surface of what I am trying to share here, but I don’t know if it is worth explaining. I only know how deeply this insight has affected the way I navigate life. If you would like to get to the bottom line, feel free to skip forward to the last two paragraphs labeled Bottom Line. For those who are more curious, I’m about to take you down a rabbit hole.

Rabbit Hole

This week I discovered that this has an intriguing synergy with the gnostic notion of Valentinian syzygy (see http://www.gnosis.org/library/valentinus/Syzygy_Valentinian.htm) as well as the Buddhist teaching of pratipakṣa bhavana (cultivating opposite thoughts as an antidote to suffering) which I learned about from dear Roshi Ed Brown during my monastic days at Tassajara (see The Grieving Tree). I will never forget talking with him about using amusement as an antidote to resentment, something that had afflicted me my whole life. (That was 35 years ago, and I still use it!) The way it works is that when you identify the feeling of resentment coming up, you seek out a feeling of amusement to counteract it and put yourself into the higher vibrational energy of amusement. If you apply this consistently – for even a short time – you will begin to notice that the lower become a trigger for the higher, therefore, you “evolve” your emotional habit. Quite useful.

In fact, in 1988, I took a class with Daniel Whiteside, one of the founders of Three in One Concepts in Burbank, California (along with Gordon Stokes). Together they developed something called the Behavior Barometer which was used along with Applied Kinesiology to identify and defuse emotional states. For two years, I studied their techniques and got an advanced certification, but I filed that away in my living, breathing library of incubating information that provides creative insights for me nearly every day now.

Once you go down that kind of rabbit hole, you are never the same again when you emerge. The paradigm shift you experience seems to reorganize your psychic DNA, and if you are still reading this part, you know exactly what I am talking about. Synchronicity becomes a daily occurrence that you cannot simply pass off as the result of social media algorithms. It is as if the entire universe is responding to your silent inquiries, and you feel compelled to question everything you thought you knew. This is called being open.

Ponder at your own peril, but let’s got to the…

The Bottom Line

I have been meditating for nearly 40 years, and I finally get why so many people want to do it but feel they cannot. It feels dangerous, beyond what we can imagine having. We convince ourselves it is “not for me” and say things like:

·       I don’t have time (even though meditation takes us beyond the limitation of time),

·       It doesn’t work for me (I’ve tried everything and nothing works),

·       My mind is too active (even though that is exactly the point),

·       [Add you own reasons here].

Here is what I propose. Since everyone has a unique nervous system, everyone needs to discover their own unique protocol for meditation. The world is so complex and chaotic – in the words of psychologist/philosopher Willian James, “a big, blooming, buzzing, confusion” – that following someone else’s rules for a meditation practice may not work for the current clime.

I would like to offer those who feel this way an opportunity to try it again in a different way.

I am starting an online course called “Exploring Meditation” as a collaborative effort to learn how to develop one’s own personal meditation protocol. If you would like to join me, see my offerings in October and November on my website page, Exploring Meditation. We just might be able to find your personal key!