Monday, August 1, 2011

What is Meditation? (A Naturalist's Perspective)

“Meditation is really very simple; there is not much need to elaborate techniques to teach us how to go about it. ... Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life.”
-        Thomas Merton
Contemplative Prayer (1969)
“Language shapes consciousness, and the use of language to shape consciousness is an important branch of magic.”
-        Starhawk
Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics (1988)
"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.  When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual." (29)
-        Carl Sagan The Demon-Haunted World (1996)

        Perhaps because I’ve written a lot in my blogs about meditation, I’ve been asked the question recently, “What is meditation?”  I’ve practiced meditation – under one guise or another – for forty years, and – as a general runing – I would say that meditation is a procedure for centering oneself in oneself, and also as a process through which to come to peace in one’s body and in one’s life in the Earth & Cosmos.  It is a practice, often daily, of stepping out of the flux and flow of daily our ordinary routines for a brief time for resourcement through a return to one’s still-point.  Its benefits include a reduction of stress, a refreshing of our natural energies and an opening of our vision.  It prepares a person to return to the daily ordinary in a way that allows for increased insight, humility and a healthy connection with others.
        I open this blog with quotes from differing spiritual perspectives to honor the traditions through which I have come to understand and practice meditation over the years.  I first learned to meditate in the context of wicchan mysticism in the 1970’s, and later practiced it within a Goddess-centered spirituality in the mid-1980’s.  Along this path, Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance (1989) deepened my spiritual praxis and led me to a more mature Pagan framework for meditation than I’d been using up to that point.  I employed her exercises for meditation on the Circle and the four cardinal directions for several years, eventually augmenting it with Celtic mythological references. Through Merton’s Contemplative Prayer (1969) and other texts – including those by Richard Foster, Fr Thomas Keating, John O’Donohue and Noel Dermot O’Donoghue – I learned to translate the practice of meditation into a Christian worldview, first in the late 1970’s and then in the late 1980’s.  Through the mid- to late 1990’s I was immersed in a hybrid Christian/Pagan Celtic meditative practice that was inspired by the works of Nigel Pennick, Tom Cowan and Caitlin and John Matthews and many others.
        What I found, though all of these transformations, was that the basic ‘procedure’ for meditation stayed the same, while the artifices of belief and the myths in which it was encoded and through which its effects were understood changed.
       Finally, beginning around 2001, I began translating my praxis into more naturalistic terms as I came to realize – through devout study of the revelations of science – that meditation is, at root, a process grounded in our neurology and cognition.  I have come to realize that there is nothing supernatural about the process itself.  It is something that all human beings are capable of learning and is an intensification of experiences common to all people, regardless of culture, gender or class.  Have you ever stopped in the course of your day, perhaps taken a deep breath and suddenly felt a sigh of relief?  A student of mine once characterized such moments as the “Ah_ life is good” moments.  Have you ever found yourself caught up in a moment of beauty?  Perhaps seeing a sunset or in the presence of an wondrous natural vista?  _And then found yourself more at peace or feeling ‘connected’ to life in a healthier way?  Have you ever just stopped in the midst something you were doing, sat down and suddenly felt a brief respite that seemed to refresh you?  Experiences such as these are the rudimentary ‘meditations’ in which we all occasionally participate.  The practice of meditation builds upon this kind of experience, expands upon it, deepens and sustains it – in order to increase the benefits and the effects.
       This ‘practice of meditation’ is common to all humanity and is found expressed in many cultures under various guises and descriptions.  It is not dependent upon one’s being religious.  It does not require a belief in ‘God.’  It ‘works’ regardless of one’s religious beliefs or lack thereof, because it is, at root, a learned behavior that grows out of the particular kind of consciousness we have as the particular evolved animals that we are.  It has taken me a long time to realize this.

       I had an experience in the late 1980’s that has become a touchstone for my naturalistic understanding of meditation.   At that time, I was seeking to work out an ecumenical approach to faith and the divine, and I had the good fortune to meditate in a group that consisted, first, of two Buddhists, three Christians and myself.  We had good experiences, and in our meditation sessions sometimes a kind of ‘group state’ of peace and well-being embraced all of us in the circle.  We had this ‘group-experience’ three or four times, at which point I invited two wicchan friends of mine into the circle to meditate with us.  Everyone used their own symbols and chanted words and did imaging exercises appropriate to their own belief system.  There was often cacophony at the beginning, but then a kind of harmony would emerge, leading ultimately to a sense of peace in our collective silence and a deep sense of love and togetherness.  For Buddhists, Christians and Witches?  Yes.  It seemed to ‘prove’ the ecumenical belief that all religions are variations on the One Theme and that what one calls God and another Nirvana and another The Goddess are all human – if also revealed – ways of expressing the Truth of the Divine-Beyond-Names.
       Once or twice an atheist friend of mine, who was learning to meditate, sat in on the sessions, and the second or third time he was with us, to our amazement, he came to a profound peace and silence in his own self, and felt – so he said, “at one” with the rest of us and with “the universe.”  It was a sublime moment for him – being in a circle full of religious people who were being as open as they could be to his non-belief.  It was a sublime experience for us!  The problem arose when someone suggested that even atheists must ultimately be connected to the Divine-Beyond-Names and that my atheist friend was, somehow, experiencing the Divine.  He left and never returned to our circle, and I fully understand why!  We were co-opting him, even if with the best of intentions and out of a sense of wonder that he might have been experiencing the same thing as we were; namely “the Divine,” by whatever name we each called it. 
       We just didn’t understand how this was possible!
       For years this experience nagged at me.  On the one hand, I wanted to affirm the ecumenical ideal that all religions can lead their adherents to the Truth and to the Divine-Beyond-Names (God, Allah, Yahweh, the Goddess, Buddha, etc.).  But my atheist friend’s experience was a fly in the honey.  Over the next few years I shed my religious aspirations and beliefs.  Along that path, I believed that ‘God’ led me to turn to science as a way of re-grounding myself and my spirituality, and then what I called ‘God’ ‘vanished,’ _whatever that might mean.  I am neither an atheist nor a theist at this point; I prefer to study Nature and seek Wisdom, and I don’t spend much time talking about ‘the Divine,’ by whatever name or under whatever religious guise.  My journey from religion into science has inspired in me a desire to re-frame the wisdom of religious traditions in naturalistic terms, as I learned a great deal about being and becoming human from my religious experience; whether I was Wicchan, Celtic or Christian in my orientations.
       I still meditate; almost every day.  And I have come to see the solution to the conundrum of my atheist friend’s experience all too clearly.  It’s not that by meditating we were all brought into communion with the Big Something; the Divine-Beyond-Names, but that by meditating in a genuine way we each ended up in a similar bodily state; neurological and cognitive—one of peace, in which we were unstressed, revivified physically and mentally, and feeling very good together as a result.  It has been true – in my experience, at least – that meditating in a group can generate a positive, collective experience.  Everyone is feeling relaxed, unstressed, and you can sense that the people around you are full of a positive energy.  I now understand that this is what was happening in that circle 30 years or so ago.  I don’t mean to say that those of us who were religious in that circle weren’t experiencing ‘the Divine.’  I’m saying that the experience of peace and silence that was the result of meditating was at root a physical state, and that we were wrong to confuse that with an experience of ‘the Divine’ _whatever that might mean.

       Today I meditate using the same praxis that I learned when I was religious.  Whether I was a witch, a Christian engaged with monastic or Celtic spiritualities (or all at the same time) there is a procedure for centering oneself in oneself.  A Naturalistic Praxis of Meditation begins with three preparations and then unfolds according to three basic steps.  I’ll present these here in brief for anyone who is interested.  The three preparations are:

           (1) Finding a place to meditate
           (2) Establishing a time to meditate, and
           (3) Choosing a ‘posture’ for meditation. 

In the beginning days and months of meditation you should use a single place that you have ‘set aside’ for the practice of daily meditation.  You should also start off by meditating at the same time every day, if at all possible, but don’t force it.  I have found that gently re-organizing one’s daily rounds is the best way for beginners to get to a place of regular daily meditation.  To meditate is to re-train our bodies, and regularity-reinforcing-repetition is one of the best methods.  Once you find a place and pick a time, you need to decide how best to posture yourself.  Most people sit on a chair or on the floor.  I’ve known one person who could meditate standing up, but I think it was an acquired taste; something he didn’t do regularly or in the beginning when he was learning to meditate.  I’ve also known two or three people who lay down to meditate; but the great danger there is falling asleep.  In my experience, sitting is the moist common posture, and if you sit on a chair, choose one that will allow you to sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor and your spine relaxed.  Whether you sit on a chair or on the floor, position yourself so that your torso is ‘balanced’ over your hips, so you are not struggling to sit still or to maintain your posture.  You don’t have to get this right at the very beginning.  Just do your best; over time, the ‘right’ posture will emerge as you let go of stress and your body comes to peace.

The three basic steps to meditation are
          (1) Breathing
          (2) Centering (sometimes called Detachment), and
          (3) Focusing (sometimes called Attachment). 
       I usually ask novices to begin by taking two or three deep, relaxed breaths.  Breath in slowly until your lungs are full.  Don’t strain your lungs.  Stop when they feel ‘full.’  Over time, with practice, you may be able to breathe more deeply.  Hold the breath for a couple seconds, and then begin to exhale just as slowly until your lungs are emptied.  After this initial exercise, begin breathing in and out, perhaps counting quietly as you do.  By inhaling and exhaling neither too shallowly nor too deeply, we create an ‘environment’ in our body conducive to the release of stress.  If you breathe too deeply or too fast, you will hyperventilate.  If you breathe too slowly or too shallow, the body will rebel against too low a level of oxygen, and you will start to breathe more normally.  The aim of meditative breathing is to slightly raise your oxygen levels in the first minute or two of meditation, as this will help your muscles unclench and relax.  Then, you will settle into a rhythm of breathing that quiets you and brings you to silence.  Only by practice will you learn how to do this.
       Associated with this breathing is what can be called “Centering.”  We are often a bundle of disparate intentions, going this way and that; we need to do ‘this,’ we need to get ‘that’ done; we need to go ‘there,’ we are thinking about ‘this’ and ‘that’ and cannot seem to stop!  _And as a result, we are all over the place!  Centering is the use of an image or a word or phrase to collect the mind and let go – at least for a few minutes to up to a half hour daily (the ‘normal’ length of a meditation session; though it can be longer or shorter) – of all the things that are making demands on our time and our attention.  When I talk in blogs about “The Dolmen on the Heath” or “The Hut of Dwelling,” these are images of ‘places’ that I ‘go to’ imaginatively wherein I can experience myself in myself; where I can come to stillness in the solitude of myself—and not be my usual outwardly directed spiral of intentions and objectives!   Centering is a process of letting-go; of coming to rest and of being still and experiencing my-self as I am in my-self.  It is usually temporary, at least for the beginner, but it is a valuable state to achieve.  In time, you will learn to be ‘centered’ as you go about your daily rounds, and not be as distracted.
       Focusing is the third step in meditation, and usually involves “meditating on” something.  When I spoke in the last blog about meditating on the Periodic Table of the Elements, I was describing a focusing exercise.  Focusing involves using something with a bit of content that you find edifying or that you feel contributes to your knowledge and understanding of Earth & Cosmos.  What you focus on should be enriching; it should remind you of the goodness of Nature or perhaps be a rann of wisdom; a saying or phrase that you feel promotes your becoming the best version of yourself that you can be, alone and in community with others.  The things we focus on in meditation will become deeply encoded in our minds and in our being, as the Christian Richard Foster once said in Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (1978):
“The mind will always take on an order conforming to that upon which it concentrates.”
 And as wicchan practitioner Starhawk said in Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics (1988):
“Language shapes consciousness, and the use of language to shape consciousness is an important branch of magic.”
 So, we need to choose the things we focus on with care!  Language shapes the way we experience and understand the world.
       When teaching meditation, I’ve found it best to start with posture and breathing exercises for the first session or so.  Once the novice has begun to get a sense of their breathing, I usually ask them to add a word to the breathing; something that intimates peace, health, or balance—whichever strikes them as most important to them in the moment.  The use of such a word will simultaneously allow for the beginning of detachment and is also a focusing tool.  In time, I usually suggest the addition of a phrase or image; depending upon the cognitive orientation of the novice.  [Some people respond more to images than to words; others rely more heavily on words.]  Over time, as you meditate, it is good to try and use both, and see what benefit comes from it.  Once the novice is experiencing a sense of centering; the letting go of the daily round—the instruction usually takes off on one of several paths, depending on the needs of the novice.  To describe all of the variations would take a book.
        Remember that every person who meditates is unique.  While we have a common human biology and psychology, there is a wide range of manifestations of our ‘human nature.’  Thus, there is no one meditative practice for everyone.  Yet the three ‘steps’ discussed here provide the common basic naturalistic framework.
       There is a lot to be learned once these three steps are mastered, yet – as Merton so correctly intimated – eventually is just enough to meditate.  Somewhere down the road you may come to see how effortlessly simple – and yet amazingly difficult, some days – it is to meditate.  Meditation proffers positive change and growth and – hopefully – intimations of wisdom.  It opens the way to self-transformation and ultimately self-transcendence.  To be on the journey often requires guidance, so devout reading – about topics salient to your own experience and to the process of meditation – are useful and often necessary.  If you can learn to meditate with others and if you can find a person experienced in the processes of meditation to guide you along the way, you may flourish mush sooner and go further than you might alone, though solitary meditation is not impossible.

       Well, I did not intend to quite a manual when I started this blog, and there is no way to cover everything one can experience and all of the variations of meditative praxis in a blog.  My point was to affirm the idea that the meditative praxis is a naturalistic one.   But if you find this blog interesting and want to know more or have questions about what I’ve written, feel free to contact me by email.

Blessed be! 


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