“Meditation is intended to wake people up, not put them to sleep. Exercises conducted in the quiet along the “journey” are tools, yes, but when a homeowner’s house is built, he puts away his tools and then simply enjoys the new place he’s in.”
[Continued from 29 August 2005]
F.: I’ve used the “Don’t Think About A Monkey” experiment with thousands, and not one has claimed the ability to force the image of a monkey from the mind completely. Now, that was an innocuous case. What happens when the mind of a person is trying to process something that the person is really "invested in," something that is having a far greater impact than a monkey’s image? If persons have a real concern or interest or worry or offense that is boiling about in a variable mind, how successful can they be at forcing the mind to ignore that happening? Next, let’s consider what else persons face when trying to force the brain and an illusory “mind” to function according to their desires. As you are reading this information, the conscious-energy is moving at a “beta-rate” of fourteen cycles per second—or even faster for most persons. Fourteen cycles or more per second. That’s 840 cycles or more per minute. That’s 50,400 cyclings or more per hour. By way of comparison, an idling automobile engine rotates at 10 cycles per second. Right now, I want you to force that cycling to slow to a “theta rate” of 4-7 cycles per second. Of course, that’s also impossible for most. If a typical person is in a beta-state and hears music that tries to force the brain to entrain to a theta-cycle range, it is not calming…it is irritating. The racing “mind” hates surrounding calm. Yet only at the theta rate can the sensations of the relative existence be neutralized and allow one to focus on pointers about non-relative possibilities. So a dilemma exists for most who begin dabbling with meditation: how can a person force an over-active “mind” to be still? As with the monkey experiment, the very act of trying to “calm a mind” accelerates the movement even more. “Set a timer,” some advise. Fine, but when the timer sounds and the person continues with the activities of the day, those activities are being done with "a mind" (with contaminated consciousness) ; thus, no lasting peace will happen. The early sages assigned meditation with a specific intention, and reaching the “no-mind” state was not the intent. Meditation is intended to wake people up, not put them to sleep. Every entry in my two Daily Meditation Guides and on this site as well ends with an invitation to enter the silence and then contemplate the point/pointers offered. At no time have I ever suggested that a student or visitor or guest or participant at a session “go into a trance,” “seek a super-conscious state as a regular habit,” or “experience the rapture.” Exercises conducted in the quiet along the “journey” are tools, yes, but when a homeowner’s house is built, he puts away his tools and then simply enjoys the new place he’s in. Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued 31 August 2005]
