What's The Point Of Meditation?

Meditation is not a cure-all. It does not take a person and make them virtuous. To become a better person the person has to want to be better and make that change . Meditation can help. The point of meditation is to reach beyond the mind and experience our essential nature. To get to what is our essential nature one has to overcome a big obstacle - our own mind. Meditation can bring you to the door of your essential nature - peace, happiness, bliss but the mind, with its chattering voice constantly chirping away, the ego that nags, all the brainwashing it has had during its lifetime, has to be overcome, trained, disciplined. The only known scietific way to acheive that is through meditation.

Many use the word meditation as another word for contemplation. This is not meditation. Others even think meditating equates to daydreaming. Wrong. Meditation is neither of those things. Meditation is a scientific technique used for resting the mind, for reaching a state of consciousness that is very different from our daily waking state. With meditation, we are able to find the many levels of ourselves so we become more conscious of ourselves and of life around us.

Meditation is not part of a religion. Hindu's, Jains, Taoists and Buddhist's are those we align with mediation but meditation belongs to no one religion. It is for everyone. For Muslims. Jews, Christian and so one. Being of a science meditation follows precisely the same method, there is a defined principle the results of which can be verified. So thoughts or misconceptions suggesting meditation is a mystic practice is without foundation. There is nothing magical or mystical about meditation. 

When I, or anyone else for that matter, meditate we are awake and fully alert. However, the mind is not focused on the external world but the internal. The mind is still and silent and should thoughts pop-up, and they do, you don't shut them down but refocus on the breath. the inhalation and exhalation, this will gently push thoughts away allowing silence to return

Our minds have been so brainwashed by our educational system that the way our lives are spent, having been prepared for work by schools, in service to this or that corporation, that we live lives in what can only be described as an illusory world. Perhaps the Hindu term Maya can be misused them applied to our lives. We live an illusion. 

When I attended "Therapy For You,"  an NHS funded mental health service having previously been prescribed Diazepam and some other drug for anxiety attacks, I undertook a course of discussions. The result of these sessions provided me with choices. Two in fact. Accept a lifetime of depression, feeling worthless and constantly anxious or practice mindfulness. I still practise mindfulness to this day but also meditation. The effect of a daily routine of meditating was almost immediate. I became calmer, more relaxed, less angry, focused and certainly more creative. Then, when I was asked to let the family dog sleep in my room, my routine was broken. Why? It is bloody hard having woken up to enter a meditative state with a dog's wet nose or tongue rubbing against your genitals. What I now call "The Event," when I pushed another over breaking their hip, occurred during that period. I also lost my attention to things and began making mistakes. All this changed when I resumed my daily routine of meditating each morning. I now do so more often. Sometimes three times or more a day. It works.

On another level, a deeper one, when meditating, you become aware of not only yourself, your body and mind but also life beyond you. You hear life in a multitude of ways so that you, your breathing seem fused with existence whilst being within. The conceptual 'God' is replaced by the reality of 'God.' 

Meditation does not mean you have to sit cross-legged in the lotus position. It is a favourite method but it must be remembered that not all practitioners are able to sit in such a manner. I don't. I sit on a stool with my hands on my thighs. I also practise walking meditation and standing. Standing I find better than walking.  

To say this or that has changed my life is perhaps a rather grand statement to make. I have had several of those in my life, the birth of my children and grandchildren being obvious examples, but nothing like meditation has changed it in such a way. As I said at the beginning of this post, Meditation is not a cure-all but it gives us access to life in ways nothing else can.

John Shelby Spong

Of all the devout Christian's I have met there are none more so than Bishop John 'Jack' Shelby Spong. His faith is so strong, so dedicated to the Trinity, to the truth beyond the deity of God, beyond the mysticism and supernatural myth surrounding his faith, to live his life as close to Jesus as he possibly can that I find his vision of how Christianity should be, must be, hugely inspirational. He is more than Christian, more than the divisive nature of religion - he is as close to being a Bodhavista as I can imagine. His revolutionary vision of how Christianity should be is both challenging and controversial. He is much like his Messiah of whom would undoubtedly heap praise on his later day disciple. John Shelby Spong isn't merely Christian he is above and beyond that. He is human and as such recognises how we are part of 'God' as 'God' is part of us.

Jack Spong, if I may be so bold, is a man awake to reality. He is much like a Bodhavista himself in that he sees things as they are rather than hides behind a veil of illusion, of repetitively quoting verbatim slices of the Bible which has little meaning, virtually no meaning of contemporary life and which, in my lifetime alone, has re-evaluated  ancient scriptures.

Spong's "Twelve Points for Reform" were originally published in The Voice, the newsletter of the Diocese of Newark, in 1998. Spong elaborates on them in his book A New Christianity for a New World:

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre- Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post- Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It, therefore, cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post- Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behaviour for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behaviour control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behaviour.
12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

Tye Tribbett - He Turned It (Live)

Even an old lapsed Catholic like me gets into the spirit when she hears great Gospel music like this!

~DJ Helena~

"The Sins of the Scripture"

I think Bishop Shelly Spong to be not only an inspirational speaker but a force of reason, a truly revolutionary voice for Christian's, and there are many I know, who feel that Biblical scripture has been manipulated by organised religion to such a degree that it cannot be viewed as a representation of how the Christian Messiah would have wanted it interpreted. 

Spong reaches beyond the boundaries of religion using his personal faith to reach out to those whose adherence to the Golden Rule is paramount and includes others, all others, to unite in something larger, more Godlike, than the divisive nature of manmade religion.

His message is an inclusive one. He speaks as though he has awakened, is aware of reality, of the world around him and the need for those of faith to disengage with being organised by an office so that Christians turn toward a personal faith rather than a collective. 

Such inspiration in a time when those who share his vision need it most. 

How to Stop the Voice in Your Head

Ekhart Tolle on God

Music and Thoughts from Mick

Hi. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Michael Neil Lee, but you can call me Mick. I am a recovering addict and alcoholic, and I believe in angels.

I realize that some of you will think my beliefs are antiquated and unscientific. I believe in science, but I think there are some things that science can't explain. Like angels, for instance.

I know there are some of you who will be like "let us be nice to the fry brain and we will humor his belief in angels" and you will say things like "yes, there are angels here on Earth who help people. Like nurses and doctors and your counselors in rehab."

I don't know about nurses and doctors and my counselors. But yes, I believe in angels in the flesh. My little sister Nicole is a for real earth angel. She believed in me even when I was on rock bottom. She was there for my kids when both me and their mom couldn't be there because of our problems. Even when I was at my worst with meth and heroin and drinking and pills she still loved her big brother and I am sorry for the times I caused her to worry that the next time she would see me is in the morgue. I am crying when I write this so I am sorry if it is not the best writing. Nikki, you are a for real Earth angel. I believe in you.

Nikki's new girlfriend Thalia who she met last year is also an earth Angel. They both thought they would never meet anybody to be in love with, but they met each other. They love their nieces and nephews like they were their own children. They are in love with each other like they thought they could never be with anybody. Also, now I have a new buddy to have (Clean and Sober) fun with and listen to music with and tease and play practical jokes with. To be fair, Tally, you had to know it was a Snake in the Can, but you opened it anyways. I'm still waiting for the payback.

Thalia introduced me to instrumental music like this. I still love my Rock and Metal, always and forever, especially my Crue, in case you can't tell by the picture on my profile. But when I need to relax and to chill out, I listen to this instead of lighting it up or shooting up or drinking, and it's way better. Now my kids know their Dad will be around for them and not dead in an alley or something like that.

Also, my friend Cie who has said to me that I can write and she will help me edit my story, you are also a real Earth Angel. My story is called Earth Angel, and it is inspired by some of the people I met along the way. The Angel in my story is called Katarin. She is a real angel who has lost her way and has been abused so much. I have met so many women who have been abused and used up. One of them had schizophrenia and she had been raped so many times when she was trying to get drugs to forget her pain for awhile. She had abortions and also kids that were taken away. She was homeless. I tried to protect her a little but couldn't always watch over her. One day they found her dead. 

I miss you, Karyn. I wish your life could have been better. I thought of you as my Sister, I really did. I wanted to be a good brother to you, the kind you never had. I am sorry I failed you like everyone else.

I believe she has gone back to be with the angels. I do. Even if she was messed up, she had a good soul.

I mean she is gone back to be with the Angels in Heaven. Because I do believe in them.

I know some of you think that is stupid, and it is unscientific, and maybe hypocritical, because I don't go to church. I believe in Heaven and Angels, and I believe in Jesus and that he is good, but I don't believe you have to think he is the Messiah to go to Heaven. I think he loves us all whether we believe he is the Messiah or no. I don't think Christianity is the only religion or the only way to be saved, and I don't think you even have to believe in anything at all to belong in Heaven. I think you only have to be kind and to try your best, and some people don't like that too much and they tell me I can't be saved if I think like that. I don't think they are right.

But I do believe in Angels, and I do believe in Spirits.

I have seen some shit in my life.

When I was a little boy, way before I ever heard about drugs and when I was going to church like a good little boy and believed what I was taught in Sunday School, I met a spirit one day in the attic at my maternal grandparents house. I was three years old and I would go in the attic and it was like a treasure hunt. And that day he was sitting there near the window. He was a boy who was older than me but still young, maybe like seven years old, and he was quiet and didn't talk, but he was nice and he smiled at me, and I stayed there with him until he faded away. I always thought it was about 20 minutes but It's hard to tell, it could have been more or less. I was never afraid of him. I never saw him again. But I always remember him. I didn't say anything to anyone because even that young I knew they would tell me to stop telling tales. I only told Nikki a lot of years later when she was 18 and I was 20, and she punched me in the arm for keeping such a cool secret to myself all that time. I told her it was fair though, because she didn't tell me she liked girls until about that same time, and we could have been liking girls together all that time but I didn't even know it!

So I believe in Angels and I believe in Spirits. And maybe some of you think that's pretty stupid. And maybe some of you think it means I am going to hell. I don't think so either way. I think there is stuff that Science doesn't understand and I don't think that too many people go to Hell. 

So this is my story about me, and sort of an introduction to the story I hope to write. Thank you for listening and for your support. This is the first time I have really told my story, and I am kind of nervous for it.

We are going to publish this post on a couple of blogs. My story blog, Earth Angel, is http://teamnetherworldsearthangel.blogspot.com

Thank You,

Mick

Living is the greatest revolution

Mind is held in a pattern; its very existence is the frame within which it works and moves. The pattern is of the past or the future, it is despair and hope, confusion and Utopia, the what has been and the what should be. With this we are all familiar. You want to break the old pattern and substitute a “new” one, the new being the modified old... You want to produce a new world. It is impossible. You may deceive yourself and others, but unless the old pattern is broken completely there cannot be a radical transformation. You may play around with it, but you are not the hope of the world. The breaking of the pattern, both the old and the so-called new, is of the utmost importance if order is to come out of this chaos. That is why it is essential to understand the ways of the mind...

Is it possible for the mind to be without a pattern, to be free of this backward and forward swing of desire? It is definitely possible. Such action is living in the now. To live is to be without hope, without the care of tomorrow; it is not hopelessness or indifference. But we are not living, we are always pursuing death, the past or the future. Living is the greatest revolution. Living has no pattern, but death has: the past or the future, the what has been or the Utopia. You are living for the Utopia, and so you are inviting death and not life.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Leonard Cohen - Leaving the Table

The way of meditation

Is truth something final, absolute, fixed? We would like it to be absolute because then we could take shelter in it. We would like it to be permanent because then we could hold on to it, find happiness in it. But is truth absolute, continuous, to be experienced over and over again? The repetition of experience is the mere cultivation of memory, is it not? In moments of quietness, I may experience a certain truth, but if I cling to that experience through memory and make it absolute, fixed—is that truth? Is truth the continuation, the cultivation of memory? Or, is truth to be found only when the mind is utterly still? When the mind is not caught in memories, not cultivating memory as the centre of recognition, but is aware of everything I am saying, everything I am doing in my relationships, in my activities, seeing the truth of everything as it is from moment to moment—surely, that is the way of meditation, is it not? There is comprehension only when the mind is still, and the mind cannot be still as long as it is ignorant of itself. That ignorance is not dispelled through any form of discipline, through pursuing any authority, ancient or modern. Belief only creates resistance, isolation, and where there is isolation, there is no possibility of tranquillity. Tranquillity comes only when I understand the whole process of myself—the various entities in conflict with each other which compose the “me.” As that is an arduous task, we turn to others to learn various tricks which we call meditation. The tricks of the mind are not meditation. Meditation is the beginning of self-knowledge, and without meditation, there is no self-knowledge.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Swami Saravapriyananda

Is there such a thing as a soul?

So to understand this question of death, we must be rid of fear which invents the various theories of afterlife or immortality or reincarnation. So we say, those in the East say, that there is reincarnation, there is a rebirth, a constant renewal going on and on and on—the soul, the so-called soul. Now please listen carefully.

Is there such a thing? We like to think there is such a thing, because it gives us pleasure, because that is something which we have set beyond thought, beyond words, beyond; it is something eternal, spiritual, that can never die, and so thought clings to it. But is there such a thing, as a soul, which is something beyond time, something beyond thought, something which is not invented by man, something which is beyond the nature of man, something which is not put together by the cunning mind? Because the mind sees such enormous uncertainty, confusion, nothing permanent in life—nothing. Your relationship to your wife, your husband, your job— nothing is permanent. And so the mind invents a something which is permanent, which it calls the soul. But since the mind can think about it, thought can think about it; as thought can think about it, it is still within the field of time—naturally. If I can think about something, it is part of my thought. And my thought is the result of time, of experience, of knowledge. So, the soul is still within the field of time...

So the idea of a continuity of a soul which will be reborn over and over and over again has no meaning because it is the invention of a mind that is frightened, of a mind that wants, that seeks a duration through permanency, that wants certainty, because in that there is hope.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Beyond Time

The conditioned mind, surely is incapable of finding out what lies beyond time. That is, sirs, the mind as we know it is conditioned by the past. The past, moving through the present to the future, conditions the mind; and this conditioned mind, being in conflict, in trouble, being fearful, uncertain, seeks something beyond the frontiers of time. That is what we are all doing in various ways, is it not? But how can a mind which is the result of time ever find that which is timeless?

The house of your beliefs, of your properties, of your attachments and comforting ways of thinking is constantly being broken into. But the mind goes on seeking security, so there is a conflict between what you want and what life’s process demands of you. This is what is happening to every one of us. I do not know if this problem interests you at all. Everyday existence, with all its troubles, seems to be sufficient for most of us. Our only concern is to find an immediate answer to our various problems. But sooner or later the immediate answers are found to be unsatisfactory because no problem has an answer apart from the problem itself. But if I can understand the problem, all the intricacies of it, then the problem no longer exists.

Digital Tribalism [Tribal Psybient Compilation Vol. 1]

Where Does Our Time Go?

Meeting Life Anew

"One of the things, it seems to me, that most of us eagerly accept and take for granted is the question of beliefs. I am not attacking beliefs. What we are trying to do is to find out why we accept beliefs; and if we can understand the motives, the causation of acceptance, then perhaps we may be able not only to understand why we do it, but also be free of it. One can see how political and religious beliefs, national and various other types of beliefs, do separate people, do create conflict, confusion, and antagonism which is an obvious fact; and yet we are unwilling to give them up. There is the Hindu belief, the Christian belief, the Buddhist innumerable sectarian and national beliefs, various political ideologies, all contending with one other, trying to convert one other. One can see, obviously, that belief is separating people, creating intolerance; is it possible to live without belief? One can find that out only if one can study oneself in relationship to a belief. Is it possible to live in this world without a belief—not change beliefs, not substitute one belief for another, but be entirely free from all beliefs, so that one meets life anew each minute? This, after all, is the truth: to have the capacity of meeting everything anew, from moment to moment, without the conditioning reaction of the past, so that there is not the cumulative effect which acts as a barrier between oneself and that which is."

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Thich Nhat Hanh

The Mystic Didgeridoo [Didgeridoo Psybient Compilation Vol. 1]

The active still mind

The mind that is really still is astonishingly active, alive, potent—not towards anything in particular. It is only such a mind which is verbally free—free from experience, from knowledge. Such a mind can perceive what is true, such a mind has direct perception which is beyond time.

The mind can only be silent when it has understood the process of time and that requires watchfulness, does it not? Must not such a mind be free, not from anything but be free? We only know freedom from something. A mind that is free from something is not a free mind; such freedom, the freedom from something, is only a reaction, and it is not freedom. A mind that is seeking freedom is never free. But the mind is free when it understands the fact, as it is, without translating, without condemning without judging; and being free, such a mind is an innocent mind, though it lived 100 days, 100 years, having all the experiences. It is innocent because it is free, not from anything but in itself. It is only such a mind that can perceive that which is true, which is beyond time.

Going beyond words

To understand each other, I think it is necessary that we should not be caught in words; because, a word like God, for example, may have a particular meaning for you, while for me it may represent a totally different formulation, or no formulation at all. So it is almost impossible to communicate with each other unless both of us have the intention of understanding and going beyond mere words. The word freedom generally implies being free from something, does it not? It ordinarily means being free from greed, from envy, from nationalism, from anger, from this or that. Whereas, freedom may have quite another meaning, which is a sense of being free; and I think it is very important to understand this meaning.

... After all, the mind is made up of words, amongst other things. Now, can the mind be free of the word “envy”? Experiment with this and you will see that words like God, truth, hate, envy, have a profound effect on the mind. And can the mind be both neurologically and psychologically free of these words? If it is not free of them, it is incapable of facing the fact of envy. When the mind can look directly at the fact which it calls “envy”, then the fact itself acts much more swiftly than the mind’s endeavour to do something about the fact. As long as the mind is thinking of getting rid of envy through the ideal of non-envy, and so on, it is distracted, it is not facing the fact; and the very word envy is a distraction from the fact. The process of recognition is through the word; and the moment I recognize the feeling through the word, I give continuity to that feeling.