Meditation; leaving everything alone.

The third course-evening was about the practice and the experience of meditation. I love meditation, I love to do it, I love to talk about it, and I find it absolutely essential to be able to live a liberated, engaged life. What I like most of all is to practice meditation and then find out together what it means and how to go further or deeper. I am a strong proponent of Andrew Cohen’s meditation instructions, there is so much misunderstanding about meditation, a lot of it came up in this class, and it took quite a bit of creative friction* to get clear about it all. Many people relate to meditation (and spirituality in general) as a way to feel better, and feeling better; the experience of deep well being, bliss and peace is definitely important, but what we spoke a lot about this evening, as it is hard to get, was the strength and confidence that the practice of meditation can give us. We talked about taking the inner position of having no relationship to any thought, feeling or experience. It is quite subtle and deep but as more people were starting to get it, the energy in the room became more grounded, stronger and deeper. It was tangible that we were laying the foundation for a deeply engaged life. Andrew said in one of the clips we watched; ‘this will enable you to be free when you need to be, when the chaos of your conditioned mind is right in your face’.

Having spoken about all this we practiced meditation by leaving everything completely alone. As we went deeper into that during the evening, I felt like we were entering a different dimension, a place where it is impossible to recognize ourselves and where we are free to go beyond any boundaries that we always assumed we had.

*Click here to see a clip in which Deepak Chopra and Andrew Cohen talk about creative friction.