Meditation

I went to Kyobo bookstore on Sunday. It’s kind of a mega-Barnes & Nobles. It has quite a nice selection of English books. I spent a long time there just looking through lots of different books. I recently started reading Siddhartha again and in 2 weeks I’ll be taking part in a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. Vipassana is a kind of Buddhist meditation technique. So meditation and spiritual readings were on my mind.

I really love just hanging out in the spiritual, philosophy, and religion sections and just chillin and reading bits from different books. I realized at Kyobo that that is a kind of meditation for me, a solace. It’s my happy place! I know this now because I realize it comes out of spending so much time sitting by Mom and Michael’s bookshelves growing up, sampling and drifting through their many spiritual books. I was so blessed to have those books around every day when I was growing up in middle school and high school. Just the fact that so many interesting books were there and available and I could relax and forget about all my troubles and sit on the carpet and leaf through them—that was so comforting! All was right with the world while I was doing that, no matter how troubled I was. There was every kind of awesome book there: different kinds of I Ching, extra-biblical Christian documents, Mayan prophecies, astrology, tarot, American Indian traditions, psychology, history, meditation, philosophy, science, and so much more!

I’m not sure if I ever read even half of any of those books, but nevertheless I feel now that they had a huge role in my life! Resting into words of meaning and depth, of power and beauty, feeling happy and comfortable in that place, opened up that side of life for me and taught me to appreciate beauty and wisdom and eloquence. They prepared me for my own spiritual journey. They opened my heart and mind to receive the Word of God. Those books are still there on those same bookshelves. It gives me a unique feeling of joy and peace to know that they are waiting for me there. Until then I can always go to Kyobo bookstore and drift through the sea of words.

I was very pleased to purchase The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, which I guess I forgot to bring. I also bought Aesop’s Fables, treasury of some of the greatest lessons (and some more mundane, but fun, stuff) taught through simple allegory. I got two books by Krishnamurti. One is something he wrote on meditation. Another is a transcription of many talks he gave in the Q & A format.

Krishnamurti wasn’t a big fan of organized religion but I realize I have to get past that kind of stuff because if I want everything I read to be in accord with the teachings of the Faith then Baha’i writings are all I’ll read. That just doesn’t cut it. I need to read more spiritual texts coming from other angles because the writings of the Faith don’t seem to be explicit about everything. Of course a lot is clearly covered but perhaps there’s just a lot that doesn’t need to be. God is allowing us to discover so much on our own, guided by His principles, knowing that He is the goal and the essence of the truth we seek. The whole realm of science is open to us and we can explore it infinitely. We can do this in peace and joy if we have the love of God in our hearts and strive to be obedient as we progress. So it is in all our endeavors in the material realm.

I think this also applies to the immaterial realm as well, the realm of mind. Experienced philosophers and meditators will testify that there is a whole world to explore that is not physical, yet is accessible to us before we pass out of our bodies. I think there are different levels. One is a level of structure and analysis. Pure mathematics and philosophy are valuable pursuits but there is nothing physical about them. They are composed purely of thought and comprehension. They employ symbols and formulas to make the concepts communicable (which is what language is in the first place!) and they strive for ever more perfect synthesis, but it’s all really abstraction, ideas, something going on in the brain and perhaps beyond! I think greater understanding of this part of life may make the harmony of science and religion much clearer because this is where logic and the mind begin to journey out in to the reaches—that is, all beyond the concrete--that not long ago most thought could only be alluded to through mystic symbology.

There’s another level beyond that, however, which is the level of pure awareness. From my understanding, experience on this level is free of thought and all that comes with it, which is just about everything! On this level, the mind is simply aware of what is. That may seem anticlimactic but the thing is: we don’t know what the truly open, clear, balanced, and aware mind is capable of! WHAT IS is surely more than we now comprehend right? So when one arrives at that state of awareness he or she sees what he knows, but not only does he see it from a very different perspective, now his capacity for awareness is freed from previous limitations so he will naturally be opened up to new understandings, new awareness, new….I don’t know what it is because I’ve only had the briefest taste of it. I got that taste through meditation and I know others have experienced this level of mind much more deeply and consistently than I have.

Meditation opened me up to that higher level, to the realization that it exists, and it also filled me with peace and joy once I had worked through all my resistance and agitation. The peace and joy were, I think, the result of my mind working in a way that it is capable of but seldom does. Meditation kinda changed my brain or something, or maybe how I used my brain.

So if joy and peace come from it and it has rules that you follow in practice and it takes you to this higher level, how come it’s not included in Divine Revelation? How come Baha’u’llah didn’t give us a meditation technique and all that? I think it’s because meditation, stripped of all dogma and tradition, is like science, like philosophy, just on another level. Or it’s like exercise and martial arts. It’s a totally rational, explainable thing that one can do to discipline his or her mind. It’s good for some people but maybe not for everyone. It’s not religion, so like science and everything, it must be guided by love of God and obedience to God and pursued by those attracted to it.

We live for a short while and then what we experience makes any kind of pure awareness we had here look like a daydream. What matters most is what we do and how we live. The world is in big trouble and there is no time to lose! I want to be of service. I long to be useful to Baha’u’llah and to His Cause! I’ve struggled with some things up to this present moment that I think meditation can help me with in a big way. I think I’m one of those people that needs to be a meditator, that needs to experience that higher level. There’s something in my mind that’s not content with less, that is constantly striving for that state of mind! I know I must exercise moderation and stay focused on action. I hope meditation can be for me a means of taking control of my life on a whole new level, of unlocking my potential! Firstly as a servant of Baha’u’llah and also as person in relation to others and as a worker. I hope it can be a means of existing in a state of being that will enable me to be wholly content with the long voyage of earthly life and all its ups and downs. I hope it can be a means of awakening.