Monday 25 August 2014

The Heart of the Matter

What we often try to say is not always in the words themselves. Sometimes you have to go through strange stuff to get to the heart of the matter, which is always different from the point of departure - to take something and look at it from every angle with a quiet dispassion, which allows the space for something you don't yet know to emerge that is greater than the sum of the parts.

Monday 18 August 2014

Meditation and the Mind - Part 2

So we go in, what then?


In meditation, by whatever technique, we disassociate from the senses and the outer world, and enter the inner world - a state known as pratyahara. But pratyahara is really only the frontier of a new inner world that has remained largely unexplored. What happens when we get there? What do we do? What’s the point?

Monday 11 August 2014

Meditation and the Mind - Part 1

Two worlds


We live and experience life in two dimensions at the same time; two worlds if you like, an outer world and an inner world. Although they are both there, for the most part we are experiencing only one of them at any one moment. We are either awake or asleep, and the other is unknown to us. When we are awake we live in the outer world; when asleep we are in the inner world, but most of the time completely unaware of it. The exception is meditation.



There is a kind of trade-off between these two worlds – inner and the outer. They are like trading nations, but with no real understanding of each other’s culture, beliefs and motivating forces. The dimension of experience is different in each. Sometimes communication breaks down, relations get fraught, ambassadors are recalled and there is conflict for some time. Thinking they are separate, sometimes we are just not at peace with ourselves.


If we consider the outer and inner worlds together and the relationship between them, you can see that there is nevertheless something constant to both of them, along with the differences. Recognizing this helps us in meditation practice, and some of the experiences it brings.