What is Meditation

Meditation Techniques

Spiritual Inspirators

 

Western  Mystics

   
What position should I choose
Simple beginner Meditation
How to deal with Thoughts
Group Meditation
Healing Hands
Music Meditation

 


Open-Eye Meditations
Meditative Pixellation Protocol
Amygdalian Death Meditation
Breathing Techniques
Mantra Meditation
Who am I
 




For people who do
not believe in or experience what could be understood as 'god':
Replace the word 'god'
with 'consciousness' or
any other word that for you could describe a sense
of the mysterious.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Albert Einstein
.

 






 

Meditation Tecniques


"He who seeks God in some way (read meditation technique or ritual),
grasps the way and loses God, who dwells in the way. But he who seeks God without a way, grasps God and lives with the Son."

Meister Eckhart - Doctor Ecstaticus

"Man has to seek God in error, forgetfulness and foolishness."
Meister Eckhart

 "If you want to succeed,
double your failure rate."

Thomas J. Watson

Thanks to the Hippies
Through the time of the hippies in the '70s, the East began to influence the West. The Beatles started practicing meditation under the guidance of an Indian guru, leading to a gigantic cultural 'experimentarium' with far greater importance than even their music. Valuable cultural information from around the globe is now synthesized into a new life stream of global culture, thanks to exponential advances in travel and information sharing.

I lived in sync with that flight of Icarus, where some got lost in drugs and others in extreme political activism. Amidst this mix, there was also gold. I grew up as a teenager worshipping Jimi Hendrix on my solo guitar, and I had hair long enough to sit on. Today, I am bald. The only thing that survived all these years was meditation and breathing techniques. I am so thankful for that!
 

Prologue

What did India learn us? Anyone who has experienced the traffic in an Indian mega-city will come to know: In the midst of chaos, just relax!
 
An English proverb says: "God takes care of the ignorant." By embracing a sense of foolishness within yourself, the body's self-improving intelligence is activated. In this sense, meditation is fundamentally not a scientific endeavor. This does not mean that meditation is anti-scientific, but rather that it involves completely different parts of the brain, which are often, though not always, inversely proportional in size due to evolutionary trade-offs.

Our mainstream Western societies worship science, and with good reason. Science and reason have brought us to our current living standards, which, despite their imperfections, are better overall than those of any other culture in history. For those who doubt this, I urge you to read world history back to ancient times.

However, the blessing of scientific thinking came with a curse. When scientists began to lead the investigation into meditation and/or psychedelics, they became like priests or gurus in a culture where science and reason have replaced God within the same system of blind worship. Just as leaders of cults or any other organized religions are often the least spiritual people, we now have a collective of rational minds, often with little or no capability and wisdom to live in meditation, taking a significant lead in formulating what meditation is.

Why do I mention this here? It is because, in actual meditation, there is nothing to understand. In fact, rational thinking must be rational enough to shut itself down—not forever and in all matters—but it must recognize that there are other highly intelligent non-verbal systems within the wonder of the human brain-body that know all about how to meditate. We need to step down from the throne of understanding for these systems to meditate for us.

I am not at all against science, but reason must know itself and its limitations in a self-aware loop and then be clever enough to allow something else to take over. You go to a dentist (a profession that, by the way, was perfected through science) when you have tooth problems. You surrender to the expertise of the dentist in the sense that you do not need to understand every move they make.

In meditation, you surrender to your inner tour guide. He will take you on the profound journey of not understanding.

"In unknowing knowing shall we know God."
Meister Eckhart

Meditation is a Lifelong Project
Meditation takes your entire life and gives it back to you in a new form.

Of all the things I have done in my life, I consider the moment I discovered meditation as a young man the most fortunate event. It evolved into a wonderful journey marked by error, forgetfulness, and foolishness, leading me to a life in old age where I can now sum it all up in one simple word:

'Gratefulness.'


WHAT TECHNIQUE SHOULD I USE?

What is now the best meditation technique in order to arrive in that promised land of peace and thankfulness? I would say all techniques and none of them. I've tried most of them, but essentially, I arrived in that state by sitting alertly with closed eyes and doing nothing.

Let me state that I have not reached that advertized state of enlightenment. However, what I have gained is so much better than the state I was in ten years ago, twenty years ago, and so on. My life gradually became better and deeper, allowing me now in old age to be here and state: It is wonderful to be alive!

Listen to what Franz Kafka has to say:

"You need not do anything. Just remain at your table and listen.
You don't even need to listen, just wait. You don't even need to wait,
just learn to be quiet, still, and alone. And existence will come to you by itself
and offer itself to you. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

Here, in that potent passiveness, I realized that the repetition of mantras is in danger of running in circles, leading internally to a state not much different from the societal alienation described in Kafka's books.

For the one who sits with what is, without doing anything, not even using a meditation technique, everything will be given in the form of fine-tuned intuitions from within. These tiny, blessed 'innerstandings,' as Sunyata would say, will light up the next step on the path.

This refined, innerstood intuition might, in fact, urge you to repeat a mantra or play with any meditation technique, but now that very same practice is not dictated by the ever-controlling mind. So, as long as you spontaneously enjoy your routines, they can definitely make a difference.

Meister Eckhart states that God prefers great mistakes over small ones. Following our interoceptive innerstandings is also the true path of divine errors. Good advice makes the head more clever, helping you avoid pitfalls. Mistakes, on the other hand, make the body wiser. That is why I see and feel my wisdom sitting like stargates in the scars of my inner body. These wonderful scars are what I got walking mindlessly in blindfolded trust.

THE RESTLESS MIND

"You are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?"
Rumi

I've often experienced impatience in myself and others. This impatience does nothing but put the cart before the horse. In this context, I think of Napoleon's famous words:

"Dress me slowly, for I am in a hurry!"

The Catarpillar-Ego
This impatience stems from our mind. However, the thinking-based ego-mind cannot become spiritual in the same way that a caterpillar cannot become a butterfly. The point is, the caterpillar dies on a cellular level in the process where the butterfly unfolds. Not a single caterpillar cell gets the honor and joy of becoming part of a butterfly. It is not the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly. It is something that has transcended the cellular life of a caterpillar. At the point of metamorphosis, both the caterpillar and the butterfly produce poison to kill each other. The caterpillar-mind lives in the world of meditation techniques, and therefore, at a certain point, these techniques become poison for the unfoldment of your spiritual life.
  
The mind in search of gurus, retreats, and more advanced meditation techniques is like a caterpillar-person putting on fake butterfly wings and convincing itself and the world that it is the butterfly of the soul.
 
Therefore, at some point, we have to give up spiritualizing ourselves. As ego-driven humans, we are caterpillars—nothing more and nothing wrong in that. One day, a butterfly will be born in us, but we will not witness the birth. For the birth itself is our death:

"You must be willing to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise again if you have not first become ashes?"
Friedrich Nietzsche

I know such statements do not sell tickets. But I'm not interested in selling meditation techniques anyhow because they are created by an ego-mind that wants to spiritualize itself through understanding and control.
 
The Business of Spirituality
The restless 'Californicated' Western mind loves ideas like self-improvement. In this sense, meditation techniques have become a kind of commodification of spirit. The more techniques are seen as important, the more there is to sell in the form of courses, retreats, mantras, and self-development.
 
What is the essence of life? It is peace and love. Can you buy love from a prostitute? No, you cannot. Can you buy true peace on a meditation course with a famous guru? No, you cannot. As long as we are all clear about the conditions, there is, as far as I am concerned, nothing wrong with prostitution or paid retreats. We must, however, realize that these gratifications are for our caterpillar life only. And at some stage, we are all caterpillars.
 
That is why Meister Eckhart says:

"Merchants go when the truth appears,
for the truth needs no merchanting.
Behold thy temple cleared of merchants."

My friend Johannes from Zurich, who is a practicing Buddhist and fluent in Tibetan, says: "Om mani padme hum" has turned into "Om money give me soon."
 
The Quantification of the Soul
A fundamental layer upon which the commodification of the soul takes place is the modern tendency of 'protocollizing' oneself. YouTube is full of young, sporty American men advocating for all kinds of overcomplicated meditation and breathing protocols that make them important and the listener lost. The mind invents all sorts of quantifiable agents like: do this technique for so many minutes in this specific way and breathe while counting 4-7-8 or 7-7 or whatever.

Now listen to what Meister Eckhart has to say on this matter:

"This spirit knows no time nor number:
number does not exist apart from the malady of time."

One of the challenges with turning meditation into a tool is that the soul is entirely valueless, understood as value-less. It is devoid of value in the sense that it is the unotized agent like a screen in a cinema that gives all other things value. Hence our soul cannot be trained like a bodybuilder's muscles. It is already perfect, but we left it when we went out to improve it.

Listen with this in mind to Rumi:

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all
the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

One such barrier is the adoration of techniques. While quantifying our spiritual practice seems rational, it removes us from the most vital aspect of meditation: the ability to sit in spontaneous communion with our vigilant awareness and feel—sense—listen to all the wordless and ever-morphing landscapes of micro sensations taking place in our interoceptive body realm. In fact, it is these various minuscule signals from the multiple operative systems within us that need our space-holding attention to guide us to the next breath we take or the next move we make. These archaic operative systems do not understand the language of words and numbers. Most of them were invented by evolution long before we were able even to growl.
 
This path of inner attentive sensing without agendas is a much murkier, muddier, and more organic way to approach meditation. It is a creative process, an art form where you and your life become a living piece of art.

"When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy."
Rumi
 

Every Truth is Half-Baked
Having said that, I now have to contradict myself. For every viewpoint sees only part of the truth. In this sense, meditation is soul surfing on a life ocean full of clashing waves. Spiritual growth is not linear and is full of paradoxes. It is each soul's task to surf the balance between them. Otherwise, the opposite of what we cling to will always turn out to be the truth that hits us out of balance.

In accordance, I must be vigilant enough not to judge the business of spiritual commodification with resentment. Everything is, in fact, perfectly imperfect, or maybe even so that imperfection is as needed as perfection. How can we learn to soul-surf if we are not constantly thrown off the board?

EFFORTLESSNESS IN MEDITATION

"The non-existent can penetrate where there is no space.
Therefore, I recognize the value of non-action.
To learn without words and work without accomplishing,
few understand this."
Tao Teh King, Lao Tzu - 43

In my youth, I learned to practice Transcendental Meditation. Nowadays I rarely meditate the TM way. However, I am eternally grateful for receiving the most vital meditation advice at an early age. The TM teachers kept repeating: Do not use effort in your meditation. What marvelous advice!
 
In accordance with that glorious advice, I would like to radicalize it even further and postulate:

We are not able to meditate!

I remember one day arriving at New Delhi airport. I observed a group of Western senior meditators with one hand in a small bag containing a little chain of beads. They were constantly counting these beads while internally repeating mantras to concentrate their minds. They looked tired and dried out. Joy had left them together with their youth, and now all they seemed to have left was the grumpy counting that kept them away from a question they should have asked themselves a long time ago, a question that would be harder and harder to confront with each passing year of joyless self-discipline: Have I wasted my life in joyless repetition?
 
Meditation is a happening, not something you do. For our old ego-operating system, which is used to eating bread by the sweat of its face, the fact that meditation only works without effort is very difficult to relate to. Our culture has difficulty understanding that you can achieve more by doing less.
 
Therefore, I say: If your meditation practice does not give you solace, peace, and joy here and now, then drop it for God's sake. There is only a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that makes you marvel at its colors at any given time.

I also repeat in joyful flow: We cannot meditate. It is impossible.
 
To be Meditated
That we, as ego-entities, are not able to meditate is, however, not contradictory to meditation as such. In the realization that we cannot meditate, we can relax and allow ourselves to be meditated. This is an effortless process. In Sunyata's words, it is a happening in 'joyous ease.' We could also say that to sit in joyous meditation is to sit with grace, and in grace, we are removed from all work. As we fall in love, we can also fall into meditation.

"The bird of paradise lands only on the hand that does not grasp."
— Zen Proverb

"God is in all things, urging us to give up our will."
— Meister Eckhart

Make as little effort as possible in meditation. In my experience, this sentence contains the most important meditation teaching. Remember the Zen proverb:

"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
 
Let me repeat like  mantra: Let yourself be meditated. Allow meditation to come to you; let it be a spontaneous, natural process that the mind engages in simply because it enjoys it. Let yourself be meditated!
 
Meditation becomes stiff when driven by conscious willpower. When you actively chase the butterfly of the soul, you cannot catch it. Only when you sit completely still, perhaps after giving up the chase, might you be lucky enough for it to land on your hand.

The "I," understood as the outward ego-driven personality-interface, is as bad at meditating as a cart is at pulling a horse.

An effortless Effort
What can be done, however, is to be meditated. Do an effort to let yourself be meditated!

Let me give you an analogy. You take your little boat and row it out and away from the shore and into the ocean. Then you put up the sails of the boat, and by that act, you cannot do more. Now all that is left is to wait for grace to fill your sails with the breath of God. When that wind is breathing from within, you have no doubt that a power much greater than you is doing meditation on you.
 
A group of fellow Sufi travelers was dancing in celebration of God's glory at sunset. They were singing over and over that all is God's will only. The next day they discovered that their camels had run away. So the Sufis say: Yes, all is God's will but remember to tie your camels!

So you have to tie your camels and row your boat to the place where the wind can catch you.

To be meditated, I must do something. This is a paradox I leave open for you to live. For the dynamically fragile truth lies in the cracks between theses and antitheses. The wonderful Manav Dayal said to me:

"The Highest can only be reached through an effortless effort."

So let me conclude by contradicting the first section: You must make an effort if you want to proceed further in the text. You might not get far in meditation without a little self-discipline.

The Will You Need to Mobilize Does Not Exist
However, allow me to look a bit beyond these stories about effort and non-effort. At the beginning of your journey, you imagine that you at least have to row your boat, set your sails, or tie your camels in the oasis in the desert. Looking back a bit longer on your path, you might realize that even these actions were not your own. Free will is, in fact, a wonderful illusion. Once your awareness becomes a bit more vigilant, it will look through the veils of will and perceive everything as processed by holy algorithms.

The Graceful Epilogue of free will
How can all this meditation be effortless effort? One way of answering that could be with a quote from Thomas Edison: "I never did a day's hard work in my life. It was all fun." The same Edison also said, "There is no substitute for hard work."

I would go a step further and declare: You cannot do meditation unless you are called from within to do it. Meditation is grace.


TO BE CLEANSED FROM EGO-DRIVEN WILL
We are deeply accustomed to be in charge and in this proces we combine insight with action. We are used to the idea that we must do something to get something and in this process we need to understand things before we act. Our entire external survival apparatus has been trained from childhood to obey 'the necessary.' It’s about doing something, becoming something, ideally becoming number one! By understanding and then doing things, we transform the world into tools. By using these tools, we achieve 'something.'

Meditation, by contrast, is about being passively aware without striving to do or understand anything. That by itself contradicts everything we have learnt since the first mammoth hunt and much before. This habit of being in charge is so strong that in order to reach the sweet flow zone spot between intention and non-intention, most of us first of all need to embark on a journey
of meditative let go. Here we will sink into that blessed well of bewilderment, where everything we believed in and took ourselves to be will questioned. Just a fingersnap second in this inner death lead to a rebirth of who we take ourselves to be.

Meditation, if practiced in courage and freedom from organized religions and techniques, will deconstruct our prefabricated perceptions of what reality is and leave us in a new and fresh world where, in William James' words, we will re-experience everything in a state of blooming, buzzing confusion.
 
This will, however, not lead to passivity! Action happens spontaneously and effortlessly in awareness and consciousness of the soul-surfer.
 
For this to occur, it is important that any insight or meta-insight into your behavior is NOT followed by guilt or sharp divisions of what is good or bad.
 
You perceive and realize yourself supported by trust and non-judgment.
Meditative meta-insight occurs in the clear light of love, where there is nothing to change. Everything happens on its own in a transformation process beyond your control.
 
Best regards,
Gunnar Mühlmann