Why Meditation Is So Hard: Wake Up Stages Part 2

We are promised peace from meditation. Then we sit down and feel just as agitated as before.
This talk shows why. We look at the turning point where we stop building the self and start seeing through it, the catch-22 of meditation, and why every step rests on the one below it. When you are stuck, the work is usually one step down.
This is the second of three talks on the stages of awakening.

Transcript

Okay, So now continuing on with our journey into the awakening map, And in particular, I want to now that we've covered the basis is to zoom out and have a look at the journey as a whole. And to begin with, I want to share a story which comes from Tara Springer in one of the interviews that she gave, Which compares her work as a therapist to her work as a Buddhist. And she tells this tale and it's quite funny and poignant. That in the daytime she would often work with people, Sometimes women in domestic violence, That sort of situation, Where they feel disempowered under the thumb of their partner, For example, And yet powerless to do anything about it. And so, As a therapist, Tara was there to try to help empower them and to let them draw boundaries feel, Build up their ego and their self-confidence and their self-esteem enough to be able to change the situation they're in or step away from a relationship that clearly wasn't working. And so it was about, Yeah, Building up the ego. And then at night time, She would go to her Buddhist class and teach, If you want to be free from suffering, If you want to be, You know, Reach nirvana, We have to let go of the ego and get rid of the self. And so there was obvious sort of of contradiction in these two views. And she said she spent years working out what this contradiction was. But this path really, I think, Illustrates these two aspects in the sense that in the first five stages, We're going from a state which has very little ego to developing an ego and then optimizing that ego finally around stage two. 5 and then trying to let it go. And this turning point from the point where we have this really strong ideally optimal sense of self. Starts around the end of stage five. So in stage five, We do everything to make our life as streamlined and perfect as it can get. And then we start to question that because there's this hollowness of feeling. And we start by looking into community to see if sharing can help us. Then we start to acknowledge that the problems lie more in our own mind rather than what's out there. And then gradually we start to understand that the unity is what brings contentment between ourselves and others, Which is, You know, Signified by love. And that allows us to finally let go and step into complete contentment in what is, For example. And so the turnaround starts sort of around the end of stage five and then sort of continues up level six and seven 8 9 10 for example. So that's sort of an overview and I want to bring in now meditation because this is the practice that I teach and the practice that so many people say is the pathway to awakening and the pathway to this relaxed, Blissful, Content, Joyous, Happy state that we are all so much hope for. And yet, This is not most people's experience, Especially beginners. When they start to do meditation, They hear all the cliches, And they're like, Okay, I'm doing this for relaxation, But where is it? Because I just feel just as agitated as before, And I sit for five minutes, That's fine, But once I get to 15 minutes, I'm already feeling agitated. And some of us have been on it for years, And the question is, What is the obstacle? Well, This path shows you what the obstacle is, And I guess it all does come down to one obstacle, Craving, But each of these stages have their own obstacles, And we can more fine-tune what they are as we go along. So this is the catch-22 of meditation, When the promise of bliss and happiness actually becomes the problem. Itself you know so no bliss arises then we feel that we have failed and we want to quit and one of the things to understand is that We see meditation almost as a shortcut to relaxation and happiness. That's what it's portrayed as. But I would say it's more like an exercise to gain clarity into your mind so that you can more easily see the obstacles that stop you from this state of happiness. And we can distract ourselves from those obstacles by going to screens, Sugary foods, Sleeping, TV, Whatever. Or we can actually look at those obstacles which give us then a chance of course to work through them or let them go. So that's the first issue to look at meditation as more of a tool for letting go rather than a shortcut to meditation. Now, The key to understand how this pathway, This stairway can help us remove the obstacles to a deep meditation, I think is to work backwards and understand you can't actually skip a step. You can't go. If you're at level four, You can't jump up to level nine. You have to work through all the levels. And even if you're at level eight or level seven or whatever, If you haven't fully completed an earlier level, It's going to hold you back. But I would say if you want to experience the state of tranquility and bliss, Then you have to be able to love the world and love everyone. And if you can't do that, Then your bliss will be fickle at most, You know. So if we want more bliss, We do have to be able to you know, Put away our differences between us in the world, And it can be obviously people that are the key problems, But it can be just things as well. If we have hatred towards situations, Anything that will mean that the foundation for bliss is not there. And so it's just not going to happen. But then you say, Well, But I can't, I can't love everybody. You know, There are people I just dislike. And I know the logic is there, I should love them, But it's just impossible. So if you are not able to love, If you want more love, Then you have to take responsibility to understand that the reason you can't love everyone is in your own mind. Being able to have this foundation to know that, Yes, It is possible, I just have to change my mind to be able to love even difficult people in my life, Then you will create that foundation. But if you say, No, But I can't, I don't see the world that way. There's no way I see, You know, It's a nice idea, But I can't see how I can take that responsibility to actually change the way I think. So that I can either hate or love people depending on my own way of my mind working. In that case, We need to work at level six. So we need to recognize that essentially we are one with these people. We're dependent on them. Everything we do, From the language we speak, The clothes we wear, The food we eat, It all depends on the people around us. We are far more interconnected with everyone than we even think possible. And it is that sense of community where we get a sense of fulfillment. Again, For those people who find it difficult to. . . You know, Fully let themselves go into relationships, Well, We need to master our mind. Again, You can see this pattern. But if we can't connect to other people, Then we have work to do at level five, Which is mastering our mind. Now here, Mastering our mind is more of a scientific, A more logical way of mastering our body and mind, As opposed to level seven, Which is a little bit more spiritual. So the level five and level seven are different, But we need to work from a logical point of view, Ourselves so that we feel good about ourselves. And if we can feel good about ourselves and love ourselves, Then we're in a better position to feel connected to others in our life. And it goes on down the line. So if we can't master our mind, It probably means that we don't have clear enough rules or boundaries in place for ourselves and for others. We are letting other people dictate their wants onto us because we don't know when to say no and we don't know And we also have our own addictions, Which we can't set boundaries for. So we need to learn to do boundaries. And if we can't set boundaries, Then we have work to do at level three, Which is to step into our own power and know that we are autonomous beings. And we have the power to be able to say yes to some and no to others and yes to ourselves and no to others, Depending on what's healthy to us. Again, If that's very, Very difficult, If we want power, Then we need to know that we belong. We have a place in this world. We have a place in our family, A place in civilization, A place in the tribe. We need to work on our sense of belonging. And then finally, Of course, If we want belonging, We have to trust that the instinctive trust that we are safe. Part of the world and you know that that core level one is this sense of just autonomy and safety. So you can see that each level rests on the level below it and if you've got any issues at lower levels then it's going to cause the whole foundation to not be stable and in the In the next part I want to talk about how we do this.