Meditating first thing in the morning is like putting money in the bank.
When we have money in the bank, we can withdraw it to spend whenever the need arises.
It is said: “Morning shows the day.” When we wake up we are relatively unconscious. What we do first thing after waking can hugely influence our state of consciousness for the remainder of the day.
When we meditate, we enter into and bring to the fore our inner peace, poise, light, love, joy and goodwill for the world. These qualities are our inner wealth, which we accumulate in our heart’s inner bank.
Then when we go out into the world, our account is in surplus; we are ready for whatever challenges might come. Let’s say our morning meditation has resulted in us earning $50 inner dollars worth of peace and bliss. Driving to work, someone cuts in front of us and nearly causes an accident: instead of stressing out and cursing the other driver, we draw on our inner poise to take the necessary evasive action and continue calmly on our way. If we had not meditated and accrued a reserve of peace and poise, we might have reacted aggressively and then carried that aggression with us the whole day. Worse still, we might not have had the composure to avoid an accident. This incident might result in a transfer of $10 inner dollars from our account. We’re ruffled but still under control.
When we get to work, our boss blames us for someone else’s mistake, rudely insulting us. Instead of shouting back, we draw another $10 from our inner account, smile and continue calmly.
By keeping our inner account in credit, morning meditation finances our smooth passage through all life’s challenges and obstacles.
The original source of musk fragrance is the male musk deer, which produces the famous scent from a gland in its body.
The story goes, that when the deer first becomes aware of this fragrance, it becomes enchanted, and starts to follow it, seeking its source. The deer walks around in search of this alluring wonder. No matter which way it turns, the fragrance remains always slightly out of reach. It cannot locate the source. Obsessed, the deer starts to run and run, madly pursuing the elusive unattainable.
Finally, exhausted, the deer collapses … and dies.
We are that deer.
The true source of all that appeals, all that beckons us, all that enchants and entertains, all that promises fulfilment and a better, richer, happier life – all is within. Yet we spend all of our time, energy and effort in desperately pursuing its reflections all around us – here, there and everywhere else except precisely the place where fulfilment is to be found: within.
Like the deer, we too sense the presence of something extraordinary, something pure, fine and high. This something seems so close, and yet so maddeningly remote. We too become obsessed with attaining this something and start to run and run in every direction, searching in this place, in that activity, in this book, in that relationship, in this substance, in that pretence, in this club, in that discipline, in this hobby, in that fashion, in this passion, in that mission, in this vocation, in that conviction.
Like the deer, we spend and ultimately give up our life in pursuit of the seemingly unattainable.
The deer’s story is sad, for it follows only its instinct. Our story is tragic, for we know the musk – our soul – is within and our own, yet we meditate not.
There is an infinite universe around us … and an infinite within.
To embrace the infinite, it is customary to identify with something vast, like the ocean or the sky.
You can instead choose something very small. The finite realm we inhabit, which dominates our present awareness, is a fine, flimsy gauze covering the infinite reality within and all around. Just as height and depth in meditation are ultimately the same; so the same truth is embodied within the vast, as in the tiny. Vast and tiny are conceptions of our mind; beyond the mind’s domain, vast and tiny alike dissolve in the One.
An exercise:
Imagine you are sitting alone on a beach, on a glorious sunny day. Focus on your breathing. Following a slow and controlled counting, bring your thoughts and feelings to a still point of serenity.
Now imagine that you have become a single grain of sand on your beach. You are one of billions, perhaps trillions of similar grains, each unique, each complete and perfect in its own being. Yet even this grain is composed of countless atoms. Look further within, to find there is no end to looking further within. Enter into and become just one atom. As an atom, you are composed mostly of empty space, with your nucleus of protons and neutrons, and countless electrons whirring around.
Putting aside the nucleus and whirring electrons, plunge into, embrace and become the emptiness that is the vaster part of your atom. You are now silent pure empty stillness unfathomable, unknowable.
Grains of sand come and go; atoms too – yet the silent impenetrable peace and power you embody is beyond all movement, action and concept, beyond time, beyond space.
You are indomitable, imperturbable, inscrutable, incalculable, irreducible, ineluctable.
To meditate, we must focus the mind. Our tool is concentration. The better our concentration, the easier it is to enter into meditation. As a chef cannot work with a blunt knife, so one cannot meditate with a scattered and wandering concentration.
Just as the force of the sun’s rays can be intensified and multiplied by using a magnifying glass, to the point where a fire can be started, so the mind’s power of concentration can be sharpened and intensified by practising bringing all of the mind’s awareness to a single point.
To develop our power of concentration, there are many exercises where one focuses exclusively on something tiny and imagines oneself entering into, and ultimately becoming that object.
Two of these exercises involve our thumbnail, and a black dot. In both cases, focus exclusively on the object – your thumbnail, or a small black dot drawn on a blank wall in front of you. Feel that the object is breathing and that you are breathing in time with it.
Narrow your gaze so that nothing else exists in your field of vision – only your thumbnail or the black dot on the wall. Imagine that the object is drawing you into it, as though it were sucking you in through a tube or a tunnel – all your thoughts, feelings and awareness is entering into the object. Nothing else exists, either within you or around you.
Imagine that you have become the object. There are no thoughts, no feelings, no distractions. Next imagine that from within the object, you are focusing your attention back onto your original self. Observe yourself, standing or sitting in perfect stillness and calm.
These exercises are difficult to master, and require persistent practise. Don’t give up! Your rewards are in the mail.
Dive deep into your heart. We feel our spiritual heart in the region of our physical heart, in the centre of our chest, but deeper within. Imagine you are not your body, mind or emotions but only your heart of peace, love, light, joy and gratitude blossoming and spreading with the sweetest fragrance. You are all heart from top to bottom, within and without.
Now imagine your heart-consciousness is expanding, effortlessly and spontaneously. See your physical form inside your heart like an innocent doll. Still you continue to expand, a formless balloon floating ever higher and wider to encompass the entire room, your whole city and eventually our planet earth. The form of the world is subtle, though vibrant, alive. Everything within your heart is suffused with your heart’s love, light and bliss.
Still your heart continues to expand, to encompass our whole Solar System, galaxy and even the universe itself. The physical universe is but a tiny speck in the core of your exponentially expanding heart.
Our spiritual heart is vaster, infinitely vaster than the universe.
It knows no boundary, no limitation, hesitation or definition, no time, no space.
You are complete, perfect, pure, utterly free…
After some time you feel a beckoning from within. There is the tiny speck of universe whirling up within you, glowing with your light and delight. There inside the universe you find our galaxy, our earth. The entire world and all its beings are shining with the light, love and radiant smile of your heart, for all this is within your heart.
Here again is this room and within it, one especially beautiful, lovable form. This is yourself. Eagerly you enter once more into your pure mind, calm emotions and perfect body, ready for action.
When you go into a dark room, if you want light, you turn on the light switch.
This is exactly how meditation works to dispel our inner darkness – our problems, worries, doubts, fears and anxieties.
If you want light in a dark room, you don’t blunder about in the darkness, exploring all the dark corners in the expectation that somehow the room will miraculously become illumined.
You turn on the light switch – and once the light is on, you don’t stare around in disbelief, speculating about whatever happened to the darkness – you simply make the most of the light. Darkness gone.
Just as light dispels darkness, so meditation dispels our problems.
Thinking, analysing and worrying about our problems will never, ever remove them. It is only a way of reorganising and shifting the darkness around inside the room. At the end of it all, the room is still dark.
The more we focus on something, the more we feed it with our own mental power. Inadvertently, we strengthen the very force we are ostensibly trying to be rid of. By strengthening it, its power over us only increases.
Problems arise from our mind’s limitations and misconceptions. The only way to remove these limitations and misconceptions is to expand our consciousness beyond the mind itself, by meditating in our spiritual heart.
Problems in our mind are like fog in a secluded cold valley before dawn: natural and inevitable. In meditation, the sun of our heart rises, the fog evaporates: again, natural and inevitable.
So never try to analyse problems and certainly do not worry about them.
Just turn on the light – meditate … and enjoy the peace, love, beauty and oneness of your heart-sun without another thought of your problems or where or how they have disappeared.
Focus on your breathing, bringing it under your conscious control, calming, slowing and making your breath one steady flow – in and out, in and out, through your nostrils. Breathe with your diaphragm, your upper body remaining perfectly still.
Imagine you are seated in meditation on the highest mountaintop, high, high in the Himalayas. Although the mountain is snow-clad, there is no wind and you do not feel cold. You feel rather an inner warmth, compeer to the warm, smiling sun.
The entire world is below you: valleys, ranges, rivers, forests, cities, sprawling plains, lakes, vast oceans, floating clouds. You are above everything: all human activity, noise, commotion, disturbance, responsibilities, stress, worries, fears and anxieties: all are a distant haze. There is not even the faintest murmur from the world below: all is silent, all is still. There are no animals or even birds anywhere to be seen or heard. The only sound is the soft beating of your heart, the rhythm of life. Above you hangs the infinite blue of sky, all radiant with sun’s light, power, warmth and contentment.
Time has evaporated; space a vapid concept. From within, an all-embracing boundless peace, your heart a fountain of ecstasy in waves permeating the sky. You are all; beyond all.
You are seated between the earth below and the heavens above; between the material and the spiritual; between sound and silence; the finite and the infinite; the mortal and the immortal; between the mind’s attraction to activity and the heart’s yearning for the unhorizoned ineffable.
You belong at once to both realms. You span both, you embody both, you rightly claim both.
Having embraced the sky and knowing yourself as infinite, happily you wend your way back down the mountain, to rejoin your life’s play.
We tend to consider imagination as weaker, less significant than reality. Yet without imagination, there can be no reality.
Everything starts as imagination. This chair did not magically manifest out of thin air: it was first imagined, then created. Imagination is the precursor of reality, one of the most potent, significant forces of the universe.
The role of imagination in meditation is essential. If we could not imagine a higher consciousness, a better world and a more fulfilling life, there would be no conviction in our efforts and no point in pursuing meditation. Imagination is our dangling carrot, surcharging us with inspiration and aspiration. Imagination is the friend and protector of hope, faith and promise.
In Creative Visualisation, imagination itself becomes meditation. An image, scene or activity is imagined and held in the mind as the focal point for our meditation. You might imagine that you are on a beach or mountaintop, sailing on the ocean or soaring in a blue sky. The purpose of creative visualisation is to summon forth from our hearts the feelings and qualities that accompany such a scene or activity – the peace of a sunset, the vastness of the sky. It thus fulfils the two essential functions of a meditation exercise: to provide at once an anchor for the mind and a doorway into our spiritual heart.
Creative visualisation conquers time and space. In the morning we can be on a beach in Lombok – without the flies – at lunchtime atop the Himalayas – with neither cold nor oxygen debt – after lunch in Africa – with no long haul flight – and that evening at the bottom of the sea – without getting wet.
Never underestimate imagination! The more we exercise our imagination, the more we open to the infinite possibilities – and inevitabilities – of spiritual growth.
The present mind and heart are two entire ways of being, each seeing and feeling the world and ourselves differently.
The mind craves control; the heart seeks love. We can only control what is fixed and certain; hence the mind’s mission to define, delimit and detain. The mind wants to reduce the universe so it can be possessed, known and dominated.
We can only really love what is free; for love which binds, only chokes and extinguishes itself. The heart yearns always to expand the universe so it has more to love, can widen the scope of its love and deepen and discover more of itself in love and as love.
The mind needs to know, and the heart to flow. The mind seeks the comfort of certain stability; the heart thrives on the adventure of flexible spontaneity.
The mind likes itemised lists; the heart loves a blank page.
The mind constructs borders; the heart builds bridges.
The mind wants to fix everything in place; the heart fixes everything apace.
The mind likes to look down on the world; the heart loves to gaze up at the heavens. The mind seeks mastery; the heart adores mystery. The mind would be lord of the temporal; the heart, disciple of the eternal.
The mind wants to plan and command the looming future; the heart invites, embraces and obeys the blooming future, now.
The mind invents and wields the might of sound; the heart discovers and becomes the power of silence. Sound precludes silence; silence includes sound. Sound masks silence; silence unmasks sound. Sound is a constant questioning; silence the eternal answer.
Yet – when the mind awakens, transcends itself and embraces the heart unreservedly, the still mind and thrilled heart fulfil each other gloriously.
The mind is not bad. It is potentially extremely good. It has just headed in a wrong direction.
The mind is like an adorable little boy of the family who thinks it great fun to splash paint over everyone’s food – at every meal. At some point, his ways need to change, before we all starve.
The mind has assumed a role beyond its station, a job for which it is not qualified – ruler of the universe.
Wherever there is illness, there is also a cure. The cure for all the mind’s ills – and all the ills it causes – lies in the peace, love and light of the heart. This cure can only work when the mind gives up its attachment to greed, power and control – and surrenders to the heart. At present the mind feels that only it is qualified to rule our lives and our world; it does not recognise that the heart might have the necessary capacity to guide our lives peacefully, happily, successfully and gloriously.
A sick child appears pale, weak, glum and forlorn: when he is cured, all his enthusiasm, light and joy return. When it opens to the light, love, wisdom and power of the heart, the mind’s natural capacities blossom and the mind becomes what it is meant to be; a clear, brilliant, inspired server of our own and the greater good.
The transition from a mind-driven to a heart-centred consciousness is our most urgent need.
Allowing the infant-mind to drive our life-car has been an interesting ride, but could be leading us over a cliff. It’s high time we let the licensed driver take the wheel.
The mind and the heart perceive and comprehend reality differently.
The mind’s modus operandi proceeds on the understanding that it is observing something separate from itself. The mind constructs models of reality based on evidence it receives from the senses and other sources. These models are constantly changing as new evidence comes to light, just as the mind itself is subject to constant change.
The heart’s way of knowing is through identification. The heart’s capacity of love enables it to enter into and become one with reality. There is no process or procedure involved – just instant intuitive awareness.
The mind approaches reality from the outside; the heart from within. The mind’s processes of observation and analysis can be slow and laborious and are always suspect to doubt, rejection and revision; the heart’s knowing is immediate and absolute.
In Western civilisation we have been using the mind as our primary instrument to know and understand ourselves and our universe. This would be all very well if we were finite beings. But we are not – so this mode needs to change.
To use the mind to understand ourselves and the universe is akin to measuring the sky with a 30 centimetre ruler, an exercise in frustration and futility. It is simply the wrong instrument.
A 30 centimetre ruler is excellent for measuring anything up to and including 30 centimetres, but beyond that, it is useless. The mind is a marvellous instrument for measuring, understanding and relating to the finite world, but when it comes to the infinite universe and to life itself, it is helplessly and hopelessly inadequate.
Only the infinite can know the infinite.
To know our infinite self, we must use an infinite instrument – our spiritual heart.
Why does the smallest dog always bark the loudest? He knows he is small, so feels he has to project an impression of greatness and power to impress the world and hide his weakness. It is all front, all a bluff.
Why does the mind always have to be right? Deep down, the mind is insecure, because it knows it is finite. Insecurity is weakness, and from weakness comes a desire to project an impression of strength. A genuinely strong and secure nation will never declare war on another, because it has nothing to prove. Wars, like arguments, are megaphones of insecurity.
Because the mind is finite and insecure, it feels the need to inflate itself, to establish its identity in superiority. It does this by differentiating itself from others and the world around it. Separativity seems essential to the mind, for only by asserting difference can it establish its own superiority.
The mind is aware there is an infinite vastness beyond itself, and is afraid if it would enter that vastness it will only be extinguished. So its first impulse is to deny the vastness exists; then to hide from the vastness; then to attack and discredit the vastness, and run away.
Our mind tries all these tricks in respect of our meditation, gateway to the infinite, afraid that meditation will lead us to a higher power than itself and it will lose its empire.
All the mind’s tricks and resistance are ultimately in vain. When the mind surrenders to the heart’s light, it comes to realise that far from being extinguished, the finite – itself – has been housed in the infinite all along. Only in the infinite – in meditation – can the finite mind be fulfilled and make sense of itself.
Yesterday I was poring over some accounts; George was studying calculus – we were both much in our minds. We met and started a conversation. It happens that George and I like different colours, different kinds of music, different foods, movies and sporting teams. After 5 minutes, we made a long list – of all our differences.
Today, I’m singing my favourite songs, and George has been meditating – we’re both centred in our hearts. We meet on the street and chat again. After 5 minutes we make a new long list … of all that we have in common, our shared loves, passions and interests.
Yesterday our minds separated us. Today our hearts have united us.
So the mind and heart operate: the mind builds walls between us; the heart sees and feels only our oneness. The mind suspects; the heart loves. The mind grasps; the heart offers. The mind frowns; the heart smiles. The mind judges and criticises; the heart accepts and forgives. The mind dominates; the heart liberates. The mind hesitates; the heart accelerates. The mind sees problems; the heart seeks solutions. The mind sees spots on the moon; the heart sings to the moon’s beauty. The mind abhors the thorns; the heart adores the rose. The mind is old, tired and pessimistic; the heart is ever young, fresh and optimistic. The mind is master of the world; the heart, servant to the world. The mind espouses superiority in separativity; the heart proclaims unity in diversity. The shouting arrogant mind knows nothing; the whispering humble heart knows everything. The mind asserts “Me!”; the heart proclaims “Us”. The mind reduces me to my little lonely ego; the heart expands us to the wide universe, and beyond…
