Poor men’s meditation

Spiritualism is slowly becoming a part of our lives. Taken from the Orient, these teachings offer a lot in the ways of maintaining a healthy soul and life.

There are hundreds of ways, courses that teach you all about these things, but usually for a simple minded person these are over-complicated. One thing they have in common, though, is meditation.

Now it is said that meditation helps you a lot in many ways. And this is true, but when you search for how to meditate, you get a lot and often confusing results.

I want to show you how very simple meditation can actually be. The idea of meditation is to calm your mind and look inside yourself. Now, it is tougher than it sounds, if you want to force yourself. Actually, this is pretty easy. I can compare it to that moment when you lay down in your comfortable chair after a long day, fully exhausted, open a beer and you are not thinking of anything, just enjoying the moment in silence and sipping your beer.

It is pretty easy to achieve such a state. I will try to show the process in points:

• Find a spot where you can lie down on your back (or on your belly, does not matter) and can feel really comfortable
• Make your environment silent, or put on some music that does not distract your mind
• Close your eyes (it is much easier to concentrate with eyes closed)
• Focus on something, like your heartbeat, or on how comfortable you stay, or the music
• Focusing will narrow down your thought process into a narrow corridor, where you can concentrate on what you want
• Actually, this already helps, because it calms you down, makes your brain work less
• When you can steer your thought process, close out everything in your physical environment, ignore all the external impulses
• Imagine yourself in a beautiful place, but a simple empty room does the trick
• Imagine yourself there and another person, or entity that has no face, it is just a being. This being is you, but without time and physical form.
• Ask questions from this being you want to know, like why does my back hurt, or stuff you want to know, but do not try to answer them yourself
• If the being does not answer, probably it does not know the answer or it is not possible to tell you the answer. Otherwise you can find out pretty interesting stuff
• When you are done, first focus on feeling your body, before opening your eyes.

Tips:

• It is not easy to concentrate on one thing and you also need a lot of imagination, so it might be hard at first to reach the end steps, so just use the technique to relax
• First, you will fall asleep a lot, so you can use this as a way to fall asleep easier
• You can create whole worlds in your mind, forests, beaches, mountains, but do not stray far, because you want to make your brain work as minimum as possible
• After a time it will be easier and easier to concentrate, so you can do this in a noisy environment. Until then, try to minimize the external impulses that force your brain to pay attention to them

I will tell you how I do it: After I lay on my back comfortably and I calmed my mind, I imagine getting out of my body and flying faster and faster from by body to the edge of the universe. When I reach the edge of the universe, I get into a white room that has nothing in it (I call it the Big Milk). From there I can open a portal to anywhere I want. Usually I get to a beach where I can feel and enjoy the warm sand on my bear feet, the wind on my face and the sound of water crashing in waves. There, I have a small tent where my soul guide awaits me. I usually fly a bit from a mountaintop near the beach with a glider first, then I get into the warm water and wash away all the poison (physical and spiritual) from my body. After that I sit in a chair at the table with my soul guide and we have a nice chat about stuff and drink some refreshing, cold drinks. After I am done with talking, I thank my soul guide for being there and helping, and then come back the way I went there. When I am back in my body, I go over my body to feel every part of it, then I open my eyes.

I am not good at this at all, but even so, this process helps a lot to relax, to let go of my problems and to calm down my mind.

Not choosing is an option!

All my life everyone around me just told me that I have to choose this or that. The people who surrounded me were so simple, that they only saw logic in choice.

What I say about this is: this is bullshit. Not choosing is an option. Let me give you some simple examples.

There is the situation when you are with your friends and they are arguing about something and they are divided into two groups about the topic. Then they tell you to choose. For you the topic means nothing, you do not care about either of the choices, so you do not choose. Usually this causes conflict, because your friends will tell you that if you are not with them, than you are against them. Bullshit! You just don’t care. I personally had a lot of conflict from this, since people around me cannot understand that I do not choose because I am indifferent in the topic. All the choices are equally good or equally bad.

Now the example I gave is in a small group. What about the country we live in? Authority does not like you to not choose. In the world of infinite choices they want you to choose. Either a product or a political view, you are forced to choose. I say, Bullshit! I will not choose. I don’t care about politics and when I want some product, I simply get it, I do not spend hours searching for better offers. I know what I want.

Okay, now we arrive to the more spiritual part of not choosing. Think about your life: you are always forced to choose in everything. Every decision is actually a choice in life. In small things you do not feel the consequences so much, but there are really hard life choices: do you stay with your father, or mother after they divorced? Do you marry that girl, or not? See, not choosing is an option.

Not choosing means anything can happen. Can you understand the freedom in that? When you are faced with a situation where you have to make a very hard choice: simply don’t do it. Who said that you have to? Nobody can force you. If you just step back and observe, you can quickly find out which choice would have been the batter.

Oh, you say if the opportunity comes and you do not choose, you will lose it? You sure feel that way in the moment, but there are no bad choices in life. No matter what path you take in life, they are all the good path. That is why not choosing is also an option. You simply take the stress off your shoulders and walk away. Let the choices solve their issues between each other.

When you do not find the goal of your life: become a benevolent bystander

Okay, this will be simpler than you would think. I will not talk about the magic meaning of life and things about these great unanswered questions. I will keep it simple.

I want to talk about that inner question, and also drive, that pops up in us from time to time and makes us go forwards. And this is: why cannot I achieve this and that in my life?

Now, this usually comes from jealousy, because we want to achieve what someone else achieved and we deal with other people instead of looking into ourselves.

I want to tell you some personal experience in order for you to understand how the search goes. Since my main occupation is programming, I tried out many things in this field to make money or become famous. It simply does not work this way. If you are not meant to do a thing, you will not, or very hardly succeed. When not walking on the right road, things just do not add up.

When you want to achieve something in your life, the first question should be: is it for you? Is it worth putting in energy, if you are not good in that field, or if it is not meant for you? Of course, if you want it, go get it. But life is much easier if you do what you are meant to do. For example I cannot keep up all the blogs I wanted to bring to glory, because I cannot come up with enough original content. I cannot come up with a super application or software package to sell so I can make a lot of money. Simply it is not meant for me. The only thing that always made me happy and was good in is writing poems. So, what is the deduction from all this?

Since I am pretty good in what I do (programming), I make money by working for others, realizing their dreams. At first this bothered me a lot, because I was not able to achieve my own dreams. Tho things changed: I realized, that I have no dreams (this is dead serious, I had some thoughts in my head, but no life-long dreams), so what should I achieve, if there is nothing to achieve? The second thing was the change of my view about the world. After a deep depression I realized, that the only real value in life is enjoying it, even with everything bad in it.

So, I realized that probably the meaning of my life is to help others with my knowledge. To make their dreams come true. And every time I do so, I feel good and happy for them, even if I get no fame out of it. What if my goal in life is not to pursue my dreams, but to be a bystander, observing and helping where needed?

Since probably I am not the only one thinking about this, I want to tell you all out there, the ones who do not find meaning in their lives because they cannot achieve this or that:

“Do not despair, just enjoy life how it is. Stand by and observe. If you can help, help. If you cannot help, do nothing. The meaning of life is not always being the best.” (Gadratil)