31-Day Meditation Challenge: Day 27

Welcome! This is the twenty-seventh lesson to a 31-Day Meditation Challenge recently recorded in July of 2020 entitled "Seek and Find Within." The audio recording is divided into an opening discourse and a guided meditation.

This lesson elaborates on the concept of an empty mind and explains its utility as a concept to help breakdown duality.

Enjoy.

Transcript

All right,

What's up everybody?

Day 27 of this 31-day challenge.

And so we're almost at the finish line.

What I'd like to say is that ends are only beginnings.

And my hope is that after this formal challenge is done,

You are informed enough and,

You know,

Well acquainted enough with your practice to carry it forward.

But specifically in a more simplistic way,

The intricacies and details,

The technicality of this last month really is there to support you in trusting how simple this process really is.

And at its simplest,

All you're doing is taking the time to sit down,

Slow down your breath,

Be still,

And be as awake as possible to the subtle experience of your own being in inaction,

In doing nothing.

And that trust in doing nothing,

You know,

Has huge effects on the nervous system.

It has huge effects on the health of our minds and the vibrancy of our psychology.

And so that's it.

It's all about trusting nothingness.

And so with that,

We're getting into the second day of this idea of empty mind.

At the center of empty mind is,

In fact,

The abstract idea of nothingness.

And so what I wanted to do is share a cute little analogy that delineates how Yogis and Buddhists both interpreted nothingness and how different yet similar their interpretations were,

And then attaching that nothingness to the soul,

And then sort of thinking about how the soul and nothingness can be used to collapse duality.

And so,

If meditation is the pursuit of soul,

So let's just define soul.

Soul is recognized through the increased sense of peace,

Tranquility,

Focus,

And presence that comes up in your practice.

And soul is not necessarily these consequences,

But is recognized through them.

The more peace you have,

The more centeredness or mental silence you are experiencing suggests you are gaining grounds and moving closer and closer to this center point known as soul.

And so,

If meditation is the pursuit of soul or the experiencing of soul,

Is the soul a peach pit or the center of an orange?

A bizarre question.

And so to Yogis and Hindus,

The soul is more like a peach pit meaning that inside the flesh of our bodies and inside the sweetness and nectars of our thought process and our emotions there is a substance,

There is a tangible core,

And that tangible core is the soul or atman.

But the Buddhists,

Right,

Their analysis of the soul was very different.

That at the center of our segments,

Right,

Like the segments of an orange,

At the center of our segments encased in the rind,

Once we remove all the segments there is nothingness.

There is just void or space and that void is the soul and that void is nothingness.

And so the truth is that the soul,

If we,

You know,

Take the time to to understand it or grasp it seriously,

Is neither and both,

Right?

The soul is ineffable,

Indescribable,

And sort of stands apart far beyond our intellect's reach.

And that's the whole point of learning to feel intensely instead of think while you're meditating.

You learn to occupy that state of feeling and that these ideas that words really become,

You know,

Very weak to define,

These words and these ideas become approachable and understandable through feeling.

But another way of sort of describing soul is that it stands apart away or sort of immune to the ups and downs of life.

That when life is good and life is bad,

When we are young and then when we are old,

The soul is that thing that stays the same and unchanged inside us.

And the reason why both Hindus and Yogis and Buddhists attached soul to the process of meditation is that at no matter what point in their lives they were meditating,

No matter,

You know,

What emotional state they were experiencing as they approached their practice daily,

When they took the time to organize their breath and organize their nerves and focus their minds,

They hit this,

They consistently hit this bed of uniform experience,

Which was again peace,

Tranquility,

Mental quiet,

A sense of openness,

A sense of connection.

And because this bed of experiences was so consistent throughout the days,

Months,

Years,

And decades of practice,

These qualities or these consequences also seem to stand against or stand apart the tides of change,

Which is so pervasive in,

You know,

In life.

Everything changes,

Yet these qualities seem to exist underneath it all.

And so they slowly became attached to the eternal and the soul is that eternal drop inside the individual.

And so this is the correlation.

Now how does soul,

Right,

This drop of eternal unchanging stuff,

Get associated to nothingness?

If you analyze your practice,

What we seem to be doing is we seem to be relinquishing our our grip.

We seem to loosen our grip on our psychological identity.

We seem to let go of who we think we are and in that what we want and what we don't want,

Period,

Right?

And so when you're sitting in stillness and the urge to move arises,

You relinquish that urge that is deeply animalistic,

Deeply sort of embedded into our code.

And by relinquishing that little tendency,

We step away from our from our form,

From our identity.

And then pain arises and again we relinquish our our tendency or our inclination to move and to adjust and in that we step away from our form.

And so on and on and on it goes until there is this sense that we've let go of ourselves.

We let go of our desires.

We've let go of our reactions.

We've quelled our impulses and in that accessed this this bed of tranquility,

This bed of euphoria and in that touched this eternal space that only comes about when we let go of our of our of our form.

And so in this we become nothing.

We become more and more transparent.

That leads to these these sort of consistent consequences and because these consequences are so consistent it gets attached to the soul or the eternal and this is sort of the chain of experiences and and the chain of concepts that really anchors anchors a meditator into into their grand their grand theory which is meditation is the pursuit of nothingness.

So how does nothingness sort of stack up against duality?

How can we use nothingness once we once we can feel it to collapse duality and experience Advaita,

Experience life through a non-dualistic lens?

Simply when we see the world dualistically we compare the world against its opposite and so when we're experiencing pain we crave its opposite which is pleasure and in that we make the pain worse we can't interact with the pain for what it is because we want what we think is sweeter.

And when we have pleasure we unconsciously understand that pain will merge or at least that pleasure will dissolve eventually and so we sort of we we do our best to push back the the oncoming tide of that dissatisfaction and in that we taint that moment of pleasure with the fear of of its dissolve.

And so we do this in all sorts of ways.

We we compare our the successful version of ourselves with the the idea of ourselves as a failure whether it's sort of over the course of our lives or in in specific situations and in that we taint both.

And so this tendency to compare opposites keeps us locked in in the struggle of escaping the negative and reaching for the positive.

But when we learn to compare each side independently to nothingness once we understand nothingness as an idea we really find that everything everything stands apart as as sort of a magnificent individual experience or phenomenon.

And that we don't have to compare pain with pleasure we don't have to compare success with failure all we have to do is compare it with nothingness with the absence of it.

And so a quick question would be would you rather live life existing in pain or or would you rather not exist at all?

Is pain more valuable than non-existence?

And more than likely our attachment to life and existence would say well I'd rather experience pain than experience nothingness.

Would you rather live life as a self-perceived failure or would you rather not exist at all?

And again it's like maybe more than likely I would choose to exist as a failure.

I would choose to exist period versus not exist at all.

And so let's get into these these sort of questions to really really sort of prove to you how natural dualistic a dualistic mind or attitude actually is.

What is the opposite of health?

Okay and so what is the opposite of ripe?

All right and so the opposite of health is illness the opposite of ripe is more than likely rotten.

And so let's take a healthy ripe apple and imagine it's in your hand you're staring at this healthy ripe apple.

And the tendency is dualistically when you're at the grocery store and you see a ripe apple you compare it against an unripe apple when you see or a rotten apple.

But if you take this ripe apple and you sort of look at it within your mind's eye and you compare it against no apple you realize sort of the the the beauty of this ripe apple without comparing it to its opposite.

And now let's say you're starving you're hungry no food and here's a rotten apple and it is the only option and so you're comparing it against no apple and all of a sudden this rotten apple at least becomes more attractive more more more worthwhile.

And so if you just take the time to think about life in this way actively comparing things against nothing you'll you'll find the innate beauty the the incomparable magnificence between you know sort of anything that you choose to to analyze.

Alrighty so with all that again nothingness is a highly abstract concept it takes time to sort of gnaw on it takes time to digest but once you feel it within you it's a beautiful moment.

So let's get to feeling it within ourselves.

Let's get into a comfortable seated position.

Slow down the breath straighten the arms bring a random finger to each thumb and start to design the physical elements of your practice.

And so we're gonna do the same thing we did yesterday as your mind scans your practice analyzing and judging your techniques against better versions of those techniques and lesser versions of those techniques that's duality.

I could slow down my breath that is better I could straighten my spine that is better.

As your mind moves and judges your practice through this duality just repeat in your head and neti neti.

Meditation is not a tall spine meditation is not stillness meditation is not a stable breath.

Yet these techniques are necessary to pull us into that bed of tranquility of peace.

These physical adjustments are necessary to give us access to what the yogis and the Buddhists and mystics across generations learn to identify as soul.

Neti neti is just empowering us to let go of our attachments to practicing correctly or incorrectly.

One last time when your mind which functions through duality judges your practice intervene with that judgment and repeat the mantra neti neti.

Until that point of judgment just focus on breathing slowly and feeling the tingling sensations of your body.

You you you you you you you you slow down your breath you before we can empty the mind before we can occupy that center point of nothingness of void from which we can experience peace tranquility silence before we can do that we have to understand the nature of the mind the mind generates duality it compares circumstances it compares sensations it compares efforts against better versions and lesser versions of themselves and this back and forth between the fantasy of better and worse creates dissatisfaction creates desire it agitates the peace of our deeper selves and this tendency to apply duality to apply the fantasy of better or worse to meditation is very real and arguably the most important lesson to learn so notice that inclination to judge your own practice notice that judgment is rooted in duality and use the mantra neti neti to create a little space by continuously reminding yourself meditation is none of that you you you you you you now let's make an adjustment use the mantra neti neti to disconnect from the ways in which you define yourself in this moment meaning when you take the time or the mind insists that you adjust the body insists that you slow down the breath there is an unconscious association that you are this body that you are this breath and when you respond with the same mantra neti neti consider you're not just negating the technique you're not just saying meditation is not my posture you're also saying and I am NOT my body I am NOT a body in pain I am not a body in pleasure when you respond to your mind neti neti there's the unconscious understanding that you are this mind you're not responding to or you are responding to but as you respond again neti neti think of it it is also negating that you are this mind I am NOT this I am NOT this you you you you slow down the breath and appreciate that you are attempting to put form to something uniquely abstract something that only exists in the caverns of critical thought because in the physical world there is no such thing as nothingness there is only substance and everywhere you look you will find something and so take your breath in this final exercise and compare this breath that you're taking to no breath as if this were your last breath as if this was the only breath and if that changes the way you appreciate and feel these breaths increased presence increased satisfaction increased tranquility symptomology of the soul it suggests you are standing in nothingness an open mind an empty mind and in that seeing this breath as incomparable seeing it outside of duality but it takes effort so one last time repeating neti neti I'm not this breath meditation is not this breath it's about becoming or experiencing or understanding nothingness so that whatever you are you can connect to this breath more authentically more generously very slowly bring your hands to heart center strengthen your posture just because not right not wrong and feel your body is outside you your mind playing out in front of you everything seems to have a distance and playfully is this soul is this center point is this practice a peach pit or the nothingness of an orange Center and then clear the mind of its thinking listen to your environment something like a flower blooming to the Sun everything is coming into you and compare this moment to nothingness back to that mantra this will not last and immediately duality breaks down not entirely but it breaks down the ego that which resists and clings and grasps the ego becomes a little more transparent and in that beauty appreciation loveliness magnificence all increase slightly thumb knuckles to third eye Center press your thumbs intensely into the skin of your forehead as you focus as you feel neti neti while I do these things meditation is not these things take a full exhale hold the breath release your wrists to your knees hold for as long as you can let the co2 build when you need to inhale mindfully through the nose swell into your belly hold your breath everyone exhale and as you open your eyes without saying anything in the mind just compare what you see to absence to void this home is better than no home this breath is better than no breath this moment is better than no moment and eventually we'll learn that even that comparison anything to nothing is unfair but that is an even more complicated mental leap