Meditation, the practice of Truth seekers.

Seekers, renunciants, and others who seek Truth with a big T:

Seekers are (as far as this site is concerned, anyway) those people who have become aware that there may be more meaning, value, truth (or something like that) available in life than living in the modern culture has led them to believe.

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The golden childhood: Six years' freedom.

The golden childhood is a common feature of seekers' lives, even though many don't notice this until fairly late in their search because childhood memories can be clouded by later developments, particularly resentments of parents and culture.

If the first six years of a child's life provide a significant degree of freedom, the mind forms with enough flexibility to cope with a seeker's path.

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The "triggering" intentions.

The "triggering" intentions are made before a seeker really gets going - shows up as a seeker.

looking back, many seekers experience a moment of wry amusement at recalling theirs.

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Awareness of Death

Becoming aware of death started Buddha on his path. Later, he'd tell his bhikkhus to go spend some time at the burning ghat (prounounced as afrikaans: gat) - where bodies are taken to be burned.

There's a true expert of The Art Of Living and Dying. His groups are very sincerely recommended. Swami Veetman.      Take a look…

Before you set out (in).

Clearing the ground:

Forgiving parents and culture, releasing judgments and resentments, cathartic techniques, transcending reward and punishment. Therapy groups are a great start to developing awareness of the depth of these issues.

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Noticing the mind. What "should be" and what is.

Noticing that you have a mind, that it isn't you, although you have to endure the consequences of what it does! That's a first step. The next is getting the mind to purge, reducing its complexity, increasing in–telligence and awareness. After that, getting into control, establishing a right relationship with your mind.

When you've had enough of having your life mismanaged by your mind, it's time to meditate, to open to the possibilities of no-mind, no-thingness, suchness.

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Angels and Demons, The Dark Night of The Soul

St John of the Cross wrote beautifully on the subject, in between torture sessions at the hands of his Carmelite Brothers. This phase is not a big focus in Eastern traditions, but needs more emphasis for Westerners. As a seeker approaches truth, and encounters the lies lived by so far, there's much self-judgment and fantasy-enhanced fears to face.

Worse, aspects of personality that have been rejected by the forming ego have to be evoked, loved and integrated. Some of these aspects have been so rejected, so distanced that they can be hard to evoke. Submitting to fasting, certain drugs, extreme physical exhaustion, physical or emotional or pain can all bring them to awareness.

When first glimpsed, they are so rejected, so alienated from what we believe to be our centre, that they are percieved as being as alien as the mind can imagine. Hence, for St John, they were demons. For others they have been "indigenous teachers from a far away land" or beings from far distant galaxies... always further and further as cultural ideas of "distance" and "alien" change.

This is one reason why "selling" meditation or the path as something that will improve people, or make them happier is intrinsically fraudulent. On the way to increased awareness, there are things one has to become aware of. Some of those things, you deliberately suppressed within yourself because they were too painful to face at the time. When revisited, for sure, there's going to be pain, torture, gnashing of teeth. The Dark Night.

Mastery and Learning from Masters.
The New Way of Discipleship.

Times have moved on since the days of Mahavira, Buddha and Jesus. The functioning of the Master-Disciple relationship has undergone some changes. The approach and methods of Masters and teachers has undergone a radical transformation.

The Master's problem is how to help the beloved disciples wake up. Some things can help, and there's a lot of stuff in the way. A divided mind, attachment to posessions, addiction to and unconsciousness in sex, repressed anger and so on.

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Meditation: Starting the journey

Learning to learn.

Whether you read the watered down version in an "official" Bible, or Thomas' richer, more authentic version, you likely have come across Jesus' teaching that one needs to learn as a little child in order to enter The Kingdom. I have never found a better description of the correct approach to true learning.

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Expanding the awareness.

Unlearning the automatic habits of the mind, dropping assumptions and expectations are vital for developing awareness. Taking life's small tasks, and bringing your awareness to them can be immensely helpful. This is what's behind the practice of walking, standing, sitting with great awareness used by some meditation schools. If you are studying with a school that does this, just watch your awareness in the couple of minutes they typically give you for eating. If you can get through that, undisturbed, you're really coming along!

It is a useful meditation to take anything you do habitually and bring your awareness to it. Driving in traffic, preparing food, many things.

Reducing "meaningless" input also helps at this stage. Has watching TV really benefited you significantly over the last year? When I stopped watching, I found that conversations with people became more interesting, and their conversation generally included enough TV data to keep me up to date on the cultural buzz. If you can, junk the thing, or at least it's aerial.

Experiencing existence.

The Quantum – String – M-theory –TOE thing.

Science's quest to discover the nature of "matter" and determine the laws that run existence is getting the poor fellows in white coats deeper and deeper into difficulty. Their experiments are becoming almost esoteric, when they don't require massive equipment, and their theories now require 11 dimensional spaces and curious mathematics.

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Gifts and temptations.

Meditation: beyond illusion, beyond belief.

Paths to Bliss: Devotional Love, Sacred Sex, Awareness (Zen), Oneness (Advait)

The path of Love - falling in love with existence.

Falling in love, then falling in love deeper, more. Again. Falling in love can become so lovely, so deep that the temptation can arise to simply love.

It doesn't perhaps matter very much what, or who you love at first, just that you learn the depths of it, the expansiveness of it. Love, more and more…

Tantra - Making Love flow.

Modern schools of tantra exist, and reduced persecution in recent times in some countries has allowed a revival and rediscovery of sexual –spiritual practices.

The works of Barry Long are a great introduction, though a little stiff, perhaps a bit rigid in practice. Margot Anand's work is inspired. Ma Sarito and Swami Geho have produced a gorgeous book, "Tantic Love". Highly recommended.

If this area is of passionate interest to you, check out Swami Virato's recommended reading list.

A definitive modern text, Osho's commentary on the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS available at otantra.net.

A South African School of Tantra is doing talks and sessions work.

Zen: Awareness, waking up, getting the joke!

Zen masters have had many approaches to getting their students enlightened. One threw a student out of the window, into the street, jumped after him, landed on his chest and said "Got it?" The student was enlightened on the spot. Another Zen student became enlightened when his master cut his finger off. It's hard to study Zen if you want to be serious about it. Hotei became enlightened, and got the joke so deep that for seven years he laughed. People came to a discourse by the Master, and he'd take one look at them and crack up for a couple of hours. That was the discourse. Once, a fellow found him sitting silent, and asked him if he wasn't the fellow that laughed. Hotei replied "I'm getting ready to laugh".

Advait - transcending dualities.

Advait as philosophy is an erudite, generally useless thing. It's a wonderful mental game to start at "there is only a oneness, seen as subdivided" and let it run from there. Lots of fun. Fun, but still useless.

As a truth perceived in Satori , Advait becomes a powerful path, an accelerated approach to Truth. The method, not the philosophy, is what's of value. The path of Advait is the path of integrating polarities - experiencing the full polarities of a thing, yielding the synthesis, and so on until all duality is transcended.

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When the mind is still - advanced techniques, "real" meditation.

Zazen, Silent sitting, Vipassana, The Heart meditation, The Death Meditation. When the mind can be a bit quiet in silence, it's time to go deep.