Meditation: Receive In The Present Moment

Spartan life coach Richard Grannon, a psychologist specializing in CPTSD and trauma recovery, describes his approach to the practice of meditation from a perspective of non-duality, taoism, buddhism, and neuroscience teachings.

Transcript

I get asked fairly frequently about the usage of meditation and whether I recommend it to people or not and usually I don't.

Not because I don't think it's useful but because I think it's easy to drive people completely bonkers with the idea of meditation so they can end up trying to chase their idea of what meditation is and never actually get any meditating done and in the process just beat themselves up for doing it wrong when there was nothing that needed to be done in the first place.

It's a bit of a tricky one and it's hard not to sound a bit poncy and pretentious when you're talking about meditation because the truth of it is is that you kind of do need to understand that your conscious mind likes to focus on things.

It likes stories,

It likes narratives,

It likes content.

It's very very content focused and then it gets good at processing content and over time,

Over years,

It develops a skill of processing content and in expressing its skill and in expressing its strength it feeds the ego,

It feels good.

We've got content,

Loads of story,

Loads of ideas,

Loads of things going on.

Meditation is kind of the opposite of that.

Meditation is focusing on the context in which the content can sit and take place.

Meditation is focusing on that which holds the ideas rather than the ideas themselves.

So people say to me,

Well what's the difference between a meditation,

A visualization or hypnosis?

And I say well hypnosis and visualization are about guiding your conscious awareness in a certain direction and about guiding the content of the conscious awareness.

Meditation is not guiding anything,

It's just listening,

It's receiving and it's practicing present moment awareness and being aware of awareness itself.

Again,

It sounds a little bit pretentious and it sounds a little bit poncy so don't let yourself get stuck on a weird idea of what you think meditation is.

Keep it practical,

Keep it normal,

Keep it every day and don't try and do meditation in a way that you think fits with somebody else's model or idea of what meditation is.

Just do it your own way.

We've got all these ideas about it being foreign from another place,

The further away the better or far away in time,

It's ancient,

It's got this long history and it relates to spirituality and other dimensions.

All that is nonsense.

It's about here and now.

It's about you in this very moment.

There is no better moment than this very moment.

This body,

This moment.

The Buddha taught that,

The Buddha said that.

It's this very body,

This very moment,

The Buddha.

This very body,

This very moment,

The awakened one.

In that sense,

You are the awakened one.

It's not about feeding the ego and going,

Oh,

I'm an awakened one,

I'm a bodhisattva now.

No,

It's about striving to get to the essence of the core of what consciousness is in itself.

The flame of consciousness that burns in you is the same as it's been in all humans throughout history,

Be they prophets,

Shamans,

Mystics,

Leaders of religious sects or whatever else.

That was the point.

There's nothing better than now,

But we try as hard as we can to reject now,

To reject what is because the only thing that is,

Is now.

There's no past,

Not really.

There's no future,

Not really.

They're ideas,

They're constructs,

They're things that we hold in the head.

The more we're focused on things that we're holding in the head,

The more we're focused on story,

On narratives,

The more we're focused on image control and perception control and ideas about what has happened and ideas about what will be,

The further away we are from the present moment.

Why is that a problem?

Well,

I don't consider myself a healer per se,

But those people who are healers say that healing can only take place here and now.

It can only take place in the present.

So if you're constantly in the past,

Constantly in the future,

Constantly doing hypnosis and visualisations and you're never truly meditating,

You're never truly receiving the present moment and just being here now,

You can never really heal.

You can only heal if you're here in the present moment,

If you're here inside your own body here and now,

And now,

And now,

And now.

And if you can accept that that is,

This is it,

This is it,

This is all there is,

Just now,

Just now.

You don't need any weird Sanskrit chants,

You don't need any weird breathing techniques,

You don't need any weird visualisations.

All of that will take you away from your personal direct experience of now.

Nobody can tell you really how to meditate.

Your experience of your own felt presence of conscious awareness in the present moment is uniquely yours.

Nobody can tell you what it should feel like.

Nobody can tell you really how to get there,

Because there isn't really a getting there,

There's a not getting there.

You're not going to follow steps one through five to get there,

You're not going to do any steps,

There's no steps.

It's the opposite of steps,

It's stop stepping.

Just don't try and do anything at all,

Just receive in the present moment that which is,

And don't be in a fight with reality.

Because if you're in a fight with what is present,

With what is now,

With that which is in the moment,

Then you're in a fight with reality.

So it kind of will sound a little bit mystical and a little bit odd,

But it really isn't.

It's just now,

It's just the present moment,

And it's just bringing your conscious awareness into the present moment and just relaxing.

And not being all pretentious and weird about it,

And trying to be as level headed and down to a straightforward knowledge with yourself as you can be.

Now,

If you're trying to follow somebody else's method,

That's probably going to make you go a little bit bonkers.

And if you try and do things like attain enlightenment,

Whatever that means,

Or empty your mind,

Then you're also going to feel bogged down by feelings of failure because there's just no way,

You're not going to be able to do it.

So what I suggest is,

Just trying to slow your thoughts down,

Just trying to cool your thoughts down,

And just gently becoming aware of the fact that you're aware.

And then become aware of the things that you are aware of in the moment.

So if your mind drifts off into past,

Into future,

Into narrative,

You can say,

Okay,

I can re-enter the present moment through the five senses.

What do I feel?

What do I hear?

What do I see?

What is here now?

Who is asking this question?

Who am I who is asking this question?

And can I observe the person who is asking this question?

Oh,

I can.

I can observe my own personality.

I can observe my own ego.

I can observe my brain ticking over trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

That's cool.

Can I observe the observer?

Can I become observing itself?

Can I lose all identity,

All personality,

All persona,

All story,

And just become that which sees?

Not even the seer,

Not even the observer,

Just observance itself.

Pure attention,

Just pure present moment attention.

Somebody said,

What's the difference between this and dissociation?

Dissociation is escaping the present moment through story,

Through drifting off into a story inside the head.

This is about associating into the moment through no story,

But be gentle with yourself.

Be kind.

Let the process be organic.

Accept that it takes a little bit of practice and that your first goal should just be to cool the thoughts down.

Cool them,

Quiet them,

Slow them down.

See if you can really bring your attention to the present moment,

Just for a few moments at a time.

Even if you only get one or two seconds,

Oh,

I was in the moment,

Oh,

I was in the moment there.

What do I feel about being in the moment?

Did I do it right?

Did I do it like the way you said to do it?

Oh,

I don't know.

Let's try again.

Oh,

I was in the moment for about 2.

5 seconds there.

How do I,

I know you'll have a whole load of thoughts and content.

You'll come back to content.

You'll keep coming back to content because that's what the mind is trained to do and that's what we're encouraging people's minds to do all the time.

How much content can you produce?

How much content can you process?

How much content can you focus on?

And this is the opposite direction.

We're going,

Okay,

No content,

Just context.

Don't be that which is said,

That which is done,

That which is talked about.

Be that which holds all of that just for a few seconds,

Just for a few moments.

What is it that holds all of that?

Your attention,

Your awareness,

Your very consciousness itself,

Your very consciousness which can only be here and now in this weird,

Nuanced,

Awkward,

Unsubtle moment that doesn't look anything like you imagined a Nepalese Buddhist monastery would.

And yet here we are becoming aware of awareness in just the same way as a Buddhist monk anywhere in the world would.

And you've never even worn an orange robe,

Have you?

So that's it.

I don't think anyone can really teach you how to meditate but you can sort of be guided to a place where you can switch your own capacity to just be in the moment and accept it,

Which is all meditation is.

You can be guided to go there.

So hopefully this helps a little bit in beginning to start that process for you.

Thank you very much for your time and your attention and I look forward to speaking to you soon.

Cheers.

Reviews

Absolutely clear; absolutely terrific.

Beautiful and on-point instruction for the meditator. Feels like #truth in 10 minutes.

Brilliant stuff, just cancelled the orange robes... 😉