Practice meditation regularly. Meditation leads to eternal bliss. Therefore meditate, meditate. ~ Swami Sivananda

Transcendental meditation is evil because when you are meditating, it opens space within you for the devil to enter. ~ Rev. Billy Graham

So just what is meditation? Is it the path to eternal bliss, or it is the road to everlasting damnation?

I've been meditating for 35 years. Not daily, mind you. Or even religiously--if this is an adjective that even makes sense when talking about meditation. In fact, for at least 32 of those 35 years, I didn't meditate at all.

Let's start at the beginning.

In 1973, I learned a meditation technique that was very similar to the then-popular Transcendental Meditation called Superconscious Meditation. I was taught by a man who had been the subject of some of the very first scientific studies of meditation techniques. His name was Swami Rama of the Himalayas and what he demonstrated to the scientists who probed and poked and measured him was that the mind, when trained, can do some very amazing things. I believe the course I took lasted 6 weeks and I went once a week for a couple of hours.

Sadly, like many great and holy--yet imperfect--men, Swami Rama's very human desires were his undoing. More precisely, it was his organization's undoing. In 1997, a year after he died, The Himalayan Institute was ordered to pay nearly $2 million for the Swami's sexual misconduct over the years; but specifically with a 19-year old student.

While this is definitely not an uncommon theme in the lives of powerful and charismatic men, this was one of those episodes that makes me wonder if there are any men strong enough to overcome our powerful physiology. Having said that, however, it must be remembered that often these kinds of actions are based as much on power as sex.

I only practiced Swami Rama's Superconscious Meditation for a couple of years. Even then I missed days; sometimes weeks. So as you might tell, I am not, nor ever have been accused of being a well-disciplined person.

The reason I stopped altogether was because of the very reason I should have continued. Frankly, I was a neurotic mess.

My then-new bride and I had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, which was our dream to do before we were even married. Well, perhaps it was more my dream than hers, but that's another story.

One thing became clear to us very quickly. It isn't the wisest thing to do to move to a high-energy and expensive (compared to our former Midwest hometown) place like the Bay Area without jobs and with very limited skills. But as they, say, we were "young...and stupid!"

California was--and still is--an exciting dreamland where some people almost seem able to absorb its energy through their skin. For others, it becomes a nightmare.

For my wife and I, it simply became a burden.

Not able to afford a house anywhere in the Bay Area, or an apartment in San Francisco or Marin County, we settled for an apartment not far from the University of California campus in Berkeley. The next cheapest place below us would have been next door in the city of Oakland, but between the two most notable and notorious civic groups of that city, the Hells Angels and the Black Panthers, we opted for the relative comfort and security of a university town like Madison, Wisconsin, where we'd both lived while attending college.

My wife and met after we left school while both working at the same hospital as nursing assistants; the lowest paid of health professions. We assumed that we could easily get a job doing this in the Bay Area as well.

But after a few weeks of filling out job applications, the only job I could get was in the senior citizens ward of an ethnic hospital near Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Basically, I was working in a nursing home.

This job necessitated my commuting from Berkeley across the 9-mile long Bay Bridge--the one that collapsed in the earthquake of '89--and through the busy streets of San Francisco to the hospital.

The Streets of San Francisco, incidentally, was a very popular television program at the time and occasionally I'd see them shooting an episode as I drove to or from work. But I digress.

My wife, however, couldn't find a steady job and had to settle for working as an on-call nursing assistant temp. Since we only had one car at the time, this sometimes necessitated some fancy logistics to get her to work, then me over to San Francisco so that I wasn't late.

Our life in the Bay Area was supposed to be a eternal vacation: which meant that we'd be able to visit places like beautiful Golden Gate Park or Mt. Tam and Bodega Bay in Marin County any time. Or that we could enjoy wonderful day trips to Big Sur, Mendocino, Yosemite Park, the Russian River, the Redwoods and all the other attractions that the state of California offered.

Without the kind of income that could allow us these enjoyable diversions, however, life was mostly commuting through busy traffic in the morning, then spending an exhausting day giving sponge baths and emptying bedpans, and then commuting back to Berkeley at night. On the weekends, we seldom ventured outside of Berkeley.

Soon, little things began to get on my nerves: noises in the apartment building; dogs barking and the like, and soon I felt an almost constant tightness in my throat from the stress and disappointment of my now-broken dream. It was at this time that I just stopped meditating. After all, wasn't meditation supposed to allow one to rise above these kinds of things? Well, it hadn't done a thing to improve my life!

We moved back to Wisconsin after about six months. Our life in America's Dairyland was much more mundane, but at least we were used to the pace, and the standard of living was not nearly as formidable. Our married life actually began at that point and within a few years, we'd had two daughters.

The stresses didn't end with our move back, however. Over the next fifteen years I had an average of one job a year. My inability to stick to a job that didn't satisfy certain needs in me started becoming very difficult on my family as well as myself.

I found myself lapsing into depression more and more as I would dwell on all the things that had not gone right in my life. And by now, meditation was the farthest thing from my mind.

It finally took a pharmaceutical drug that allowed me to escape from my biology-imposed prison. The stress of my life had taken its toll on the amount and availability of the neurotransmitter, serotonin, in my body.

Serotonin is vital in the modulation of physiological manifestations like anger, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep, sexuality and appetite. Any or all of these things can be affected by the lack of it.

Paxil, the Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitor (SSRI) anti-depresssant was the name of the drug that came to my rescue nearly 12 years ago. Within weeks, the rage I'd felt for years boiling just under the surface, as well as my mild obsessive-compulsive tendencies that went along with my depression eased. I truly felt like a new man.

This was exactly the result I'd wanted to achieve with meditation, but never could. With Paxil, meditation didn't seem necessary and I never thought another thing about it.

Until about two years ago, when I began the journey I have written about extensively in this blog.

It took about another year before I finally felt that I'd missed something by not meditating for the previous 33 years. How much farther along toward "Enlightenment" or something approaching that would I be had I continued? How much different would my life have been all those years?

As I've heard time and time again about such questions, however, it seems that it is only when we are ready do these questions even arise. And now I felt ready once again to revisit meditation.

I began my old Superconscious Meditation routine and used the mantra given to me long ago by a disciple of Swami Rama's named Swami Ajaya, formerly Allan Weinstock, who may have been a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin Department of Psychiatry while I was attending that school as an undergrad. In any case, he achieved his doctrate and has been a practicing psychotherapist ever since.

I am glad to see that he has also continued on his spiritual path in spite of the problems of his teacher and mentor. I am even more interested to see that according to his website, Being Awareness, along with the many books on Yoga and Psychology he has written or co-authored, he is writing a book on another subject of great interest to me. From his website:

Dr. Ajaya has also researched the effectiveness of entheogens in releasing dysfunctional patterns in the body-mind. He is currently writing a book that demonstrates how entheogens, self inquiry, and psychotherapy complement one another in releasing identification with the constricted self and opening to being awareness.

The ironic thing with this idea is that Dr. Stanislav Grof was doing the same thing over 50 years ago when he began using LSD as the entheogen in his psychoanalytic practice. Still, Dr. Ajaya's work is yet another example how so many of the sidepaths I have taken on on my journey all seem to converge at a place where we might discover the true ground of our being.

As for my return to meditating in the past year, I felt that so much time had passed that I was in need of a more powerful and effective method, and so my search for one began.

Vipassana Meditation

Perhaps a year ago now, I listened to an interview of S. N. Goenka by Michael Toms of New Dimension Media. For many years, Mr. Goenka has been teaching the oldest and simplest form of meditation known called Vipassana.

The technique which S.N.Goenka teaches represents a tradition that is traced back to the Buddha. The Buddha never taught a sectarian religion; he taught Dhamma - the way to liberation - which is universal. In the same tradition, Mr. Goenka's approach is totally non-sectarian. For this reason, his teaching has a profound appeal to people of all backgrounds, of every religion and no religion, and from every part of the world.

Mr. Goenka has taught tens of thousands of people in his 10-day Meditation courses, for which he charges nothing. As stated on the Vipassana website: "There are no charges for the courses - not even to cover the cost of food and accommodation. All expenses are met by donations from people who, having completed a course and experienced the benefits of Vipassana, wish to give others the opportunity to also benefit. "

This, to me, is a remarkable policy by Mr. Goenka and displays his dedication to the spiritual liberation of people everywhere, regardless of income. Unfortunately, this is a far cry from a great many spiritual disciplines and modalities in the world, and especially in the United States.

Below is an 8 minute overview of Vipassana by S. N. Goenka.



The rest of the introduction to Vipassana can be found on YouTube.com. This is the link to Part 2.

My daughter, who is living in India until October recently went on a 10-day Vipassana Meditation retreat there and was profoundly affected by the experience. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to avail myself of this kind of intensive retreat yet. Still, the technique is a simple one and for awhile I was using it during my own meditation at home.

Breathwork and Kundalini Yoga

Then this past June, I had what for me was the most rewarding experience of my journey thus far with my Holotropic Breathwork weekend in Houston, Texas. I've written about this weekend extensively in my posts, Preparing for Launch, Liftoff! and ReEntry. My first post that describes Holotropic Breathwork is called The Breath of Lives.

After that experience, I felt that the way to Enlightenment could perhaps be "expedited" with the use of breathwork. The most well known technique employed for this purpose is Kundalini Yoga, which was popularized in this country by Yogi Bhajan through his 3HO, or Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization.

After some investigation, I was happy to learn that even in my relatively small town there is a teacher of Kundalini Yoga, and I made plans to take the introductory course.

I did my homework on Kundalini Yoga and understood that it would be a very strenuous class that combined yoga postures with deep breathing and some meditation. What I had no idea was just how strenuous it was going to be.

Like many older folks, I still think of myself as being the strong, vibrant young man I once was. It is damned hard for the ego to let go of those kinds of self-images, and when I began the class, I was determined that the overweight, out-of-condition man I am would bow to the younger man I still felt myself to be inside.

How wrong I was! Within minutes and during an exercise that found me turning my head quickly left to right for a minute or two, I began to feel a familiar feeling that occurs with me frequently in boats and during bumpy airline flights: nausea.

Sadly, that one exercise began a slow, but steady downward slide toward what was to be a miserable experience for me; to the extent that after about six days of debating whether to go back for a second class, I finally "wimped out" and decided that I would have to be in much better shape to go back.

I know that the nausea itself was caused by a couple of factors; first, I have an inner ear problem that has always been a problem for me in certain types of movements. I once got nauseous on a ferris wheel at a carnival. This one didn't make sense to me because it was just going up and down rather than round and round, but it happened nonetheless.

As for the Kundalini class, besides being affected by the rapid head movements I'd also gone straight to the class from work without eating or--more importantly--without drinking. So I may have been a bit dehydrated as well. Still, I'm willing to take the rap that I did indeed wimp out!

I actually do want to return to take the class at some point, but for now I am doing my best to get back into condition and lose weight so that my body won't be so shocked at the intensity of the class; the rewards of which I feel could be great. There are certainly less strenuous ways to achieve what I want to achieve and since I lean toward being more endomorph than mesomorph, I don't know if I can say honestly that I will go back to Kundalini Yoga, but let's say that the young man inside me still wants to.

So obviously, the subject of meditation is complex and varied. In fact, an organization called The Meditation Society of America even has a page that lists 108 meditation techniques, including one called Reverse Evil to Live (#91), which is not only a meditation technique, but also uses the palindrome evil and live, and instructions for reading the palindrome are contained in the name itself. Very Clever!

2012

Recently I had a discussion with a friend about what, if anything, will occur on December 21st, 2012, which is the end of the current Mayan calendar cycle of 26,000 years. According to this website, this is the date "that our biological process is transforming, approaching the culmination of a 26,000 year evolutionary program. Bringing the return of universal telepathy, heightened sense capacity, and self-reflective consciousness, this is a return to the sacred domain of our inner technology."

2012 also plays a part in a software program Terence McKenna developed many years ago called Fractal Time or Timewave Zero. He designed this software to demonstrate his Novelty Theory, a complex theory that involves ontology, morphogenesis, and eschatology and which is built upon the classic Chinese text, the I Ching or Book of Changes,

Based on his software, he determined that 2012 would be what he called an End of History for mankind. According to the Wikipedia page on Novelty Theory,

This End of History was to be the final manifestation of The Eschaton, which McKenna characterized as a sort of strange attractor towards which the evolution of the universe developed.

His predictions for this transcendent event were wide ranging and varied, depending on his audience, and different times he conjectured the following: the mass of humanity would, by means of some technology, become mentally conjoined in a great collective; the moment in which time travel became a reality; the birth of self-conscious artificial intelligence; a global UFO visitation; and occasionally he even expressed doubt whether anything at all would happen. However, McKenna claimed that there was no contradiction between these scenarios, as they might all happen simultaneously.

For the consummate math nerds out there, this page will explain the mathmatics behind Timewave Zero. Even though only the Sigma character (?) is used on this page, it's all pretty much Greek to me.

I've already written about Daniel Pinchbeck's book, 2012: The Return of Quetalcoatl. The following video is an entertaining 6-minute overview of Daniel's idea about this momentous date as presented in his book.



Another person who has written about the 2012 event goes by what to my mind is the absurdly contrived name of Drunvalo Melchizedek, who for some reason--possibly intuition--I want to rate high on the "Huckster Meter".

Yet, this is admittedly very unfair to Mr. Melchizedek. So I decided to spent almost an hour listening to him speak about accessing the Higher Self, to which you must first access the Lower Self. In addition to these two Selves, he speaks a lot about his own life, which is fine. He has lived an interesting if not extraordinary life, but somehow after the videos were done, I didn't really know anything more about the Higher Self than I did at the beginning.

However, you are free to assess his ideas for yourself here, and while popularity in the world of New Ageism is not an assurance of the truth of the message, he does seem to be very popular and has spawned a virtual smorgasbord of New Age websites and programs that include those of his wife, Claudette, and his nephew, Ken Page.

My natural tendency towards cynicism colors my perception of Drunvalo's New Age cottage industry and I really should read one or more of his books before I pass any kind of judgment as to his veracity or profundity. As for which book to read, I guess that his book, Serpent of Light: Beyond 2012, would be the one I'd choose if I had the time.

Unfortunately, I have an ever-enlarging collection of books I need to get to for this journey that offers me more immediate intellectual and spiritual sustenance. I do, however, invite anyone who is into Drunvalo Melchizedek to comment here and tell me how I am all wet and perhaps just too stupid to understand his concepts of Sacred Geometry, The Spirit of Ma'at, The Flower of Life and Merkaba Meditation. And believe me, there are many areas of knowledge of which I am both ignorant and utterly incapable of grokking.

Meditation! Oh yeah! That's why I got off on this whole 2012 tangent in the first place. I was talking about different types of meditation, and Drunvalo has even developed his own method based on the Hebrew Merkabah, or throne-chariot of God as spoken of by Ezekiel (1:4-26) in the Old Testament.

Drunvalo states that Merkaba Mediation is "a counter-rotating field of light generated from the spinning of specific geometric forms that simultaneously affects one's spirit and body." More specifically, he goes on to say that "the Merkaba is a crystalline energy field that is comprised of specific sacred geometries that align the mind, body, and heart together."

Youtube, that remarkable library of online videos has a number of Merkaba-related videos that generally involve a spinning 3D tetrahedron called a star tetrahedron. An example can be found here.

Om Namah Shivaya

Finally, the question might arise, what meditation technique am I using these days?

I am currently meditating while chanting "Om Namah Shivaya" or Om Namaha Shiva. Chanting is very new to me, but an interesting way to go inside. As mentioned on the website, this mantra is considered one of the most powerful.

Below is a 3-minute chant of Om Namaha Shiva sung by Sheila Chandra, whose beautiful voice first got me interested in Indian music. You can hear short clips and purchase MP3's of any cut from her album "Weaving My Ancestors' Voices" at this Amazon page.



The most important question for anyone practicing meditation of any kind is, will this be of benefit to me? A greater question is, will this be of benefit to the world of creation?

As for being a benefit to me, like so many things I've worked with in the past couple years, meditation doesn't seem to have had a great deal of effect on my everyday life. But obviously I haven't really been at it that long in comparison to the total time I've thought about using it.

One of the great frustrations of working with many of these spiritual methods is an inability to know if and when they are working. Unfortunately, we can't all be Saint Paul and be struck down by God on our own Road to Damascus. Instead, attitude and intent are incredibly important in how we go into them and perceptions of whether they even work are mostly subjective.

Thus far, then, I have to be honest and say that I've noticed no great change in how I react to stress, or how compassionate and loving I am in my everyday life.

But even having said that, I must relate that over the last two or three months, I've weaned myself completely off Paxil, and I have to admit that I was on a pretty high daily dose. So after having thrown off my comforting emotional blanket after 12 years, life can be seem very raw at times. Intense emotions can rise quickly and I have felt moments of depression trying to seep into my consciousness at different moments for different reasons.

Will having restarted my meditation help me battle the negative aspects of my emotional life? Only time will tell. But besides meditation, I'm arming myself with a few other healing modalities.

Just this past weekend I had a quite wonderful experience with Reiki, which is the Japanese method (originally from India and China) of energy manipulation in the body. Whenever the word energy, or Ki or Chi or Qi are used with the idea of healing, we are speaking of matters of such subtlety that science refuses to even acknowledge them.

Since I have no areas of pain that I needed to have worked on specifically, what I experienced last Saturday was an hour of intense relaxation that was facilitated by a woman whose soothing and caring presence itself was an important part of the process. Since she is also a massage therapist, her methodology with Reiki involves a very light touching of different parts of the body. There was no manipulation involved; simply touching. Over other areas, she used the more traditional above-the-body approach of transferring energy through her to me.

Based on how enjoyable that session itself was, and how long afterwards I felt a relaxation and even joy as I proceeded with my day, I have to rate Reiki as a very pleasant surprise; so much so that I intend to have more sessions as well as try a couple of the other services offered at this healing center: acupuncture and massage therapy.

There are many skeptics who believe that nothing measurably beneficial comes from things like reiki or acupuncture or even meditation; nothing good or nothing bad. The ultimate doubters' website is The Skeptic's Dictionary, where if there is an idea that doesn't conform to modern science's methodology--as well as its biases--you will find it debunked and even ridiculed. A good case in point is its page on Transcendental Meditation.

Oddly enough, I have a feeling of camradery with the folks who produce The Skeptic's Dictionary. It wasn't too long go that I found pages like those found there to be required reading. In addition to The Skeptic's Dictionary, I frequented professional debunker and magician James Randi's website and perhaps most importantly, Rick Ross's website, which is devoted to rooting out and exposing "destructive cults, controversial groups and movements".

As a person whose brother was caught inside the Moonie cult for a number of years, the information provided there is invaluable to people who find themselves in similar situations. I still find sites like these important places to check whenever I have questions about a well-promoted person, movement or philosophy. I use them as provide some kind of balance as well as to counter excessive hype found on many of websites that provide extraordinary knowledge or insight to the human condition.

Still, there is much in and out of our universe and reality that do not seem to lie within the rigid structures of modern science. Thousands of years of human history and millions of years of evolution have brought mankind to a world we call normal, yet cannot be called so by any stretch of the imagination. An awareness of what occurs every day in our "civilized" world demonstrates this.

Therefore, while many of the things that pass for spiritual, supernatural or non-ordinary realities might be little more than "snake oil", I think that there is a positive psychic energy that happens to people on a spiritual path that is able to combine with others on a similar path and in doing so, societal memes can be modified and created that can possibly lead toward the kind of world most of us really do desire to be a part of.

In other words, Hey, it can't hurt. And who knows, it might even help!

Afterword

I decided last night to do the most radical thing I've ever done with my body--other than decide to be born--and that is begin a 3-week body purification cleanse. As a man who has abused his body for many decades, I feel like this is a gift that I can give it, and one that is long overdue.

It was a good friend who suggested this cleanse to me as she and I both realized on my last birthday (me for the first time perhaps) that I wasn't getting or feeling any younger. Fortunately she will be just a few days ahead on her own 3-week cleanse, and so she will be able to figuratively hold my hand as I proceed to face what I consider an assault on everything I know and love about eating in 21st century America.

This cleansing process involves the giving up of things very important to me like coffee, preservatives, artificial colors, flavorings and sweeteners and all foods except fruits and vegetables certain fats and oils and a minimum of 8 glasses of water; basically everything that that makes life worthwhile! This process, however, does provide protein supplements so that I won't suddenly collapse in week 2 from malnutrition.

Still, I look forward to the challenge. As opposed to the subtleties I described above in regard to determining if this spiritual approach or that spiritual approach is effective or not, I have to believe that I will know within a very short time how both my body and mind react to these new feelings of preventing the toxins we consume with every day with our food from entering this temple that is my body.

Well, actually my temple is more like the Temple in Jerusalem. All that remains of that building is the outer walls. And while Judaism has decided not to rebuild its Holy Temple, I have to believe that a little urban renewal project would be good for mine.