by Marc Allen
Stay in this realm of pure Being for as long as feels comfortable.
Then become aware again of the physical body, your breathing and physical senses, and open your eyes. Look at your surroundings for a few minutes in a meditative way — that is, without labeling things mentally — and continue to feel the inner body as you do so.
THROUGHOUT THE DAY
Eckhart Tolle is one of the greatest teachers of meditation I have ever met. The two meditations above are from his work. Another great teacher I had was Katsuki Sekida, who taught at the Honolulu and Maui Zendos in the 1960s, and at the London Zen Society from 1970 to 1972, and wrote two great books, Zen Training and Two Zen Classics.
In Zen Training, he describes in great detail how, after sitting in meditation for a while, we naturally enter into a state of absolute samadhi, where we are completely conscious, silent, and aware.
Then, as we get up and go into the activity of our day, we can train ourselves to be in a state of what he describes as positive samadhi, where there is no extraneous thought in our mind as we are focused on the object of our attention, whatever it may be.
Throughout the day, take a moment to let go of all thought as often as you can. It can be as simple and as short as a single exhalation: Let your thought go as you let your breath go.
Look outside first thing in the morning, take a deep breath, and let all thought go as you exhale.
During your affirmation or prayer session in the morning, stepping into the shower, sitting down with a cup of coffee or tea, turning on your computer, getting into your car — take a deep breath, and let all thought go as you exhale.
As you finish a phone call or a small task, take a deep breath, and let all thought go before you go onto something else.
Remind yourself throughout the day to let go of thought as much as possible. Find moments, even if very brief, to sit in silence.
positive samadhi
When you walk up a stairs, simply walk, without extraneous thought. Whatever you are doing, simply focus on that, without letting your mind wander into streams of thoughts about other things.
ATTAINING ENLIGHTENMENT ON THE FREEWAY
Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, was another great teacher of meditation. He and Katsuki Sekida were very much alike in many ways; both had an ocean of serenity surrounding them, regardless of external circumstances, and both found a great deal of humor in life.
One time Suzuki Roshi mentioned Zen koans, the little phrases and stories some students of Zen meditate on. Then he smiled and said this:
Here’s a koan for Westerners:
How do I attain enlightenment driving on the freeway?
I have asked myself that question many times over many years while driving on the freeway, or on any kind of road.
Over the years I’ve gotten many, many different answers. Some can be expressed in words; most can’t. Often all thought simply falls away. I drive with complete awareness of the vehicle and the road, but without a thought in my mind.
Next time you’re driving, ask yourself that question. See what happens.
FEEL THE LOVE IN YOUR HEART
Sit quietly, relax, and become aware of your heart.
Feel its vibrant presence. Feel it fill with radiant healing energy. Feel it radiate its warmth. That warmth is love.
Feel the love in your heart. Feel that love expand to include the whole Earth, and then even all of creation. You are in the heart of God.
SEE THE PRESENCE
Sit quietly, relax. Close your eyes and become aware of the vibrant light energy that is centered between your eyes. This is your “third eye,” the eye of inner vision.
What do you see with your eyes closed? What do you see with your inner vision?
If what you see is formless, you are seeing God in its ultimate formless state.
If you see something with form, you are seeing a form of God.
A yoga teacher in India put it so simply in the film Phantom India directed by Louis Malle:
Close your eyes, and see God.
Feel yourself in the presence of the One who created it all. Sit quietly in the still radiance.
Ask that presence, if you wish, for guidance, answers, support. It is omnipresent, all knowing, and all powerful.
LOOK WITHIN
Sit quietly, close your eyes, relax. Become aware of the radiant energy, the presence, within you.
Within your inner world is endless, everlasting energy and information, directly connected to the source of all creation, an integral part of the entire quantum field of the universe.
To access that energy, simply look within, ask your question or ask for guidance, and wait for an answer. It will come, sooner or later.
Return to your center within. Feel its presence. Feel the energy in your body. Keep letting thought go as it arises. Keep returning to your center. You are filled with light within. Feel its peace and power.
THE VAST OCEAN OF STILLNESS WITHIN
Sit quietly and comfortably. Close your eyes. Breathe slowly and deeply for a while.... Relax.... Let yourself go....
Become aware of your breathing, and let it go deeper and deeper within. Let your breath fall deep within you. Let your exhalations become longer and longer. Breathe deeply, and let go, into stillness....
Imagine, if you want to, a vast ocean of stillness within. Become one with the vast silent ocean within.
There is a Zen koan that says, Pick up the silent rock from the depths of the sea and, without getting your sleeves wet, bring it up to me.
MEDITATION IN MOTION
As you walk, imagine a vast ocean within you. It radiates out of the depth of your belly. It is silent, still, and endlessly deep.
As you move, imagine the ocean encompassing all you see, and even all there is.
We are one in a vast ocean of a single quantum field, filled with energy and information. We become receptive to it when we quiet our mind.
I once read a koan on a bathroom wall in Northern California:
In motion be like water, in stillness like a mirror.
GIVING UP RESISTANCE
We’ve seen this phrase before, from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It’s worth meditating on until we understand it so deeply it affects every moment of our lives:
As you sit quietly and as you go about your day, reflect on this phrase:
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness.
Throughout the day, when you find yourself resisting something — whether it’s a big thing, like a major loss in your life, or a small thing, like the cat peeing on the carpet — bring those words back into your mind, and let go of your resistance.
Resist nothing.
THE JOY OF BEING
After you’ve pondered that great key for a while, move on to this one from The Power of Now:
The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter a state of nonresistance.
Nothing out there in the world — no other person, great wealth, prestige, or anything else — can bring us lasting happiness. It can only be found within.
CREATIVE VISUALIZATION
All the forms of meditation above involve letting thought go as it arises. There are forms of meditation, however, that use focused thought: one is creative visualization, another is reflecting on specific phrases. We’ve already done both of these types of meditation many times in this Course.
When we use creative visualization, we relax deeply and then focus on what we want to create in our life. When we visualize our ideal scene, we are doing this meditation: We’re imagining, envisioning, what we want in life. The more we do it, the greater detail we bring to our imagined reality — and the sooner we receive clear instructions on how to create that reality.
Take a deep breath, and relax deeply as you exhale. Close your eyes, and take a few more
deep, relaxing breaths. Imagine your life, in vivid detail, five years in the future. Imagine yourself enjoying new levels of success, health, and fulfillment.
Visualize sending healing energy to a friend who needs it; visualize their disease dissolving into light; see them as strong and healthy again.
This kind of visualization and prayer where you send healing energy to others has been proven to be effective in scientific double-blind studies of the effects of prayer in healing. And it has proven to be effective in the lives of countless people who regularly practice this type of meditation, myself included.*
REFLECTING ON A PHRASE
We’ve been doing this type of active meditation almost constantly throughout this Course: Take a specific phrase and repeat it, reflecting on the words.
Pick any one of the keys in this Course that appeals to you and repeat it until you understand it, and its meaning takes root in your subconscious.
Once that happens, surprising change occurs in your life, automatically, easily and effortlessly.
CREATING AN INNER ALTAR
Here’s one you can adapt endlessly to your own wishes, desires, and understanding. You simply create your own imaginary altar, and put whatever images on it you choose.
Close your eyes, take a long, slow breath, and relax. Take another breath, and relax more and more deeply as you exhale.
Imagine before you an image of God — as you choose to see God in this moment — on an inner altar of some kind. Sit quietly, bathing in the radiance of God as you see God.
If you wish, imagine that altar expanding to include other images of the sacred that occur to you. Imagine many images of all that is sacred, if you wish. Sit quietly in the radiance of these images.
Whatever images come to mind are images of God — it’s all God. If there are no images, then you are seeing the ultimate body of God: formlessness.
Bathe in the silent light of God’s radiance. You are sitting in the heart of God.
FORM AND FORMLESSNESS
Sit quietly, and observe the world within. When forms arise, remember: It is all a part of God. It too is formless, in its essence. All form is essentially empty.
Reflect on these words from a famous Buddhist sutra that some students of Zen chant:
Form is emptiness.
Emptiness is form.
CARING AND NOT CARING
The poet T. S. Eliot wrote these words in his poem Ash Wednesday. In a play I was in years ago, we turned these words into a little song or mantra we chanted over and over, and it proved to be a good meditation practice:
Teach us to care, and not to care. Teach us to sit still.
LEARN TO BE QUIET
There are keys everywhere. We can find guidance for a life well lived all over the place, sometimes in the most unexpected places. The famous writer Franz Kafka came up with these striking and powerful words:
You need not leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, simply wait.
You need not even wait, just learn to be quiet
and still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you
to be unmasked. It has no choice;
it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
— Franz Kafka
LET THERE BE PEACE
Over the years I have attended many services in many different kinds of churches. All of them have some forms of prayer, and most of them encourage some kind of meditation.
In Unity Churches, they have a song they sing at every service that contains a beautiful phrase to meditate on. Bring these words to mind as often as possible — the more of us do it, the sooner we can transform the world.
Let there be peace on earth,
And let it begin with me.
THE POWER OF RELAXATION
There are great benefits to relaxation, whether in brief moments throughout the day or in longer periods when we rest at home or take vacations. It’s certainly worthwhile to luxuriate in the healing power of relaxation.
PRESCRIPTION FOR A TYPE-A CULTURE
We can put it this way for all those entrenched in our workaholic culture: When we relax, whether for even just brief moments or for longer periods, the important work is still getting done. In fact, it’s often the best way, the most efficient way, to do the work, in the long run.
Throughout the day, especially in the midst of what seems to be a problem or stressful situation, learn to relax for a moment, even for just one breath. Take a deep, healing breath and slowly let it go, and let go of all thought along with your breath.
That’s it — just one breath. Two or three breaths is even better. Just let go of your thoughts for a moment. When you start thinking again, you just might have a clearer perspective on the problem; it might be much simpler to find the solution than you thought it was. You’ve done an important bit of work in that moment of relaxation.
We all know the value of sleeping on something. So often something that seems problematic in the afternoon is much less complicated, much clearer in the morning. The same thing can happen in a breath, or in two or three breaths, for in that brief time a creative new solution has some room to emerge.
This is an excellent little habit to develop:
Take a deep breath and relax.
Let all thought go for the moment.
Do this several times throughout the day.
As Eckhart Tolle puts it in The Power of Now, “When you are full of problems there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room, create some space....”
BRIEF RELAXING MOMENTS THROUGHOUT THE DAY
The best thing you can do in the midst of your activity is to relax for a moment, and let go of everything, even all thought.
Just a single deep breath lowers blood pressure and relieves stress. Just letting your thoughts go for a brief moment can open you up to a clearer perspective. Two or three deep breaths is even better, a quiet minute or two is better yet.
Find times throughout your day when you can relax. When you have a bathroom break, you can turn it into a refreshing moment of quiet meditation.
Sometimes during the day I put on a tape or go to my website and close my eyes and listen to a few minutes of my stress reduction tape or music. (I love to listen to my own music, I must admit.) And Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer have a website I often visit (www.orindaben.com) that has a whole series of short two- or three-minute meditations you can choose from that are tremendously relaxing.
Just as research has shown even a minute or two of vigorous exercise can make a big difference in your energy level, even a minute of relaxation can have a calming effect that lasts for hours.
LONGER PERIODS OF RESTING
Any amount of resting is rejuvenating, whether it’s for a minute or an hour or anywhere in between. I always encourage people to take more naps — there are times during the day when our bodies want to relax, and we often ignore those signals.
Relax more and you’ll stay healthier. It’s much better in the long run to relax when you feel like it than to take more stimulants and power through it. You don’t work very well anyway when you’re tired; you’re slow and inefficient. It is far better to rest, and then come back when you’re physically and emotionally up for it.
We used to have a tradition of Sunday as a day of rest, but somehow many of us have lost that tradition. Let’s bring it back. After all:
We all need a day of rest.
Even God needed a day of rest.
Sunday is a day of rest, prayer, and family for me. And Monday is my day alone, to rest or do whatever I feel like in the moment. I always end Monday with a sauna or hot tub, and then put my son to bed.
There have been days when I’ve gotten up, had a strong cup of coffee, and then gone back to bed. My family thinks this behavior is funny. To me it’s the most natural thing in the world, and I encourage everyone to nap as much as possib
le. We can learn a lot from our cats and dogs. A catnap during the day is highly refreshing.
I keep my mornings during the week to myself, for sleeping, meditating, writing, goofing off, doing whatever I feel like doing in the moment.
I don’t get to the office until Tuesday afternoon, but by then I am ready to work, energized and enthused, and plow through sixty e-mails and twenty phone messages and a stack of mail. Because I’m fully rested, I work efficiently and effectively. Sometimes I’ll work for over ten hours, until midnight, though I always leave as soon as I feel like relaxing.
VACATIONS
We all need vacations! Our souls need vacations.
We have seen that many of the processes we use in this Course, from the first step on, involve long-range planning. First we set our long-term goals and make our long-term plans, then we break them down into the next obvious steps to take in the short-term. It is essential to make those long-term plans and to keep them in mind.
Vacations give our hearts and minds time to reflect on the long-range things that are so vital to us. They can put our lives into clearer perspective; sometimes they can lead to bold decisions and sweeping changes.
