~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

August 16

Taking the Red Pill

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?

Joe Pantoliano as Cypher, to Keanu Reeves as Neo

in The Matrix

A friend came to me yesterday. A few weeks ago I was teaching in New York and she got an advanced meditation technique, and now she was having some trouble. "I'm just being so resistant to meditation now..."

When we first learn to meditate, our first initiation mantra is designed to do one thing extremely well: it's designed to give us the experience of transcendence. We transcend the level from which thoughts arise. We go beyond individual experience of self and into unboundedness, into the transcendent field of consciousness itself where we bathe in the bliss experience and find ourselves able to relax and unwind and begin the process of allowing the stresses to unwind from our body, giving us more and more access to ourselves. This is an amazing experience and indeed it can be a practice one may use for the rest of one's life.

How does the advanced technique change meditation?

First, the new technique keeps us from diving straight into the depths. Rather, we begin to find ourselves having the experience of yes, being really deep, but at the same time we are having thoughts. We are beginning the movement toward a more full experience of life. When we meditate, we give up one state in order to have another. We give up 'eyes open' state in order to have the bliss of unboundedness. What our system wants is the capacity to have the entirety of consciousness without having to give up any part of it. We want to be able to feel the depths of consciousness and at the same time be in the world, walking around, talking, making love, playing baseball, writing a novel. The advanced technique is the first movement in that direction, the beginning of our system learning it can expand into adjacent levels of consciousness rather than experience them serially. 

Also, in using the advanced technique, we are taking our senses with us into the unboundedness and they begin to refine, becoming more and more able to distinguish the subtle movements of consciousness so that when we come back out into the world we are aware of our surroundings much more fully, much more subtly. We begin to be able to see more deeply into the movement of the laws of nature, helping to assure us that we will be able ever more fully to align ourselves with that movement. To align our will with the will of God.

These are some of the practical gifts of the advanced technique. But there also is the message we send by taking this step. It is a message to the universe that we wish to be a part of it all. That we wish no longer to live in ignorance of what's happening here, and of our place in it. We are saying to consciousness that we want to be responsible--to the world, to our fellows, to ourselves. Able to respond and willing to respond with at least the idea of being of service to something greater than our individuality. This is a big step. This is a step that says I am willing to move in the direction of being everything I can be, which means in the direction the universe would have me move in. I am willing to give myself fully to whatever God, universe, Totality wants of me and I will work on a daily basis to find what that is, rather than seek to fulfill my own small ideas.

[To be clear, I am not at all saying that this meditation or an advanced technique is the only way of doing the above; I am however saying that this absolutely describes the experience of learning an advanced technique in this meditation.]

We resist moving in this direction of responsibility because we know it will require us to change. Some part of us, the ego part of us, wants to stay safe, stay the way we are. The true part of us, the heart part of us, wants us to expand, to grow, to give of ourselves to the world in the way we uniquely are able to give. When we support this heart part of ourselves, we are going to be hit by the resistance of the ego, and the defiance and the discomfort we experience may be large. But we've already stepped forward. There's no going back. Even if we pretend it never happened, we've taken the red pill. We've seen the matrix. We've seen that there's more to all of this than what is oh so apparent here in the Hollywood, look good, Capitalistic, fatalistic, futuristic, sex-selling, sweet-smelling world of ego-gratification and fast food for the soul.

So I laid this all out for my friend. She said yes. That sounds right. That sounds like the experience I've been having. And we meditated together. And it was good.

Today I will remind myself that there is more here than I can see, and if I start to look for it, life might get a little more fun. Or at least more interesting.