I have had a life long curiosity with all things philosophical …
As I progressed through life,
I’ve been sharpening my focus towards Spiritual Philosophy.
As a young teenager,
I was curious about certain types of mental phenomena…
I became curious to see if there were any practical ways
to learn how to do some of them.
I taught myself to meditate 50 years ago.
This seemed like the first step that was common with
everything I had read about certain psychic phenomena…
like clairvoyance, moving objects with the mind,
‘astral travel’ and lucid dreaming…
I was also inspired with the idea of healing with the mind.
I was able to use some techniques to deal with
the dreadfully horrible migraine headaches I used to have a kid,
and then went further,
to a way to even get rid of the headaches all together.
However,
It became obvious to me that healing others with the mind
was not practical… not impossible,
but
the effort required to master this was daunting.
Even those that did sort of ‘master it’…
it was hit and miss.
The other area I was interested in was ‘astral traveling’…
Turns out instead of sitting in meditation and ‘traveling’…
I learned how to develop a very interesting form of lucid dreaming.
It seemed to have a similar effect of what is called ‘astral traveling’…
However,
Lucid dreaming is all done in the mind during dreams.
Much later in life, I learned the deep end of “Insight” meditation…
the experience goes way and beyond Lucid dreaming or ‘astral travel’.
As fascinating as all that was…
Life goes on, and with it
college, careers, opportunities and challenges take precedence.
I did get back into it very deeply in my early 20’s…
I did lots of learning and work with a renowned
meditation teacher and psychic that lived at my apartment.
She taught at numerous schools and even the University of California in Northridge,
and did the major TV appearances like Johnny Carson…
The ‘super stars’ sought out her guidance…
Very fascinating things indeed.
Which actually opened up my contemplations…
I had thought that reincarnation seemed to make sense,
as this how our conventional minds understand the physical life we live…
We all start at babies…
grow up a bit and go to kindergarten,
1st, 2cd… grades, high school and college.
It’s all a liner learning path.
yet,
as I would learn decades later that…
the Buddha’s teachings of Anatta – No self...
renders reincarnation as just another misleading projection
that various ‘traditions’ used for distracting ways to encourage aspirants
to put in the ‘Right Effort’ towards Enlightenment.
There is no such thing as reincarnation,
and of course the fantasies of “heaven” and getting a ‘heavenly body’
are even more insidiously distracting to the average person.
However,
After being guided in a very deep ‘past lives’ meditation,
which required over a year of intense practice …
instead of relating to the various ‘past life’ characters
that were somehow supposed to be “me”…
I came away from the experience with a completely opposite insight…
I strongly felt that instead of ‘me’ visiting my past lives…
I was somehow tapping into the ‘collective conscious’.
Which was and still is…Ineffable to me…
As words can’t begin to describe it and
there is nothing our convention thinking minds can grasp it.
Later down this page,
I’ll mention a meditation process that goes beyond the mind…
And that’s a good start.
~
After about two years of this intense ‘practice’…
Again,
Life moves on.
I used the skills of meditation, goal setting, and visualizations…
to help my creative music and studio careers that soon followed.
For 15 more years, I was very successful in those ambitions.
Then,
I started to find a wee bit of time in-between those very long hours of
career obligations to begin reading about Buddhism.
The Buddha was very adamant about NOT wasting one’s time
chasing after the psychic phenomena’s…
He stated that, the time and effort required to master these
irrelevant amusements
would be better spent towards gaining the full fruition of Liberation…
Enlightenment. “Self-Realization”.
All though my busy creative life
allowed no huge blocks of time I once had for meditation
and chasing these amusing phenomena’s…
I dropped all curiosities of psychic phenomena
and devoted what little time I had towards this new to me
‘Path’.
Being fully present,
alert to the ‘now moments’ of awareness was the key element
that kept popping up in my research to deepen my ‘Practice’.
It would be another 10 years before I eventually heard about
Ram Dass and his book “Be Here Now’.
This theme was beginning to prove to be a very important part of
deepening one’s ‘Practice’.
I would just try to ‘practice’ in every moment of my daily life…
to acknowledge the ever present moments
as the flow of life went by.
Not clinging to the joyful moments, nor avoiding the harsh moments…
A sort of ‘Equanimity’ was being developed.
Being in Nature was my favorite place to …
Just be Here Now.
And it still is to this day.
Another 15 years would go by before I read Byron Katie’s books.
She accidently became fully Enlightened,
just by the tragic nature her life was being challenged with…
She had no spiritual or philosophical background at all…
Yet,
Her ‘Enlightening’ experiences changed her life
and millions of others she has helped along the ‘Way’.
Long before I read her books,
I was learning to live by some of the very same ‘perspectives’
that she would later outline in her books…
And that was,
Being in love with whatever “Is”…
If you love whatever… ‘is’…
You’ll never be disappointed.
Also,
Consider this.
When we are upset with how life is going…
And we keep getting more upset with it all…
We are really having an argument with reality.
If you catch yourself having an argument with reality…
That’s a clear sign that if you continue…
Straight jackets and padded walls will be in your future.
Back in 2007, I sold my house,
quit my $$ cushy Hollywood studio tech gigs
and sailed away from it all.
For about 4 years we sailed all throughout the South Pacific
from California, to Mexico, to French Polynesia…
all the way ‘down unda’ to New Zealand
and back around Tonga and Fiji before selling the boat in New Zealand
and flying to Maui Hawaii to try to re-invent a livelihood.
All those years and nearly 30,000 sailing miles
gave me heaps of time to ‘be in the moment’
as only nature can offer.
So far in my life,
I had achieved very impressive creative careers,
created and built a successful recording studio,
worked in many top studios and enjoyed
a very deep guitar music way of life….
Jazz, Jazz Fusion with heavy metal influencing and
producing some very intense recording projects of my own music….
Along with all the bands and other studio work I did.
So far in life,
All I had to do is put my mind to it…
And I’d make it happen.
But,
Once the Sailing Adventures of a lifetime were over…
And made my new home here on Maui…
My struggles and life challenges reared their incessant ugly heads…
Each time I’d try to find employment, a new dead end would be met.
I hit many hundreds of such ‘dead ends’.
After a while,
I had to find a way to live…
that wouldn’t kill me.
A few years into this endless dead end madness…
I decided to put my ‘Practice’ back into my highest priority.
Life…
You can’t give up trying…
But,
You can give up giving a shit about materialistic challenges.
This is a street version of…
Equanimity.
and basically the definition of ‘Spirituality‘.
I was determined to find a way through life without it killing me.
Ha!
I know that in life…
No one gets out a live 😉
but…
My pursuit to find meaning in my life, all life
and how it all fits together in the ‘timeless wonder of it all’…
This pursuit has paid off.
As I now have a fundamental perspective of the ‘big picture’.
To start:
One must forget everything they’ve ever been told about…
anything.
God, divinity, religions, traditions, and all the make believe ‘belief’ systems
that just distract and confuse.
Most traditions are a dead-end pursuit of the Ultimate Truths…
On account that, within their tradition…
they feel they already know everything anyone will ever need to know…
With religions…
It’s way worse!
Even with reasonable spiritual traditions
that teach the ‘non-dual’ perspectives like:
Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen, Tibetan Bon, Buddhism, Tao, sufi…
For the most part,
They all are ‘pointing towards’ the ‘Truth’.
But,
Each tradition will have it’s idiosyncrasies…
Which may be a distraction or even a dead end
if one chooses to choose one perspective
and close off the mind to better deeper wider ways
that may arise as one pushes on to the deep end of
‘the Path’.
One big consideration about “the Truth”…
The concepts of an ‘Ultimate Truth” can never be adequately put into words.
The Ultimate Truths can only be understood wordlessly through …
experience.
It is said that:
Silence is the language ‘God’ speaks.
So,
The only way to hear the Wordless Whispers of Wisdom is…
Within your Inner Silence.
During the very deep end of a focused meditation practice,
the mind becomes… ‘purified’.
In that,
With the disciplines of deep meditation,
all the mind’s sub-minds or sub-consciousnesses
begin to become in line with the meditators conscious intentions.
A fascinating ‘phenomena’ begins to become a part of one’s meditation.
These are the beginnings of entering the highest form of human consciousness.
It is called:
Jhana states.
There are four formal Jhana states,
And
Four ‘formless’ Jhana states.
To get to these states,
One must go beyond the mind…
To the Absolute.
As one deepens this process…
The body starts to feel pleasant with no physical distractions…
The mind becomes joyful and a blissful happiness prevails.
This is where the object of meditation, typically the breath…
starts to dissolve from awareness…
And the ‘formless’ or objective-less’ point of awareness shifts to this
joyful, blissful aspect…
It feels like love.
Falling in love with this flow is how it starts.
From then on it becomes effortless… and time is of no essence…
Nor is the ego-mind-body involved.
~
Everything one does their entire life
is based on the assumption that there is a “me” in there somewhere
that calls all the shots and is in ‘control’.
So,
Everyone thinks they are this… “I”.
Reinforced every time one thinks:
“I” am hungry, “I” will get some to eat.
“I” am angry, jealous, mad, happy…
But,
During these deep meditational states,
The reference to this made up imaginary “Me”…
Dissolves.
Whatever senses that are still in our peripherical awareness… still registers…
But,
They don’t register to a made up imaginary ‘me’.
In Advaita Vedanta, this is called… the “I am’…
Like Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj‘s book:
“I am that”…
But there’s no “I” … awareness just…
is. To find and abide in this
To find this “I am” one has to go beyond the mind…
All our sense organs send their information to the brain,
the brain then adds it’s instinctive biases, filters it further with endless thoughts…
then presents it to an imaginary ‘self’.
so whatever we are finally conscious of is not the original senses…
We only get our ego-mind’s story.
The Path towards Liberation requires that one contemplates
as fully and deeply as possible…
Their True Self.
This is “Self-Realization”.
In Sanskrit, there is a process called “Neti-Neti”…
Which means ‘not this – not that’.
By negative deductions,
one can narrow down the field of possibilities
by determining what is obviously … ‘NOT “me”.
I’m not my body… the timeless essence of whatever ‘we’ are
was never born, will never die… it doesn’t live forever…
it’s beyond time…
I am not my brain…
That too is just a body part, along with thoughts it produces.
The brain is of course a very useful part of our body,
along with the intense thought processes…
Even our egos,
which are also NOT US,
has been a necessary element in our human growth development…
Our instincts is what kept us alive in the mighty jungles of early humanity.
But now that ‘we’ are a wee bit more evolved…
The ego just gets in the way from further evolution and keeps us stuck in Dukkha…
the inherent pain and suffering of life’s challenges.
As I’ve been deepening my ‘Practice’
and began to enter these deep meditation states,
I found that a lot of things in my life needs to be…
perceived by a certain perception.
Equanimity must be deep and strong enough
to not allow the chaos of lie to disturb my well being.
~
To finally answer the question:
“What are your best tips for avoiding wasted time and living a fulfilling life?“
The long and intense focus of these “Insight” meditations
require that each moment of the day, and even my dreams
must become more of a peaceful blissful flow.
One must set mindful ‘Intentions‘ then not get distracted with trivial things
that take you away from your highest ambitions…
In other words…
Stay on point and don’t waste any of your precious limited time.
My day starts with some Yoda stretches…
this is a meditation in itself as one should keep distracting thoughts
out of the ‘now moments’…
Only be aware of the body’s feed back.
After this,
I do a very long meditation to gain the “Insights” of higher consciousness.
Then,
As I go throughout my daily activities…
I just try to stay in the moment.
If you like to mountain bike or drive really fast like I do…
Your awareness must be really focused on that task.
To have your mind wandering off to
‘pine about the past or fret about the future’
will have serious consequences.
I have a set of mala beads.
They are not magical or mystic,
even though seemingly ‘mystic’ people use them…
They are mainly a physical way to remind themselves to focus …
Typically on the breath.
So,
If a particular form of a life challenge that pops up unexpectantly…
Slow your breath…
and be aware of the most subtlest aspects of the breath…
One’s ‘Prana’, chi or life force also flows with the breath…
Any aspect of the breath including the prana that helps capture your full attention
will help bring you back into the
‘now moment’.
For me,
If my mala beads are handy,
This reinforces that focused effort.
~
Whenever possible, just do one thing at a time.
If you are eating … just eat.
Don’t try to do work, or text or doom scrolling the news.
Also,
The last few hours before bed.
Don’t do work, text, or doom scroll the news.
Each breath, nighttime sleeping or in daily activities
becomes a meditation.
Each breath can take you closer to that Liberating perspective of
Equanimity.
Be fully in the moment, particularly when you get a chance to ‘Be’…
In Nature.
Find more time for that.
Not everyone will be inspired to the very deep ‘Insight’ meditations I describe,
But,
Anyone can do a walking meditation… anywhere.
Just walk a wee bit slower so that you can notice each sensation as it
‘arises’… and passes away.
That phrase will become a profound Insight deeper in one’s Path.
As,
All things that arise… will pass away.
Even the thing we normally call…
Ourselves.
Impermanence is one the key teachings the Buddha offered.
To realized that nothing is permanent…
And be fine with that…
Will go a long way towards the Liberation of one’s Pain and Suffering
that is inherent in this life.
Namaste
