Mystics, Mysticism, & Peak States



The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Albert Einstein


Our challenge is to be Contemporary Mystics!

Preface – “What Is Mysticism?”

The word 'Mystic' originally comes from the Greek word for 'mystery' - meaning 'the unexplainable' - whose own root word means quite simply, 'with closed eyes'. According to mystic philosophy, one cannot gain a full understanding of God, the nature of the universe, or indeed the 'Self', by external or physical means alone since God, religion and spirituality all exist within our own selves, within our own souls.

By 'closing the eyes' and shutting out the external physical world of the five senses through introspection, meditation or prayer, a divine union with God, vision or revelation may be experienced by the individual. Meditation, introspection and prayer are common to all religions, and yet mysticism is not a religion because it has no hierarchy, no rules, no regulations, and no sacred texts. In mysticism the central character is yourself and you are, in your highest sense, both the worshipped and the worshiper, both temple and congregation.

The mystical journey is, by its very nature, a journey into the self, and a journey ultimately made alone. The mystical and supernatural however, may also be experienced spontaneously by those with no religious affiliations at all, atheists and agnostics alike. Apparently regardless of all belief and outward form, the mystical experience appears to exist and function as an internal vision or revelation within the mind or the 'soul' of the self, and not as an externalised sensual experience.

The mystic tradition itself pre-dates organised religion and is ultimately the very foundation of all religions, whether they are pagan, primal or otherwise and mystical revelation can be clearly seen to be at the heart of them all. This includes the Eastern philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism as well as the three Western monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the latter of which were founded on the mystical revelations of their own respective teachers or prophets, Buddha, Moses, Jesus Christ and Mohammed.

Although the three great monotheistic religions which originated in the Middle East - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - are based on the individual vision, revelation, and mystical experience of these divine messengers or prophets, it has been the case throughout recorded history that some of these self same religions have also been largely responsible for the repression of individual empowerment through the internalised individual experience of personal revelation.

However innocent and natural this primal human desire for higher spiritual states of consciousness may be, and it is obviously a collective social phenomena from the beginning, the art, knowledge and practice of spiritual mysticism has found no safe haven in our relatively modern male-dominated monotheistic religions.

In the words of Carl Jung however: "So long as religion is only faith and outward form, and the religious function is not experienced in our own souls, nothing of any importance has happened. It has yet to be understood that the mysterium magnum is not only an actuality, but is first and foremost rooted in the human psyche. The man who does not know this from his own experience may be a most learned theologian, but he has no idea of religion and still less of education." The philosophy of mysticism and individual revelation, however, is a unifying philosophy in as much as it recognises the right of every individual to this state of harmony, bliss and union with the divine, which can only be experienced by the individual as an internalised phenomena.

http://www.nvo.com/bigapple1/themysticmind/

PEAK EXPERIENCES

Abraham Maslow always laid great stress on the importance of peak experiences and the experience of transcendence. A peak experience is one of those times, felt by many millions of people, when all the pretence and all the fear drops away, and we seem to be in touch with the whole universe. It is a timeless moment of intense feeling, which comes to some people when they see a sunrise, or a mountain, to some when they hear great music, to some when they look at a child, to some when they are having sex, and to some in a religious ceremony. It is technically known as casual extraverted mysticism, and it is within the reach of all of us. In humanistic psychology we are very interested in studying this kind of phenomenon, and seeing how in some cases it can change a person's life.

I "Exceptional human experience" was coined by Rhea White, a noted parapsychologist, as an umbrella term for many types of experience generally regarded as psychic or mystical. It is a useful construct for considering the varieties of experience as points on a continuum and for examining possible connections between some, if not all of them. It may provide the "big picture" that might be overlooked if we were to study these experiences as discrete types of experience only.

The most fundamental principle of mysticism is transcendental omnipresence, which refers to being totally independent of spacetime while still being everywhere at once in spacetime. The idea of transcendental unity is built-in to this principle, since we are referring to a single, undifferentiated state of being. The second most fundamental principle is polarity, which refers to the inherent dynamic-creative aspect of the transcendental state, and is said to be the essence of consciousness, both at the universal level and the individual level. From these simple principles the entire physical universe is manifest in all its cyclic diversity, from the highest frequencies of oscillating energy to the lazy ellipses of orbiting planets, from the birth and death of stars to the expansion and collapse of the Universe itself.

At present, the Vedas (the Knowledge, the Sacred Science) are the most ancient texts known to our official historical records. The teaching itself probably dates from a time beyond which we can know, and some historians now estimate that it could easily be at least 12,000 years old. Some say it comes from a time long before that.

The Upanishads, translated by F. Max Müller, published originally in 1879 by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, England, and republished in 1962 by Dover Publications, New York, NY.

Ancient nondualism at its best, as we find it in the teachings of Buddha and Sankara, represents mysticism at its loftiest. Theistic, pantheistic, and other forms of mysticism are pale reflections thereof. The core of nondualistic mysticism lies in the conviction that the supreme truth is the timeless and formless Being or Nonbeing. Reality is essentially indefinable and nonverbal. It is beyond all opposites -- nondual. Beyond all limitations of cosmic expression, it is still the source and support of the cosmic manifold. ...

A Hindu theistic mystic may say, "I am at one with Krishna." Insofar as he is a theist, and not a nondualist in the strict sense of the word, he finds it difficult to rise above the Krishna-form. Indeterminable Being is for him only an abstraction. At best it is the limitless power and glory of the determinate Krishna-form.

Similarly, a Christian mystic, who is usually a theist, says, "I am at one with Christ, or with God the Father, who is inseparable from Christ." He finds it extremely difficult to rise above the Christ-form and comprehend Being in its transcendental universal essence. ... Formless Being is the common ground of all such specific symbols of the Divine, as Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Moses, etc., with all their historical particularities. ...

The theist equates the historical form with the transhistorical. Consequently, the transhistorical reality appears to him as a person. Failure to rise above personalities and to comprehend the superpersonal divine ground introduces an element of parochialism into his religious outlook. He fails to appreciate the common universal essence of all religions.

Haridas Chaudhuri Being, Evolution, and Immortality - An Outline of Integral Philosophy 1974, The Theosophical Publishing House


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LOVING PRACTICE

Seeing Beyond

The literal meaning of transcending is "going beyond," and at moments of clarity it is possible for anyone to be aware that reality isn't confined to the five senses. Peak experiences open up windows to spirit. Yet "going beyond" is not an accurate description of the experience of transcending, since there is no distance to cover; spirit never leaves us, it is only overlooked. This practice trains you to stop overlooking the spirit and love that surround you, waiting to be noticed.

Although it means "going beyond," a better way to describe transcending is "seeing beyond." What can you see beyond the apparently solid façade of life, the constant flow of time, the limitations of space, and the laws of cause and effect? If the answer is very little, the reason is that your perception has not been trained for such vision. Yet every day contains clues of the second reality we all inhabit, which is timeless, unbounded, causeless, and intimately tied to our needs on the path to love.

First examine the following list to determine if you have experienced these sorts of clues:

1. In the midst of danger or crisis, have you had suddenly had the feeling of being completely safe and protected?

2. Have you ever been with someone who was dying and felt a sense of peace or a coolness in the air when the moment of passing came?

3. Have you known someone who recovered from an "incurable" illness?

4. Have you prayed and had your prayer answered?

5. Have you ever witnessed a soft light around another person or yourself?

6. Have you ever asked for silent guidance or the answer to a dilemma and received it?

7. When looking at a sunset, a full moon, or something of great natural beauty, have you felt yourself expand as if you were no longer enclosed within the physical limits of your body?

8. Have you experienced a silencing of your mind, perhaps just before going to sleep or on first waking up?

9. Have you felt a loving presence when you most needed it?

10. Do you ever hear an inner voice you feel you can absolutely rely on? (This voice doesn't have to speak in words; it can also be a strong feeling or intuition.)

11. Have you felt wonder at the sight of a newborn child?

This isn't a quiz. You aren't trying to answer yes to as many questions as possible, but if you did say yes to any of them, pick the one that resonated most for you. Let us say it was the first one: feeling a sudden sense of safety and protection in the midst of crisis or danger. Close your eyes and put yourself back into that situation; see all the details of where you were, who you were with, what time it was and so on.

Try to relive the moment, but instead of being the person who was reacting at that moment, ask to be given a larger perspective. Ask to see the meaning of what was happening, and request that the meaning be as specific as possible. Take a deep breath and listen to whatever response comes. Now interpret your answer. Do any of the following meanings come through?

I am loved. I am safe. A part of myself watches over me. I know. I am. The light is with me. God is real. God is. Nothing is wrong. I am at peace. Things are OK. I can love. Everything is one. These are the messages love is trying to send you at every moment. Each is extremely simple yet eternally true.

You do not have to have an extraordinary or peak experience to receive such messages, but peak experiences do bring sudden clarity.

Attune yourself to spirit, and it will speak to you in love.

Spirit isn’t a phenomenon; it is the whispered truth within a phenomenon. As such, spirit is gentle, it persuades by the softest touch. The messages never get louder, only clearer. If you have the slightest hint of communication from spirit, ask for clarification; look at the preceding list if you need to. At first the links to spirit may seem tenuous and fragile, but as you grow more confident you will find that your life is full of meaning, that every moment has an aspect that goes beyond if you have the vision to find it.

The exerpt is from The Path to Love, by Deepak Chopra

Mindfulness & Insight

Excerpts from

Mindfulness in Plain English by Venerable Henepola Gunaratana
How to Do Mindfulness Meditation, By Sakyong Mipham Rinpoch
Diamond Mind, A Psychology of Meditation by Rob Nairn
“The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Meditation, by Chogyam Trunpa RinponcheThe Heart of the Buddha, by Diana J. Mukpo

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The practice of mindfulness, of bringing the scattered mind home, and so of bringing the different aspects of our being into focus, is called Peacefully Remaining or Calm Abiding.

All the fragmented aspects of ourselves, which had been at war, settle and dissolve and become friends. In that settling we begin to understand ourselves more, and sometimes even have glimpses of the radiance of our fundamental nature.



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Gradually, as you remain open and mindful, and use a technique to focus your mind more and more, your negativity will slowly be defused; you begin to feel well in your own skin, or, as the French say, être bien dans sa peau (“well in your own skin”). From this comes release and a profound ease. I think of this practice as the most effective form of therapy and self-healing.


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When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn. And in the all-revealing clarity of its sunlight, this insight can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own mind and the nature of reality.


Meditation is bringing the mind back home, and this is first achieved through the practice of mindfulness.

Once an old woman came to Buddha and asked him how to meditate. He told her to remain aware of every movement of her hands as she drew water from the well, knowing that if she did, she would soon find herself in that state of alert and spacious calm that is meditation.

-Sogyal Rinpoche



Mindfulness in Plain English

Excerpts by Venerable Henepola Gunaratana

Vipassana is the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices. The method comes directly from the Sitipatthana Sutta, a discourse attributed to Buddha himself. Vipassana is a direct and gradual cultivation of mindfulness or awareness. It proceeds piece by piece over a period of years. The student's attention is carefully directed to an intense examination of certain aspects of his own existence. The meditator is trained to notice more and more of his own flowing life experience.

Vipassana is a gentle technique. But it also is very , very thorough. It is an ancient and codified system of sensitivity training, a set of exercises dedicated to becoming more and more receptive to your own life experience. It is attentive listening, total seeing and careful testing. We learn to smell acutely, to touch fully and really pay attention to what we feel. We learn to listen to our own thoughts without being caught up in them. The object of Vipassana practice is to learn to pay attention. We think we are doing this already, but that is an illusion. It comes from the fact that we are paying so little attention to the ongoing surge of our own life experiences that we might just as well be asleep. We are simply not paying enough attention to notice that we are not paying attention. It is another Catch-22. Through the process of mindfulness, we slowly become aware of what we really are down below the ego image. We wake up to what life really is. It is not just a parade of ups and downs, lollipops and smacks on the wrist. That is an illusion. Life has a much deeper texture than that if we bother to look, and if we look in the right way.

Vipassana is a form of mental training that will teach you to experience the world in an entirely new way. You will learn for the first time what is truly happening to you, around you and within you. It is a process of self discovery, a participatory investigation in which you observe your own experiences while participating in them, and as they occur. The practice must be approached with this attitude. "Never mind what I have been taught. Forget about theories and prejudgments and stereotypes. I want to understand the true nature of life. I want to know what this experience of being alive really is. I want to apprehend the true and deepest qualities of life, and I don't want to just accept somebody else's explanation. I want to see it for myself." If you pursue your meditation practice with this attitude, you will succeed. You'll find yourself observing things objectively, exactly as they are--flowing and changing from moment to moment. Life then takes on an unbelievable richness which cannot be described. It has to be experienced.

The more concentration power you have, the less chance there is of launching off on a long chain of analysis about the distraction.

Just about the only rule you need to follow at this point is to put your effort on concentration at the beginning, until the monkey mind phenomenon has cooled down a bit. After that, emphasize mindfulness. If you find yourself getting frantic, emphasize concentration. If you find yourself going into a stupor, emphasize mindfulness. Overall, mindfulness is the one to emphasize.

The most important moment in meditation is the instant you leave the cushion. When your practice session is over, you can jump up and drop the whole thing, or you can bring those skills with you into the rest of your activities. It is crucial for you to understand what meditation is. It is not some special posture, and it's not just a set of mental exercises. Meditation is a cultivation of mindfulness and the application of that mindfulness once cultivated. You do not have to sit to meditate.

You can meditate while washing the dishes.

the ultimate goal of practice remains: to build one's concentration and awareness to a level of strength that will remain unwavering even in the midst of the pressures of life in contemporary society. Life offers many challenges and the serious meditator is very seldom bored.

A state of mindfulness is a state of mental readiness. The mind is not burdened with preoccupations or bound in worries. Whatever comes up can be dealt with instantly. When you are truly mindful, your nervous system has a freshness and resiliency which fosters insight. A problem arises and you simply deal with it, quickly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss. You don't stand there in a dither, and you don't run off to a quiet corner so you can sit down and meditate about it. You simply deal with it. And in those rare circumstances when no solution seems possible, you don't worry about that. You just go on to the next thing that needs your attention. Your intuition becomes a very practical faculty.

Try to stay alert and aware throughout the day. Be mindful of exactly what is taking place right now, even if it is tedious drudgery. Take advantage of moments when you are alone. Take advantage of activities that are largely mechanical. Use every spare second to be mindful. Use all the moments you can.

Meditation that is successful only when you are withdrawn in some soundproof ivory tower is still undeveloped. Insight meditation is the practice of moment-to-moment mindfulness. The meditator learns to pay bare attention to the birth, growth, and decay of all the phenomena of the mind. He turns from none of it, and he lets none of it escape. Thoughts and emotions, activities and desires, the whole show. He watches it all and he watches it continuously. It matters not whether it is lovely or horrid, beautiful or shameful. He sees the way it is and the way it changes. No aspect of experience is excluded or avoided. It is a very thoroughgoing procedure.

Thus, as genuine mindfulness is built up, the walls of the ego itself are broken down, craving diminishes, defensiveness and rigidity lessen, you become more open, accepting and flexible. You learn to share your loving-kindness.

Traditionally, Buddhists are reluctant to talk about the ultimate nature of human beings. But those who are willing to make descriptive statements at all usually say that our ultimate essence or Buddha nature is pure, holy and inherently good. The only reason that human beings appear otherwise is that their experience of that ultimate essence has been hindered; it has been blocked like water behind a dam. The hindrances are the bricks of which the dam is built. As mindfulness dissolves the bricks, holes are punched in the dam and compassion and sympathetic joy come flooding forward. As meditative mindfulness develops, your whole experience of life changes. Your experience of being alive, the very sensation of being conscious, becomes lucid and precise, no longer just an unnoticed background for your preoccupations. It becomes a thing consistently perceived.

Each passing moment stands out as itself; the moments no longer blend together in an unnoticed blur. Nothing is glossed over or taken for granted, no experiences labeled as merely 'ordinary'. Everything looks bright and special. You refrain from categorizing your experiences into mental pigeonholes. Descriptions and interpretations are chucked aside and each moment of time is allowed to speak for itself.

You actually listen to what it has to say, and you listen as if it were being heard for the very first time. When your meditation becomes really powerful, it also becomes constant. You consistently observe with bare attention both the breath and every mental phenomenon.

You feel increasingly stable, increasingly moored in the stark and simple experience of moment-to-moment existence. Once your mind is free from thought, it becomes clearly wakeful and at rest in an utterly simple awareness. This awareness cannot be described adequately. Words are not enough. It can only be experienced. Breath ceases to be just breath; it is no longer limited to the static and familiar concept you once held. You no longer see it as a succession of just inhalations and exhalations; it is no longer some insignificant monotonous experience. Breath becomes a living, changing process, something alive and fascinating. It is no longer something that takes place in time; it is perceived as the present moment itself. Time is seen as a concept, not an experienced reality. This is simplified, rudimentary awareness which is stripped of all extraneous detail. It is grounded in a living flow of the present, and it is marked by a pronounced sense of reality. You know absolutely that this is real, more real than anything you have ever experienced.

Once you have gained this perception with absolute certainty, you have a fresh vantage point, a new criterion against which to gauge all of your experience. After this perception, you see clearly those moments when you are participating in bare phenomena alone, and those moments when you are disturbing phenomena with mental attitudes. You watch yourself twisting reality with mental comments, with stale images and personal opinions. You know what you are doing, when you are doing it. You become increasingly sensitive to the ways in which you miss the true reality, and you gravitate towards the simple objective perspective which does not add to or subtract from what is. You become a very perceptive individual. From this vantage point, all is seen with clarity.

The innumerable activities of mind and body stand out in glaring detail. You mindfully observe the incessant rise and fall of breath; you watch an endless stream of bodily sensations and movements; you scan a rapid succession of thoughts and feelings, and you sense the rhythm that echoes from the steady march of time. And in the midst of all this ceaseless movement, there is no watcher, there is only watching. In this state of perception, nothing remains the same for two consecutive moments. Everything is seen to be in constant transformation. All things are born, all things grow old and die. There are no exceptions. You awaken to the unceasing changes of your own life. You look around and see everything in flux, everything, everything, everything. It is all rising and falling, intensifying and diminishing, coming into existence and passing away. All of life, every bit of it from the infinitesimal to the Indian Ocean, is in motion constantly. You perceive the universe as a great flowing river of experience. Your most cherished possessions are slipping away, and so is your very life. Yet this impermanence is no reason for grief. You stand there transfixed, staring at this incessant activity, and your response is wondrous joy. It's all moving, dancing and full of life.

As you continue to observe these changes and you see how it all fits together, you become aware of the intimate connectedness of all mental, sensory and affective phenomena. You watch one thought leading to another, you see destruction giving rise to emotional reactions and feelings giving rise to more thoughts. Actions, thoughts, feelings, desires--you see all of them intimately linked together in a delicate fabric of cause and effect. You watch pleasurable experiences arise and fall and you see that they never last; you watch pain come uninvited and you watch yourself anxiously struggling to throw it off; you see yourself fail. It all happens over and over while you stand back quietly and just watch it all work.

Out of this living laboratory itself comes an inner and unassailable conclusion. You see that your life is marked by disappointment and frustration, and you clearly see the source. These reactions arise out of your own inability to get what you want, your fear of losing what you have already gained and your habit of never being satisfied with what you have. These are no longer theoretical concepts--you have seen these things for yourself and you know that they are real. You perceive your own fear, your own basic insecurity in the face of life and death. It is a profound tension that goes all the way down to the root of thought and makes all of life a struggle. You watch yourself anxiously groping about, fearfully grasping for something, anything, to hold onto in the midst of all these shifting sands, and you see that there is nothing to hold onto, nothing that doesn't change.

A meditator keeps his mind open every second. He is constantly investigating life, inspecting his own experience, viewing existence in a detached and inquisitive way. Thus he is constantly open to truth in any form, from any source, and at any time. This is the state of mind you need for Liberation. It is said that one may attain enlightenment at any moment if the mind is kept in a state of meditative readiness. The tiniest, most ordinary perception can be the stimulus: a view of the moon, the cry of a bird, the sound of the wind in the trees. it's not so important what is perceived as the way in which you attend to that perception. The state of open readiness is essential. It could happen to you right now if you are ready. The tactile sensation of this book in your fingers could be the cue. the sound of these words in your head might be enough. You could attain enlightenment right now, if you are ready._

You find nothing. In all that collection of mental hardware in this endless stream of ever-shifting experience all you can find is innumerable impersonal processes which have been caused and conditioned by previous processes. There is no static self to be found; it is all process. You find thoughts but no thinker, you find emotions and desires, but nobody doing them. The house itself is empty. There is nobody home. Your whole view of self changes at this point. You begin to look upon yourself as if you were a newspaper photograph. When viewed with the naked eyes, the photograph you see is a definite image. When viewed through a magnifying glass, it all breaks down into an intricate configuration of dots.

Similarly, under the penetrating gaze of mindfulness, the feeling of self, an 'I' or 'being' anything, loses its solidity and dissolves. There comes a point in insight meditation where the three characteristics of existence--impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and selflessness-- come rushing home with concept-searing force. You vividly experience the impermanence of life, the suffering nature of human existence, and the truth of no self. You experience these things so graphically that you suddenly awake to the utter futility of craving, grasping and resistance. In the clarity and purity of this profound moment, our consciousness is transformed. The entity of self evaporates. All that is left is an infinity of interrelated non-personal phenomena which are conditioned and ever changing. Craving is extinguished and a great burden is lifted. There remains only an effortless flow, without a trace of resistance or tension. There remains only peace, and blessed Nibbana, the uncreated, is realized.

Abridged from 'Mindfulness in Plain English' By the Venerable Henepola Gunaratana

How to Do Mindfulness Meditation

By Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Mindfulness is essential to spiritual practice, for no matter what spiritual tradition we follow, we must have a mind that is able to stay in the present moment if our understanding and experience is to deepen. In mindfulness, or shamatha, meditation, we are trying to achieve a mind that is stable and calm. What we begin to discover is that this calmness or harmony is a natural aspect of the mind.

Through mindfulness practice we are just developing and strengthening it, and eventually we are able to remain peacefully in our mind without struggling. Our mind naturally feels content. An important point is that when we are in a mindful state, there is still intelligence. It’s not as if we blank out. Sometimes people think that a person who is in deep meditation doesn’t know what’s going on—that it’s like being asleep. In fact, there are meditative states where you deny sense perceptions their function, but this is not the accomplishment of shamatha practice.

Creating a Favorable Environment

There are certain conditions that are helpful for the practice of mindfulness. When we create the right environment it’s easier to practice. It is good if the place where you meditate, even if it’s only a small space in your apartment, has a feeling of upliftedness and sacredness. It is also said that you should meditate in a place that is not too noisy or disturbing, and you should not be in a situation where your mind is going to be easily provoked into anger or jealousy or other emotions. If you are disturbed or irritated, then your practice is going to be affected. Beginning the Practice I encourage people to meditate frequently but for short periods of time—ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes. If you force it too much the practice can take on too much of a personality, and training the mind should be very, very simple.

So you could meditate for ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening, and during that time you are really working with the mind. Then you just stop, get up, and go. Often we just plop ourselves down to meditate and just let the mind take us wherever it may. We have to create a personal sense of discipline. When we sit down, we can remind ourselves: “I’m here to work on my mind. I’m here to train my mind.” It’s okay to say that to yourself when you sit down, literally. We need that kind of inspiration as we begin to practice.

Posture

The Buddhist approach is that the mind and body are connected. The energy flows better when the body is erect, and when it’s bent, the flow is changed and that directly affects your thought process. So there is a yoga of how to work with this. We’re not sitting up straight because we’re trying to be good schoolchildren; our posture actually affects the mind. People who need to use a chair for meditation should sit upright with their feet touching the ground. Those using a meditation cushion such as a zafu or gomden should find a comfortable position with legs crossed and hands resting palm-down on your thighs. The hips are neither rotated forward too much, which creates tension, nor tilted back so you start slouching. You should have a feeling of stability and strength.

When we sit down the first thing we need to do is to really inhabit our body—really have a sense of our body. Often we sort of prop ourselves up and pretend we’re practicing, but we can’t even feel our body; we can’t even feel where it is. Instead, we need to be right here. So when you begin a meditation session, you can spend some initial time settling into your posture. You can feel that your spine is being pulled up from the top of your head so your posture is elongated, and then settle. The basic principle is to keep an upright, erect posture. You are in a solid situation: your shoulders are level, your hips are level, your spine is stacked up. You can visualize putting your bones in the right order and letting your flesh hang off that structure. We use this posture in order to remain relaxed and awake. The practice we’re doing is very precise: you should be very much awake even though you are calm. If you find yourself getting dull or hazy or falling asleep, you should check your posture.

Gaze

For strict mindfulness practice, the gaze should be downward focusing a couple of inches in front of your nose. The eyes are open but not staring; your gaze is soft. We are trying to reduce sensory imput as much as we can. People say, “Shouldn’t we have a sense of the environment?” but that’s not our concern in this practice. We’re just trying to work with the mind and the more we raise our gaze, the more distracted we’re going to be. It’s as if you had an overhead light shining over the whole room, and all of a sudden you focus it down right in front of you. You are purposefully ignoring what is going on around you. You are putting the horse of mind in a smaller corral.

Breath

When we do shamatha practice, we become more and more familiar with our mind, and in particular we learn to recognize the movement of the mind, which we experience as thoughts. We do this by using an object of meditation to provide a contrast or counterpoint to what’s happening in our mind. As soon as we go off and start thinking about something, awareness of the object of meditation will bring us back. We could put a rock in front of us and use it to focus our mind, but using the breath as the object of meditation is particularly helpful because it relaxes us. As you start the practice, you have a sense of your body and a sense of where you are, and then you begin to notice the breathing. The whole feeling of the breath is very important. The breath should not be forced, obviously; you are breathing naturally. The breath is going in and out, in and out. With each breath you become relaxed.

Thoughts

No matter what kind of thought comes up, you should say to yourself, “That may be a really important issue in my life, but right now is not the time to think about it. Now I’m practicing meditation.” It gets down to how honest we are, how true we can be to ourselves, during each session. Everyone gets lost in thought sometimes. You might think, “I can’t believe I got so absorbed in something like that,” but try not to make it too personal. Just try to be as unbiased as possible. Mind will be wild and we have to recognize that. We can’t push ourselves. If we’re trying to be completely concept-free, with no discursiveness at all, it’s just not going to happen.

So through the labeling process, we simply see our discursiveness. We notice that we have been lost in thought, we mentally label it “thinking”—gently and without judgment— and we come back to the breath. When we have a thought—no matter how wild or bizarre it may be—we just let it go and come back to the breath, come back to the situation here.

Each meditation session is a journey of discovery to understand the basic truth of who we are. In the beginning the most important lesson of meditation is seeing the speed of the mind. But the meditation tradition says that mind doesn’t have to be this way: it just hasn’t been worked with. What we are talking about is very practical. Mindfulness practice is simple and completely feasible. And because we are working with the mind that experiences life directly, just by sitting and doing nothing, we are doing a tremendous amount

`Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche is holder of the Buddhist and Shambhala lineages of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. “How to do Mindfulness Meditation appeared in the January 2000 issue of the Shambhala Sun.

Diamond Mind, A Psychology of Meditation by Rob Nairn

Excerpts

Happiness, compassion, wisdom, and clarity are inherent qualities within all human beings. The true nature of the mind is gentle, peaceful and clear. This seems difficult to believe because most of the time our minds are in a state of anxiety, agitation, desire, passion, anger, or grief - all clouds that obscure the bright pure quality of what we truly are. We ourselves are creating obscurations and thus keeping our innate qualities inaacessible within our minds.

Through understanding the psychology of meditation we can reverse our perspective, and recognize these obscurations, how they came about, and how to release and dissolve them. The innate brilliance of the mind then naturally manifests.

Meditation is inherently simple. We do not need to import anything new into the mind. There are no complex, intellectual mechanisms involved. We don't have to understand profound philosophical systems. What is necessary is to learn the very basic simplicity of being - and in this way discover the diamond mind.

"What is presented here is like a map; it is an entirely different experience to actually make this journey. It requires a guide to make this journey, and as well, we must make the proper preparations; our minds must be tamed and trained through the practice of meditation. Only then can we see the vajra world."

Chogyam Trunpa, Journey Without Goal

What is meditation?

It is you and me, it is us! our inner journey, our business, our effort. Nobody can do it for us. Meditation is a method of gaining access to the inner wisdom and compassion - and resolving our inner problems in the process.

As soo as we are in the success/failure dimension in meditation, we're in trouble, because there is no success in the normal sense.

So, in meditation, we are not working with the success/ failure paradigm at all. We are simply training ourselves to be present in the moment with exactly what is there. For most people the big suprise is that what is there is a bewildering stranger. One of the greatest strangers in the world is this one in the heart. We don't know much about ourselves.

When we start looking, we discover there is a great deal we don't want to be with, don't want to know about, don't want to feel. Meditation reveals a paradoxical situation. We are travelling through life with a stranger who at some level is trying to communicate with us, yet we want to know only a very limited aspect of communication. We want to know only the nice things about ourselves: whether we are happy, good-looking, enjoying things. If we experience anxiety, anger, guilt, depression, jealousy, and other unpleasant emotions (which we mostly know as a sinking feeling that gets pushed down into the pit of teh stomach) then we definitely don't want to know.

Towards a description:

To attempt a loose description rather than a definition of meditation, one could say it is a training based on mindfulness. This entails being present in the moment, which is the ground out of which tranquility arises. One comes face to face with the mind and learns about it at a deep level. This leads to inner understanding and penetrating insight into the illusion we have created about ourselves and the nature of life. Hence Buddhist meditation is often loosely termed "insight meditation", which describes the result of training in mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the founding cause of both tranquility and penetrating insight. When the mind is established in these two, we experience liberation from suffering and a co-emergent manifestation of compassion and wisdom. But the reslut is not the goal. We let go of goals and focus on the action of meditation. If we fixate on a goal, we block the arising of the meditative condition.

Meditation, then, involves being present with what is here.

External / Internal Surveillance

This external surveillance method also operates inwardly. We conduct surveillance in relation to our inner environment.

We refer to this as subjective because we are a subject and it is within us. Objective is concerned with external objects. The one form of surveillance is objectective and directed externally. The other is subjective and directed internally. The level and intensity of inner surveillance exceeds the external because there are no outer forces to change it.

When meditating we need to take account of this sensitive inner situation. Meditation first trains us to be present with what is there, with this inner environment. If we don't, we buy into the internal criticism, the repression, and the not wanting to know. This leads us away from meditation into morbid introspection. Our way of observing ourselves, becomes harmful because it can lead to self-rejection, repression, and paranoia instead of clarity and freedom. Then people say, "Stop dwelling on your faults and neuroses. You're always dwelling on your miseries." That's morbid introspection.

The second thing we do is train ourselves to develop an attitude towards ourselves which won't precipitate that condition. An attitude where we say, "Whatever arises is ok." Not OK in the sense that it's what we want, but that we can be with it. We don't have to try to get rid of it. Internally we cannot get rid of mindstates. If anxiety arises in the mind, we can't get rid of it any more than if the liver has a problem, we can tear it out and get rid of the problem. So it's extremely important that we really understand this attitude of self-acceptance: this is me, at this moment. It doesn't mean it's always going to be me. It means it's me now and the first thing I can do as a human being is come to terms with myself as a human being.

Beyond Ambition: No Goals

There are no goals. If we think, "I'll now develop the attitude of acceptance because then I will have an amazing mind," we have fallen into the third hole: that of forming a goal. As soon as there is a goal, there is a potential problem because it brings with it the idea of achievement and failure. We need to understand the general principle, that change will come about if we learn to work skillfully with the mind but we don't make change the goal. That's not our job. The change will arise in its way and in its own time due to the effect of meditation. Our job is to train ourselves through mindfulness, increasingly to be simply present in the moment and to come to terms with what is there. If we do that, everything else falls into place.

This is the order of things then: First training ourselves to be present in the moment with what is there. Second, developing the attitude of self-acceptance so that whatever airises is OK, thus coming to terms with ourselves. Third abandoning goals.

Having no goals bewilders most people in the beginning because in life we are obsessed with goals. "How can we get anywhere if we don't get a goal?" The answer is that if we let go of any idea of getting anywhere we come to see that we are already there. There is nowhere to go. We are sitting where we need to be, but just haven't realized it. Once we've understood that, we can relax, let go of the terrible strain of striving to achieve, to get there, to accomplish, to win. We can also let go of the accompanying fear of losing and failing. Wherever there is hope there is going to be fear in this context. So having no goals, we just learn to relax, be fully with ourselves, and OK about ourselves.

These are the reasons why we meditate: so that we can develop our inner potential, and actualize our own peak experiences without making them into goals. But most of all, so that we can really equip ourselves to help other beings. Our being in the world then becomes a natural, beneficial force so that simply being is beneficial instead of harmful. Without continually thinking, "Oh, I must do good things," the way the mind is becomes beneficial. By freeing our mind from its negative and neurotic patterns and liberating our inner potential, we experience a spontaneous response which will be helpful and beneficial to others. It's not contrived. We don't have to kepp thinking about it or fabricating it.

The Effects of Meditation

The effect of meditation, in the beginning, will be the gradual understanding of what is meant by tranquility, what is meant by the mind becoming tranquil. It is not something contrived or imposed or imported from outside. It is arising of what is already within us. As the mind becomes tranquil, many things begin to become clear. Things that were not formerly clear to us about ourselves, the world around us, the way we are living, relationships. We become clear about everything. So we need to generate within our minds the conditions for a prelinary mindfulness - the essence of meditation.

As tranquility arises we began gaining insight into the state of our own minds. Insight may arise naturally with tranquility. That is the traditional teaching. We train in tranquility and insight naturally arises.

Insight is the most profound level of learning. It is learning throught direct perception which naturally gives rise to understanding. It is not learning through externally acquired information, something imported from outside. It leads to wisdom because it is learning inwardly how we are and what we are as human beings. The way to wisdom and intelligence is to understand ourselves as human beings. Not through a theory, not through a concept, but through direct experience.

Direct perception: "Ah, that's what my mind does. That's why I become angry. That's why I become depressed. That's why I become anxious." There is no theory. It's direct perception. We see through meditation, what the mind is doing, moment by moment. Why? Because we are training ourselves to become present. If we are present, we naturally bring our intelligence to bear on the moment. Therefore we have no option but to find out what is happening.

The effect of this is that the mind inevitably changes. We don't make it change. It changes. It is like giving a child food; it eats. Through eating, its body changes. We don't get the child up in the morning and say, "Right, eat your breakfast and grow big and strong." The process of eating naturally does it. The process of meditation naturally brings about tranquility, insight, and change. Through that change arises the basis for wisdom, compassion, and clarity.

Meditation Support

When we begin meditating, we need a reference point for the mind to prevent it getting lost in distraction. This is called a support. Breath is generally used. Sound is also a good support.

....Our task as meditators is to gradually create the conditions for the removal of what stands between us and the experience of the enlightened condition: the obscurations of the mind.

The obscurations are rooted in what we call mind poisons: greed, hatred, delusion, pride, an jealousy. (Lamas say that westerners have invented the sixth: guilt.)

In simple terms it means facing and becoming free from negativity. The path is neither to dwell on the negative nor deny it. It is a mature middle way of acknowledging the existence of negative and then setting out to do something about it. The path to freedom from negativity has the development of mindfulness as the foundation.

Mindfulness can be defined as knowing what is happening while it is happening, no matter what it is.

Observer Consciousness and Activity Mind

The essence of meditation is training in mindfulness. This is done by resting the attention on an external meditation support, and returning to it every time it drifts away into thought. This action is possible because one part of the mind observes and identifies with thoughts and feelings as they arise. If we did not have this capacity for self-reflective awareness we would not know or realize we were thinking when thinking happens.

We call the part of mind that observes "observer consciousness," and the part that thinks and gets observed "activity mind". When we talk of the "thought", the word includes feelings and emotions.

Awareness is a quality of knowing which develops out of that, encompassing of whatever is happening around you without directing attention specifically to it. if I become mindful, I become more aware of things both within and without. So awareness develops out of mindfulness.

Wakefulness is a term that is used in a number of different contexts. In Buddhism, the term of wakefulness is applied to that quality of mind which is no longer lost in not wanting to know. It is a quality of mind that is spontaneously present and alert and therefore picking up what's going on. So it is a sharpening of awareness. It is also applied to somebody who has woken to the true nature of his or her own mind in which case it has a much more extended meaning. That means that you are beginning to move into the area where you are enlightened. The Buddha was often referred to as the Awakened One. Awakened to all the illusions and freed from them. The analogy that is often used is that the non-enlightened state is like being asleep. This is because your Buddha-nature, your enlightened awareness, is masked by a the sleep of ignorance, greed, and hatred. When you awake to the fact that that all is part of the illusion of egocentricity, you are free from that illusion. So you are awakened from the ego-illusion and all that goes with it.

These three terms are useful to look at because they describe the different stages we experience. It's quite useful to see meditation as a growth process, rather than a mystical or magical experience. As a growth process, it has its own systematic order. It's graduated within the Kagyu Lineage.

Source: Diamond Mind, A Psychology of Meditation by Rob Nairn, Shambhalla Publications

“The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Meditation”
by Chogyam Trunpa Rinponche

Mindfulness plays a very important role in this technique. In this case, mindfulness means that when you sit and meditate, you actually do sit. You actually do sit as far as the psychosomatic body is concerned. You feel the ground, body, breath, temperature. You don’t try specifically to watch and keep track of what is going on. You don’t try to formalize the sitting situation and make it into some special activity that you are performing. You just sit.
And then you begin to feel that there is some sense of groundedness. This is not particularly a product of being deliberate, but it is more the force of the actual fact of being there. So you sit. And you sit. And you breathe. And you sit and you breathe. Sometimes you think, but still you are thinking sitting thoughts. The psychosomatic body is sitting, so your thoughts have a flat bottom. Mindfulness of body is connected with the earth. It is an openness that has a base, a foundation. A quality of expansive awareness develops through mindfulness of body—a sense of being settled and of therefore being able to afford to open out.


We come to this in the second foundation of mindfulness, which is mindfulness of life, or survival. Since we are dealing with the context of meditation, we encounter this tendency in the form of clinging to the meditative state. We experience the meditative state and it is momentarily tangible, but in that same moment it is also dissolving. Going along with this process means developing a sense of letting go of awareness as well as of contacting it. This basic technique of the second foundation of mindfulness could be described as touch-and-go. you are there—present, mindful—and then you let go.

A common misunderstanding is that the meditative state of mind has to be captured and then nursed and cherished. That is definitely the wrong approach. If you try to domesticate your mind through meditation—try to possess it by holding onto the meditative state—the clear result will be regression on the path, with a loss of freshness and spontaneity. If you try to hold on without lapse all the time, then maintaining your awareness will begin to become a domestic hassle. It will become like painfully going through housework. There will be an underlying sense of resentment, and the practice of meditation will become confusing. You will begin to develop a love-hate relationship toward your practice, in which your concept of it seems good, but, at the same time, the demand this rigid concept makes on you is too painful.

So the technique of the mindfulness of life is based on touch-and-go. You focus your attention on the object of awareness, but then, in the same moment, you disown that awareness and go on. What is needed here is some sense of confidence—confidence that you do not have to securely own your mind, but that you can tune into its process spon_taneously.



Mindfulness of life relates to the clinging tendency not only in connection with the meditative state, but, even more importantly, in connection with the level of raw anxiety about survival that manifests in us constantly, second by second, minute by minute. You breathe for survival; you lead your life for survival. The feeling is constantly present that you are trying to protect yourself from death.

For the practical purposes of the second foundation, instead of regarding this survival mentality as something negative, instead of relating to it as ego-clinging as is done in the abstract philosophical overview of Buddhism, this particular practice switches logic around. In the second foundation, the survival struggle is regarded as a steppingstone in the practice of meditation. Whenever you have the sense of the survival instinct functioning, that can be transmuted into a sense of being, a sense of having already survived. Mindfulness becomes a basic acknowledgment of existing. This does not have the flavor of “Thank God, I have survived.” Instead, it is more objective, impartial: “I am alive, I am here, so be it.”

In this way, meditation becomes an actual part of life, rather than just a practice or exercise. It becomes inseparable from the instinct to live that accompanies all one’s existence. That instinct to live can be seen as containing awareness, meditation, mindfulness. It constantly tunes us in to what is happening. So the life force that keeps us alive and that manifests itself continually in our stream of consciousness itself becomes the practice of mindfulness.

Such mindfulness brings clarity, skill, and intelligence. You are here; you are living; let it be that way—that is mindfulness. Your heart pulsates and you breathe. All kinds of things are happening in you at once. Let mindfulness work with that, let that be mindfulness, let every beat of your heart, every breath, be mindfulness itself. You do not have to breathe specially; your breath is an expression of mindfulness. If you approach meditation in this way, it becomes very personal and very direct.

But again it is necessary to say, once you have that experience of the presence of life, don’t hang onto it. Just touch and go. Touch that presence of life being lived, then go. You do not have to ignore it. “Go” does not mean that we have to turn our backs on the experience and shut ourselves off from it; it means just being in it without further analysis and without further reinforcement.



Mindfulness of Effort

“The sudden flash is a key to all Buddhist meditation, from the level of basic mindfulness to the highest levels of tantra. But it is not enough just to hope that a flash will come to us; there must be a background of discipline.”

The next foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of effort. The idea of effort is apparently problematical. Effort would seem to be at odds with the sense of being that arises from mindfulness of body. Also, pushing of any kind does not have an obvious place in the touch-and-go technique of the mindfulness of life.

In either case, deliberate, heavy-handed effort would seem to endanger the open precision of the process of mindfulness. Still we cannot expect proper mindfulness to develop without some kind of exertion on our part. Effort is necessary. But the Buddhist notion of right effort is quite different from conventional definitions of effort.

The traditional Buddhist analogy for right effort is the walk of an elephant or tortoise. The elephant moves along surely, unstoppably, with great dignity. Like the worm, it is not excitable, but unlike the worm, it has a panoramic view of the ground it is treading on. Though it is serious and slow, because of the elephant’s ability to survey the ground there is a sense of playfulness and intelligence in its movement.

In the case of meditation, trying to develop an inspiration that is based on wanting to forget one’s pain and on trying to make one’s practice thrive on a sense of continual accomplishment is quite immature. On the other hand, too much solemnity and dutifulness creates a lifeless and narrow outlook and a stale psychological environment. The style of right effort, as taught by the Buddha, is serious but not too serious. It takes advantage of the natural flow of instinct to bring the wandering mind constantly back to the mindful_ness of breathing.

The crucial point in the bringing-back process is that it is not necessary to go through deliberate stages. It is not a question of forcing the mind back to some particular object, but of bringing it back down from the dream world into reality. We are breathing, we are sitting. That is what we are doing, and we should be doing it completely, fully, wholeheartedly.

There is a kind of technique, or trick, here that is ex_tremely effective and useful, not only for sitting meditation, but also in daily life, or meditation-in-action. The way of coming back is through what we might call the abstract watcher. This watcher is just simple self-consciousness, without aim or goal. When we encounter anything, the first flash that takes place is the bare sense of duality, of separateness. On that basis, we begin to evaluate, pick and choose, make decisions, execute our will. The abstract watcher is just the basic sense of separateness—the plain cognition of being there before any of the rest develops.

Instead of condemning this self-consciousness as dualistic, we take advantage of this tendency in our psychological system and use it as the basis of the mindfulness of effort.

The experience is just a sudden flash of the watcher’s being there. At that point we don’t think, “I must get back to the breath” or “I must try and get away from these thoughts.” We don’t have to entertain a deliberate and logical movement of mind that repeats to itself the purpose of sitting practice. There is just suddenly a general sense that something is happening here and now, and we are brought back. Abruptly, immediately, without a name, without the application of any kind of concept, we have a quick glimpse of changing the tone. That is the core of the mindfulness of effort practice.

Mindfulness of Mind

“Mind functions singly. Once. And once. One thing at a time. Things always happen one at a time, in a direct, simple movement of mind. Mindfulness of mind is to be there with that one-shot perception, constantly.” Often mindfulness is referred to as watchfulness. But that should not give the impression that mindfulness means watching something happening.

Mindfulness means being watchful, rather than watching some thing.

This implies a process of intelligent alertness, rather than the mechanical business of simply observing what happens. Particularly the fourth foundation—mindfulness of mind—has qualities of an aroused intelligence operating. The intelligence of the fourth foundation is a sense of light-handedness. If you open the windows and doors of a room the right amount, you can maintain the interior feeling of roomness and, at the same time, have freshness from outside. Mindfulness of mind brings that same kind of intelligent balance.

Mindfulness of mind means being with one’s mind. When you sit and meditate, you are there: you are being with your body, with your sense of life or survival, with your sense of effort, and at the same time, you are being with your mind. You are being there. Mindfulness of mind suggests a sense of presence and a sense of accuracy in terms of being there. You are there, therefore you can’t miss yourself. If you are not there, then you might miss yourself. But that also would be a doubletake: if you realize you are not there, that means you are there. That brings you back to where you are—back to square one.

The whole process is very simple, actually. Unfortunately, explaining the simplicity takes a lot of vocabulary, a lot of grammar. However, it is a very simple matter. And that matter concerns you and your world. Nothing else. It does not particularly concern enlightenment, and it does not particularly concern metaphysical comprehension. In fact, this simple matter does not particularly concern the next minute, or the minute before this one. It only concerns the very small area where we are now.

Really we operate on a very small basis. We think we are great, broadly significant, and that we cover a whole large area. We see ourselves as having a history and a future, and here we are in our big-deal present. But if we look at ourselves clearly in this very moment, we see we are just grains of sand—just little people concerned only with this little dot which is called nowness.

We can only operate on one dot at a time, and mindfulness of mind approaches our experience in that way. We are there and we approach ourselves on the very simple basis of that. That does not particularly have many dimensions, many perspectives; it is just a simple thing. Relating directly to this little dot of nowness is the right understanding of austerity. And if we work on this basis, it is possible to begin to see the truth of the matter, so to speak—to begin to see what nowness really means.

abridged version.

These teachings are abridged from The Heart of the Buddha, published by Shambhala Publications. ©1991 by Diana J. Mukpo. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was founder of Shambhala International, a worldwide association of meditation centers; Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and the Shambhala Sun. “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Meditation” appeared in the March 2001 issue of the Shambhala Sun.

Being Spiritual
Becoming Spiritual & Performing Miracles

by Wayne Dyer

This article presents 12 beliefs & practices to cultivate in order to manifest miracles in our life.

Becoming a spiritual being is synonymous with becoming a miracle worker and knowing the bliss of real magic. The differences between people who are non-spiritual, or "physical only", and those whom I call spiritual beings are dramatic. I use the terms spiritual and non-spiritual in the sense that a spiritual being has a conscious awareness of both the physical and the invisible dimension, while the non-spiritual being is only aware of the physical domain. Neither category, as I use them, implies atheism or religious orientation in any way. The non-spiritual person is not incorrect or bad because he or she experiences the world only in a physical manner.

Below are 12 beliefs and practices for you to cultivate as you develop your abilities to manifest miracles in your life. Becoming a spiritual being as outlined here is an all-out necessity if real magic is your objective in this lifetime.

1. The non-spiritual being lives exclusively within the five senses, believing that if you cannot see, touch, smell, hear, or taste something, then that something simply doesn't exist. The spiritual being knows that beyond the five physical senses, there are other senses we use to experience the world of form.

As you work toward becoming a spiritual being as well as a physical being, you begin to live more and more consciously within the invisible realm. You begin to know that there are senses beyond this physical world. Even though you cannot perceive it through one of the five senses, you know that you are a soul with a body, and that your soul is beyond limits and defies birth and death. It is not governed by any of the rules and regulations that govern the physical universe. To be a spiritual being means that you allow yourself the option of being multi-sensory. Hence a whole new world opens up. As Gary Zukav writes in The Seat of the Soul, "The experiences of the multi-sensory human are less limited than the experiences of the five-sensory human. They provide more opportunities for growth and development and more opportunities to avoid unnecessary difficulties."

2. The non-spiritual being believes we are alone in the universe. The spiritual being knows he or she is never alone.

A spiritual being is comfortable with the idea of having teachers, observers, and divine guidance available at any time. If we believe we are souls with bodies rather than bodies with souls, then the invisible, eternal part of ourselves is always available to us for assistance. Once this belief is firm and unshakable it can never be doubted, regardless of the rational arguments of those who live exclusively in the physical world. For some this is called intense prayer, for others it is universal, omnipresent intelligence or force, and for others it is spiritual guidance. It matters not what you call this higher self or how you spell it, since it is beyond definitions, labels, and language itself.

For the non-spiritual being this is all hogwash. We show up on Earth, we have one life to live and no one has any ghosts around or within to help out. This is a physical-only universe to the non-spiritual being and the goal is to manipulate and control the physical world. The spiritual being sees the physical world as an arena for growth and learning with the specific purpose of serving and evolving into higher levels of love. Non-spiritual beings accept the existence of a supreme being or God, not as a universal force that is within us but as a separate power that will someday hold us accountable. They do not see themselves as having assistance or a higher self, unless they have the kind of direct experience of divine presence recorded by St. Paul or St. Francis of Assisi. Spiritual beings simply know, through their personal experience of having been in contact with their own divine guidance, that they are not alone, and that they can use that guidance to become miracle makers in their lives.

3. The non-spiritual being is focused on external power. The spiritual being is focused on personal empowerment.

External power is located in the dominance of and control over the physical world. This is the power of war and military might, the power of laws and organization, the power of business and stock market games. This is the power of controlling all that is external to the self. The non-spiritual being is focused on this external power. By contrast, the spiritual being is focused on empowering himself and others to higher and higher levels of consciousness and achievement. The use of force over another is not a possibility for the spiritual being. He or she is not interested in collecting power, but rather in helping others to live in harmony and to experience real magic. This is a power of love that does not judge others. There is no hostility or anger in this kind of power. It is true empowerment to know that one can live in the world with others who have differing points of view and have no need to control or vanquish them as victims. A spiritual being knows the enormous power that comes with the ability to manipulate the physical world with one's mind.

A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe. The entire philosophy of aikido and the Oriental martial arts is based not on external power over the opponent, but on becoming at one with that external energy to remove the threat. Empowerment is the inner joy of knowing that external force is not necessary to be at harmony with oneself. To the non-spiritual being, no other way is known. One must constantly be ready for war. Even though the spiritual masters to whom they often pledge allegiance speak against such use of power, the non-spiritual being simply cannot see other alternatives

4. The non-spiritual being feels separated and distinct from all others, a being unto himself. The spiritual being knows that he is connected to all others and lives his life as if each person he meets shares being human with him.

When a person feels separate from all others he becomes more self-centered and much less concerned about the problems of others. He may feel some sympathy for people starving in another part of the world, but that person's daily approach is, "It's not my problem." The splintered personality, the non-spiritual being, is focused more on his own problems, and often feels that other human beings are either in his way or trying to get what he wants and so he must "do in" the other guy, before he gets done in himself.

The spiritual being knows that we are all connected, and he is able to see the fullness of God in each person with whom he makes contact. This sense of connection eliminates much of the inner conflict that the non-spiritual being experiences as he constantly judges others, categorizes them according to physical appearances and behaviors, and then proceeds to find ways to either ignore or take advantage of them for his own benefit. Being connected means that the need for conflict and confrontation is eliminated. Knowing that the same invisible force that flows through himself flows through all others allows the spiritual being to truly live the golden rule. The spiritual being thinks, "How I am treating others is essentially how I am treating myself, and vice versa." The meaning of "love thy neighbor as thyself" is clear to the spiritual being, while it is considered nonsense by the non-spiritual being. Negative judgment is not possible when one feels connected to all others. The spiritual being knows that he cannot define another by his judgments, that he only defines himself as a judgmental person.

5. The non-spiritual being believes exclusively in a cause/effect interpretation of life. The spiritual being knows that there is a higher power working in the universe beyond mere cause and effect. The non-spiritual being lives exclusively in the physical world, where cause and effect rule. If one plants a seed (cause), he will see the result (effect). If one is hungry, he will seek food. If one is angry, he will vent that anger. This is indeed a rational and logical way to think and behave, since the third law of motion for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction is always operating in the physical universe.

The spiritual being goes beyond Newton's physics and lives in an entirely different realm. The spiritual being knows that thoughts come out of nothingness, and that in our dream state (one-third of our entire physical lives), where we are in pure thought, cause and effect play no role whatsoever.

6. The non-spiritual being is motivated by achievement, performance and acquisitions. The spiritual being is motivated by ethics, serenity and quality of life.

For the non-spiritual person, the focus is on learning for the purpose of high grades, getting ahead, and acquiring possessions. The purpose of athletics is competition. Success is measured in external labels such as position, rank, bank accounts, and awards. These are all very much a part of our culture, and certainly not objects to be scorned, they simply are not the focus of the spiritual being's life. For the spiritual being, success is achieved by aligning oneself with one's purpose, which is not measured by performance or acquisitions. The spiritual being knows that these external things flow into one's life in sufficient amounts and that they arrive as a result of living purposefully. The spiritual being knows that living purposefully involves serving in a loving fashion. Mother Teresa, who has spent many years of her life caring for the most downtrodden among us in the slums of Calcutta, defined purpose this way in "For the Love of God:"

"The fruit of love is service, which is compassion in action. Religion has nothing to do with compassion. It is our love for God that is the main thing, because we have all been created for the sole purpose to love and be loved."

It is in ways such as this that the spiritual being's inner and outer reality is experienced. It is not necessary to become a saint ministering to the impoverished to become a spiritual being. One simply must know that there is much more to life than achievement, performance and acquisitions, and that the measure of a life is not in what is accumulated, but rather in what is given to others. Living ethically, morally and serenely while being aligned with a spiritual purpose is at the core of his being. Real magic cannot be experienced when your focus is on getting more for yourself, particularly if it is at the expense of others. When you experience a sense of serenity and quality about your life, knowing your mind is what creates such a state, you will also know that from such a state of mind flows miracle-making magic.

7. The non-spiritual being has no place within his awareness for the practice of meditation. The spiritual being cannot imagine life without it.

For the non-spiritual being, the idea of looking quietly within oneself and sitting alone for any period of time repeating a mantra, emptying one's mind, and seeking answers by aligning oneself with one's Higher Self borders on lunacy. For this person, answers are sought by working hard, struggling, persevering, setting goals, reaching those goals and setting new ones and competing in a dog-eat-dog world.

The spiritual being knows about the enormous power of the practice of meditation. He knows meditation makes him more alert and able to think more clearly. He knows the very special effect meditation has in relieving stress and tension.

Spiritual people know, by virtue of having been there and experienced it firsthand, that one can get divine guidance by becoming peaceful and quiet, and asking for answers. They know they are multidimensional and that the invisible mind can be tapped at higher and higher levels through meditation, or whatever you want to call the practice of being alone and emptying your mind of the frenetic thoughts that occupy so much of daily life. They know that in deep meditation one can leave the body and enter a sphere of magic that is as blissful a state as any drug could temporarily provide.

For the non-spiritual being this is perceived as an escape from reality, but for the spiritual being it is an introduction to a whole new reality, a reality that includes an opening in life that will lead to miracle making.

8. For the non-spiritual being, the concept of intuition can be reduced to a hunch or a haphazard thought that accidentally pops into one's head on occasion. For the spiritual being, intuition is far more than a hunch. It is viewed as guidance or as God talking, and this inner insight is never taken lightly or ignored.

You know from your own experience that when you ignore your intuitive proddings, you end up regretting it or having to "learn the hard way".

To the non-spiritual person, intuition is completely unpredictable and occurs in random happenstance. It is often ignored or shunned in favor of behaving in habitual ways. The spiritual being strives to increase consciousness concerning his intuition. He pays attention to invisible messages and knows deep within that there is something working that is much more than a coincidence.

Spiritual beings have an awareness of the nonphysical world and are not stuck exclusively in a universe restricted to the functioning of their five senses. Hence all thoughts, invisible though they may be, are something to pay attention to. But intuition is much more than a thought about something, it is almost as if one is receiving a gentle prod to behave in a certain way or to avoid something that might be dangerous or unhealthy. Although inexplicable, our intuition is truly a factor of our lives.

For the non-spiritual person, this seems to be merely a hunch and nothing to study or become more attuned to. The non-spiritual person thinks, "It will pass. It is just my mind at work in its disorderly way " For the spiritual person, these inner intuitive expressions are almost like having a dialogue with God.

A Personal Perspective

I view my intuition about everything and anything as God talking to me. I pay attention when I "feel something" strongly and I always go with that inner inclination. At one time in my life I ignored it, but now I know better and these intuitive feelings always, and I mean always, guide me in a direction of growth and purposefulness. Sometimes my intuition tells me where to go to write, and I follow, and the writing is always smooth and flowing. When I have ignored this intuition, I have struggled tremendously and blamed "writer's block."

I have come to not only trust that guidance in my writing, but to rely on it in virtually all areas of my life. I have developed a private relationship with my intuition from what to eat and what to write about, to how to relate to my wife and other family members. I meditate on it, trust it, study it, and seek to become more aware of it. When I do ignore it, I pay a price, and then remind myself of the lesson to trust that inner voice the next time.

I figure if I can talk to God and call it prayer, believing in such a universal divine presence, then there is nothing loony about having God talk to me. All the spiritual people I've read about share a similar feeling. Intuition is loving guidance and they know enough not to ignore it.

9. The non-spiritual being is involved in a lot of fighting, he is aligned with the tools of power in a war against that which he believes to be evil. This person knows what he hates, and experiences a great deal of inner turmoil over perceived wrongs. Much of his energy, both mental and physical, is devoted to what he perceives to be bad or evil.

Spiritual beings do not order their lives to be against anything. They are not against starvation, they are for feeding people and seeing that everyone in the world is nutritionally satisfied. They work on what they are for, rather than fighting what they are against. Fighting starvation only weakens the fighter and makes him angry and frustrated, while working for a well-fed populace is empowering. Spiritual beings are not against war, they are for peace and spend their energy on working for peace. They do not join a war on drugs or poverty, because wars need warriors and fighters, and this will not make the problems go away. Spiritual beings are for a well-educated youth, who can be euphoric, giddy and high without the need for external substances. They work toward this end, helping young people to know the power of their own minds and bodies. They fight nothing.

When you fight evil by employing the methods of hatred and violence, you are part of the hatred and violence of evil itself. despite the rightness of your position in your own mind. If all the people in the world who are against terrorism and war were to shift their perspective to supporting and working for peace, terrorism and war would be eliminated. Somehow our priorities are turned inside out. Spiritual beings do not get tied up with hatred. They are focused thoughtfully on what they are for and they translate that into action. Spiritual beings keep their thoughts on love and harmony, in the face of things they would love to see changed. All that you fight weakens you. All that you are for empowers you. In order to manifest miracles, you must be totally focused on what you are for. Real magic occurs in your life when you have eliminated the hatred that is in your life, even the hatred that you have against hatred.

10. The non-spiritual person feels no sense of responsibility to the universe, therefore he has not developed a reverence for life. The spiritual being has a reverence for life that goes to the essence of all beings.

The non-spiritual being believes, as Gary Zukav has said, "that we are conscious and that the universe is not." He thinks that his existence will end with this lifetime and that he is not responsible to the universe. The non-spiritual being has become arrogant.

The spiritual being behaves as if the God in all life matters, and he feels a sense of responsibility to the universe. He is in awe of this life and that he has a mind with which to process the physical universe. That awe leads him to look outward at all life and the environment with a sense of appreciation and reverence, to engage with life itself at a deeper level than merely the material world.

To the spiritual being the cycles of life are approached as representatives of infinity, with reverence that is truly an honoring of life. It is a gentle and kind approach toward all that is in our world, a recognition that the earth itself and the universe beyond has a consciousness and that our life is connected in some unseen way to all life now and in the past. The invisible intelligence that suffuses all form is a part of ourselves, thus a reverence for all life is knowing that there is a soul in everything. That soul is worthy of being honored.

The spiritual person is conscious of the need not to take more from the earth than is needed, and to give back to the universe in some fashion for those who will habitate the planet after himself. Miracle-making capability comes out of a strong reverence for all life, including your own, and therefore in order to know real magic you must learn to think and act in ways consistent with being a reverent spiritual being.

11. The non-spiritual being is laden with grudges, hostility, and the need for revenge. The spiritual being has no room in his heart for these impediments to miracle making and real magic.

The spiritual being knows that all spiritual masters have talked about the importance of forgiveness. Here are few examples from our mayor religious teachings:

Judaism: The most beautiful thing a man can do is to forgive wrong.

Christianity: Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" "As many as seven times." Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven."

Islam: Forgive thy servant seventy times a day. Sikhism: Where there is forgiveness there is God himself.

Taoism: Recompense injury with kindness.

Buddhism: Never is hate diminished by hatred. It is only diminished by love.

This is an eternal law. For the spiritual being it is crucial to be able to "walk the talk." One cannot profess to be a practicing member of a given faith, and then behave in ways inconsistent with the teachings. Forgiveness is an act of the heart.

12. The non-spiritual being believes that there are real world limitations and that although there may be some evidence for the existence of miracles, they are viewed as random happenings for a few fortunate others.

The spiritual being believes in miracles and his own unique ability to receive loving guidance and to experience a world of real magic. The spiritual being knows that miracles are very real. He believes the forces that have created miracles for others are still present in the universe and can be tapped into. The non-spiritual being sees miracles in a totally different light. He believes them to be accidents, and therefore has no faith in his own ability to participate in the miracle-making process.

Conclusion

The spiritual dozen require very little of you. They are not difficult to understand nor do they require any long training or indoctrination on your part. They can be accomplished in this very instant in which you are reading. Becoming a spiritual being takes place within that invisible self I have been writing about. Regardless of how you have chosen to be up until now, working toward becoming a spiritual being can be your choice today. You do not have to adopt any specific religious tenets or undergo a religious transformation you simply have to decide that this is the way you would like to live out the remainder of your life. With this kind of inner commitment you are on your way. It is important to recognize that real magic is unavailable to those who choose the non-spiritual life. Being able to make miracles happen is fundamentally a result of how you choose to align yourself, how you choose to use your mind, and how much faith you have in being able to use it to affect your physical world.