What’s in it for me? Quiet the chaotic mind and find balance through meditation.
Do you feel disillusioned with life?
Perhaps you’ve achieved success, yet don’t feel as happy as you expected.
It’s no surprise.
Many people find themselves confused when they get to the end of the rainbow and realize there’s no pot of gold after all.
They think there’s something wrong with them, and start searching high and low for solutions.
For Ram Dass, the search took him from being a psychology professor at Harvard University, to experimenting with psychedelic drugs, to beginning his spiritual journey in the Himalayas.
These blinks reveal what he learned: that you must look deep within yourself to find fulfillment – and that meditation is the best way to do that.
In these blinks, you’ll discover why you should free yourself from your ego; how different concentration techniques can ease you into meditation; and how to maintain a strong meditative center at every stage of your journey.
Meditation helps you to live in the present moment and find balance and clarity.
Have you ever had a moment when you felt at peace with the world – a moment totally free of self-conscious thought?
It’s like being a surfer who catches a wave and moves in perfect harmony with the force of the water.
This is a moment of flow.
People often refer to flow as “losing oneself” or “forgetting oneself.
” It can happen when you’re alone or with people you love and trust.
These moments – when your anxiety is released and your awareness expands – are the essence of meditation.
Sadly, most of the time, flow evades us – because we’re trapped by our egos.
The key message here is: Meditation helps you to live in the present moment and find balance and clarity.
Think of your ego like a room made of your thoughts – you see the world through its windows.
Your ego wants to convince you that your identity depends on staying inside, where everything is familiar and comfortable.
Because you’re afraid to leave, your ego can become a prison.
Outside of this prison is where flow exists.
The good news is that you don’t have to destroy your ego to spend time outside its walls; you can stroll in and out as you please.
How?
When you begin a meditation practice, you poke holes in the walls of your ego – which helps you adapt to the idea that your thoughts are not reality.
The purpose of meditation is to help you move outside of your daily thoughts more easily so that you can live fully in the present.
But perhaps you’re pursuing the healing powers of meditation halfheartedly, or for ego-driven reasons – like to increase pleasure or power.
You secretly hope it won’t work, and you won’t really have to leave your familiar rooms.
Even if your initial goal for meditation is to feed the ego, the practice itself, paradoxically, leads to liberation from ego – if you can overcome your resistance to change.
As you meditate more, the stillness allows deeper motives to emerge that encourage you to further your practice – and your thought prison starts to crumble.
When your mind is rooted in awareness, reality is relative.
You grow less attached to your thoughts, and stop clinging to feelings – like anger and fear – that make your life difficult.
In doing so, you come to see the world differently.
Choose a form of meditation that interests you and matches your sensibilities – then dive in.
If you’ve never meditated before, take a moment to try now.
Find a comfortable seated position with your back and head straight.
Close your eyes.
As you sit, your thoughts might grab at you.
Try not to follow them; just let them pass.
This is meditation.
If a thought catches and you find yourself making plans, strategizing, or recalling memories, then you’re thinking, not meditating.
Try picturing a stream.
When thoughts interrupt your focus, notice them, and let them float by like autumn leaves.
Then, gently return your attention to the water.
Don’t get frustrated by your active mind; that’s another leaf.
Just go back to the flowing stream.
Do this for several minutes.
Think: What did you notice in your body?
As your practice deepens, you’ll find there are certain factors that affect you.
Here’s the key message: Choose a form of meditation that interests you and matches your sensibilities – then dive in.
Did you find yourself in an uncomfortable position, perhaps?
Restlessness or pain can be distracting.
Try doing hatha yoga first to prepare your body, mind, and spirit for meditation through a series of postures.
Sitting and concentrating is one basic method – but there are many other options.
If you’re athletic and wary of sitting still for an hour, investigate karate or t’ai chi.
If you’re creative, try singing or Sufi dancing.
What matters is what you do with your mind, not your body.
At the beginning, commit to one method for at least two weeks.
Your ego may intervene and tell you not to take it seriously, but this is where discipline comes in.
Make a pact with yourself to suspend judgment and doubt until the end of the trial run.
Then you can continue to experiment with different methods until you find one that feels right.
As your practice grows stronger, you’ll know when you’re ready to switch again.
Eventually you’ll be able to meditate anywhere.
But for the easily distracted beginner, it’s important to have a dedicated, quiet space.
Set aside a corner of a room for your practice and nothing else.
You might also consider meditating with a group to strengthen your resolve.
Meditate at convenient times of day – ideally not just after you’ve eaten or when you’re hungry.
Most serious meditators practice twice daily.
Start with 20- to 30-minute sessions, and gradually extend them up to an hour.
Incorporate different techniques to concentrate your mind and evolve the subtleties of your practice.
Think back to the flowing stream you visualized in your brief meditation.
As your mind wandered and you calmly returned your attention to the water, you were practicing the essential skill of all meditation practices: concentration.
Mindful breathing is another way to practice concentration.
Next time you meditate, focus on the flow of your breath coming in and out of your nostrils.
Notice the subtle sensations – like a doorman watching people coming and going.
Maybe the breath feels sharp inside the nose, or light at the rim of your nostrils.
There’s no right or wrong feeling.
Just be aware of it.
When you do this, you’re learning about attachment – and how your thoughts and senses are constantly trying to hook your attention.
You’re also learning mindfulness: a quiet, peaceful alertness to each moment.
The key message is this: Incorporate different techniques to concentrate your mind and evolve the subtleties of your practice.
By developing mindfulness and concentration together, you learn to stop clinging to your thoughts and, in doing so, find balance.
You realize that everything is in a state of transformation and flux, including you.
But what you concentrate your mind on is important.
For instance mantra – a repeated sacred word or spiritual phrase – focuses you on God.
The rhythm and repetition of mantra helps you release all other attachments, so that you become intimate with the sound, and surrender to it.
If you’re not sure where to begin, try the Sanskrit mantra, “Ram,” a name of God, or “Aum,” which means the totality of all sound.
There are two further elements that will help ground your practice: contemplation and devotion.
Contemplation comes from studying the works of people already attuned to higher states of consciousness and using them to guide and inform your own spiritual practice.
Keep books by your meditation space and choose a passage or sentence to reflect on every day.
Devotion allows you to cultivate love by praying, singing to, or otherwise channeling your energy toward a holy being – like Christ, Ramakrishna, or Buddha.
If you don’t have a figure who inspires you already, you might find yourself drawn to one in your contemplation.
When you practice devotion, you see yourself reflected, without judgment, in the eyes of the Beloved.
As you release your feelings of unworthiness, you acknowledge your own radiance – and the radiance of all people.
Just as meditation influences life, life affects the process of meditation.
The more you practice meditation, the more you will integrate daily life into the meditative space.
For Ram Dass, even walking through New York City could be profoundly meditative.
By using mantra or concentrating on his breath, he would notice just how often his mind was pulled by the endless stimuli of the city.
But he was able to stay in the meditative state by noticing his thoughts and letting them go.
Grounding is necessary for this type of meditation-in-action.
You don’t meditate to escape from reality or to avoid social responsibility – you meditate to experience a spaciousness around the things you notice or respond to.
That way, you can handle your responsibilities without clinging to thoughts about them.
The key message here is: Just as meditation influences life, life affects the process of meditation.
While it might be more difficult to begin the journey of meditation if there’s turbulence in your life, meditation can be a steadying force.
In the same way, simplifying your life comes more naturally the more you ease into the flow of meditation.
When you let your whims drag you around day to day, you’ll find you spend your meditation time untangling these new and complex webs of attachment.
If you limit distractions, you’ll find you make the process smoother.
Do this by taking note of the thought patterns that arise during meditation.
These are the areas of your life that you’ll want to clear.
Let’s say you have a lot of debt.
The financial worries that continually interrupt your meditation are a sign and motivation that you should clear what you owe.
Silence and space bring a deeper understanding of the nature of cause and effect.
As you plunge deeper into meditation, your idea of who you believe yourself to be will change, perhaps along with your tastes.
For example, after an intense meditation session you may find the idea of watching TV too mentally distracting.
But don’t rush into lifestyle changes or try to copy someone else.
Honor your own pace; letting go of attachments is no easy feat.
Finally, don’t try to convert your friends and family.
The urge to romanticize meditation is usually an attempt to reassure ourselves when we lack faith.
But it only creates more obstacles.
If you view spirituality as something to acquire, it becomes yet another attachment that you’ll have to release sooner or later.
Power, attachment, and other ego traps may lead you astray – but if full liberation is what you want, keep going.
As you bring a meditation practice into your awareness, your consciousness will start to shift.
You’ll experience moments of rapture and ecstasy – something southern Buddhists call jhanas.
You might even see visions, or experience tingling or shaking.
These moments can be fascinating – and seductive.
On his own spiritual path, Ram Dass was drawn to memories of psychedelic highs, and tried to recreate them through yogic practices – without luck.
But when he stopped comparing them, he realized that his present meditative moments were just as intense and rich as his past psychedelic ones.
It happened again when he was studying yogic breathing techniques and found a moment of extreme bliss – which he tried to recreate again and again.
Finally, he recognized that clinging to moments, no matter how extraordinary, was getting in the way of his progress.
Here’s the key message: Power, attachment, and other ego traps may lead you astray – but if full liberation is what you want, keep going.
Remember the meditation practice you did earlier?
Treat these moments in the same way – just let them pass as though they’re people walking by you on a busy street.
Simply notice them, acknowledge them, and then let them go.
Once you stop blindly following your thought patterns, you experience awakening.
You discover that you have the power to create your world.
Of course you might be tempted to use this newfound control to manipulate your environment – by attracting lovers, for example.
This is an enticing trap, but it involves the ego, and will ultimately just slow your progress.
Spiritual pride is another trap, because your self-righteousness gets in the way of compassion.
And if your awakening also wakes up your ego, the effects will be even more harmful to you than to your relationships.
But navigate these traps and you’ll arrive at a point at which you are open, bright, and detached.
Daily life takes on a new ease.
You relate better to other people.
You approach problems with lightness and a sense of humor.
This may look like success, but it’s really the moment before your ultimate ascent to full liberation.
It’s comfortable, like a pleasant meadow – and it can trap you into complacency.
Overcome this by maintaining perspective.
When you acknowledge where you are on your journey without guilt or judgment, you see that there are still higher slopes to climb.
As you flow beyond the boundaries of the ego, remember that before growth comes change.
Ram Dass once had a patient who worried she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
She’d ride her bike for hours and finish with more energy than when she began.
Sometimes she had trouble distinguishing between dreams and reality.
She was a therapist, and at times she felt so overwhelmed with love for her clients that she wanted to worship them.
Normally these symptoms would be treated as pathology.
But Ram Dass wasn’t a traditional psychologist.
He recognized the woman’s experience as the rising of the kundalini, the divine energy located at the base of the spine.
When the patient learned that this was simply part of her spiritual journey, her anxiety disappeared.
She was then able to work with the new energies and let the changes happen.
The key message is this: As you flow beyond the boundaries of the ego, remember that before growth comes change.
The way you see your environment comes via your ego – as a way of reinforcing your habits.
So when your ego’s walls begin to crumble, you too might experience confusion about the nature of reality.
You may even fear you’re going mad.
The best way to deal with these concerns is to notice them, and then let them be.
If your experience becomes too disturbing, try meditating less or take a break.
You might find that you have unpredictable surges of energy, or frequent dips.
According to the author, physical tension may also come out as headaches or lower back pain.
When you’re used to being on the move, sitting calmly to meditate can be a surprise for your body.
Usually, this tension will vanish on its own if you don’t obsess over it.
Of course, if you are truly ill, seek treatment, but matter-of-factly.
Another way in which the ego resists change is by instilling doubt.
Perhaps you want to sleep in one morning, not get up to meditate – so you become skeptical of your practice, yourself, your teacher, and God.
You must deal with these doubts.
Maybe your teacher doesn’t deserve your following.
Only you know whether your concerns are justified or your ego is just acting out.
Finally, once awakened, your favorite activities may not resonate as much – leaving you with a feeling of emptiness.
Moments that used to stick out lose their romance: because now every moment is rich and beautiful.
The lows aren’t as low – which means the highs aren’t as high.
It takes great strength to get past this stage, but this is a plateau you must hit before you gain the fullness of divinity.
We begin the path to liberation with hope; we continue with faith, self-reliance, and endurance.
Imagine a group of people hiking up a mountain on a lush summer day.
The walk is easy and pleasant.
After a few hours, they arrive at a rest station with comfortable chairs, a restaurant, and a beautiful view.
Many are satisfied with their climb, and return home refreshed.
Those who stay discover a new path to explore.
As they climb higher, it gets cooler and the trees thin out.
By the time they reach the second rest station, there’s a warm feeling of camaraderie.
The view is awe-inspiring.
Their villages below look tiny, and the experience gives them a new perspective on the limits of their lives.
After resting, most head back down.
The final few climbers find a hidden path, full of narrow ledges and caves; they wonder if they will manage the treacherous terrain.
It’s not just the physical obstacles – now it’s a spiritual battle.
Can they master the mountain?
The key message here is: We begin the path to liberation with hope; we continue with faith, self-reliance, and endurance.
Just like the hikers, we must confront our remaining attachments on the final stage of the journey.
One way to do this is by seeking out your most powerful temptations.
This is a dangerous business, and you must proceed with a deep resolve to resist them.
For example, if you are easily blinded by anger, you could put yourself in a situation that would normally trigger your temper.
Try to stay rooted in awareness and let those feelings pass.
There will be plenty of moments of weakness on your journey.
But when you trust yourself and honor where you are, you build self-reliance.
Even when you feel vulnerable, opening yourself to the power of meditation shifts your perspective on reality.
Read the stories of people who have taken the same path as you to discover the possibilities for your own meditative life.
Study and understanding will strengthen your faith, and faith will sustain your journey.
Only one or two of the hikers forge on to the summit, using every tool and technique at their disposal.
They aren’t the same people they were when they started – they’re free of doubt, fear, confusion, and self-consciousness.
But they still have one last stretch to complete.
Now, the travelers must return home, transformed by their journey – and ready to light the path for those who will follow.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks: If what you want is liberation from your thought prison, you’ll get it with meditation practice.
But the bright, unknown universe outside may frighten you, causing you to long for the comfort of your ego room just as its familiar walls are collapsing.
Learning how to let go of attachments through concentration, mindfulness, contemplation, and devotion will help you overcome your fear of change – and build the inner strength you need to continue the journey of spiritual awakening.
Actionable advice: Don’t get too attached to any one method of meditation.
In his spiritual study and training, Ram Dass found that every meditation technique he ever tried was beneficial in some way.
He believed that if the ultimate goal is liberation, it doesn’t serve to get stuck with just one value system.
Many roads lead to your inner self.
Just be sure to avoid bouncing from method to method – otherwise you get in the way of your enlightenment.
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