Reinvigorating your meditation

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo

Goals

In class 31 you will
- find out how to get out of a spiritual funk
- think about the right path, working at the right job and soulmates.
- widen your meditation experience with group meditation

In the spiritual community, a common theme is of getting stuck. We wonder if we are on the right path, whether we are working at the right job, if we are doing what our heart is telling us to do, whether our friends really understand us, whether we should move from our current location in the city to in the country with the cows and the forests, or from the country to the city, or from this city to another city. We wonder where our soulmate is, or if this is our soulmate? Whether we should be Buddhist or Hindu or Christian or Muslim or this sect or that cult.

We wonder why in every moment it is not blatantly obvious that we are living our absolute highest?

The reality is that there is no career, there is no soulmate, there is no place, no city, no country, no one else that can add very much to our spiritual life if we are not present.

We must realise that every day is not rainy. Every day is not sunny. Some days there are floods and tornados and some days there are storms and rainbows, and some days are just like any other day.

“Perhaps each life has one sensational thought, if acted upon will bring great meaning”

But every day is perfect and there is only one answer to being stuck and that is the flow of love.

We cannot blame our place or our wife or our job, if we want to live a higher life, we need to stop, be in the present moment and offer and/or receive love. It is that simple.

If we are not happy, or indeed if we are not as happy as we were formerly, there is only one answer, the flow of love. We need to stop and be. In the flow of love.

We tend to believe that if we had another job with more money and less financial strain then we would be able to meditate more. That if my life wasn’t so stressful, then I would be able to be in my heart. That if I find my soulmate, then I will be more spiritual. That I have so much to do to just function in my normal day to day life that I have no time to meditate or to be in the flow of love. That I have kids or my wife is sick or I just got fired or I was abused when I was a kid, or I am too fat or too thin, or I am addicted to drugs or alcoholic or whatever the story, because that is what all these things are, our stories. The stories of our egos, the soap operas of our minds.

This is our sad, sad, mistake. Our sad delusion. We are not just those stories. In fact, the reality is that those stories are the furthest thing from what is real. They are about 0.0000000001% of the real nature of us. And that is being kind.

And if you are to make the mistake of saying ‘well I don’t know which path I should be on’ the answer is even more simple. It is not that you should be Buddhist or Christian or new age or atheist, again the only answer is the flow of love. To practise being. In the flow of love. The path we are on should never be anything more than what inspires us to practise being in the flow of love.

“You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” - Rabindranath Tagore

The religion or the career or the soulmate or the place or the money or not is not just secondary, it is the last thing that is important. What is important is practising. Being. In the flow of love.

You can be in jail. You can be rich or poor. You can be struggling to survive or you can be famous and waited on. You can be busy, you can be stressed, you can be worried or anxious or bankrupt or just got robbed. You can be in a train, in a line, at the football, driving a car. You can be dancing or romancing. The reality is that we are all equal in the flow of love. None of us are better or worse, none of us are more or less, we are all one in the flow of love. And that is the joy of this.

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same” - Nelson Mandela

It takes not even a second to be in the flow of love, not even a moment to offer someone or something love and less time to receive it. It is important also to spend some time in meditation once or twice or a few times a day, but the little meditations, the little moments we are in the flow of love are nearly as important.

For there is no other way to happiness. There is no other way to real wisdom, real peace or understanding than the flow of love. And each of us have exactly equal opportunity to be in the flow of love in every moment.

So to be entirely practical, all the ‘stories’ I have mentioned are the ‘one percenters’ of the spiritual life. They can help a little, but daily meditation in the flow of love is the ninety-nine percent. The ‘one-percenters’ might inspire us to meditate but that is all they can ever do.

“What is uttered from the heart alone, will win the hearts of others to your own.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Our ego is the culprit in this process of telling us that we need some outer component so that we can live our spiritual life more effectively. It is the ego that convinces us that the ‘one-percenters’ will make all the difference. Remember that from its perspective the more time bound it can make us, the more it can convince us that we need something in the future or something from the past, the more the ego can be justified in thinking it is in control. So it has a vested interest in telling us that the ‘grass is greener’ somewhere else, in some other time, with some other people, that is the only way it can be sure it still exists.

There is one other component to our spiritual life that is extremely important. It will help us immeasurably to meditate in a group at least once a week.

The simple groups are the best without too much ritual or dogma, just sit and meditate with others. The group energy will help and you will find that your meditation experience will be empowered and will also widen by meditating with others. This is important, especially if we are finding ourselves getting bored with our meditation.

As well just talking to others we will find much inspiration in their revelations, their wisdom.

Going to a meditation intensive if it is well directed, can also be a fantastic boost. Up against the one percenters mentioned previously, group meditation once a week at least is worth 50% of our meditation practise. It is extremely important.

Exercise 31 - Group Meditation

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Try this with a group of other meditators if you can. If not, imagine that you are with your deepest and best friends and/or your family.

Sit in this group energy and just allow your consciousness to roam to each of the other souls in the group.

Imagine, or make yourself aware, of their highest dreams for themselves.

Do not let any judgement or analysis creep in, just feel their highest aspirations, and if possible widen your experience to theirs. Feel how they love. How they would offer and receive love and allow your own experience to broaden to embrace theirs. This is not a process of labelling or naming what they do, rather, it is of intuitively feeling their experience and just letting it be, inside of us.

We are all one. So eventually the perfect us will experience love in all the ways every single living thing experiences love.

Feel that your meditation is not your single meditation but the meditation of the whole group and you are a witness.

Try to go to each person in the group in this way and contribute and receive love.

Then when you feel that you are completely in the group energy, feel the enormous power coming from the group, that is powering your meditation. You are not one person meditating, but you are this one group meditating with all its depth and width. Allow your meditation to become effortless as you just let yourself be led by this powerful energy, this powerful light.

Feel the space and freedom of this experience. You are a part of something magnificent and whole.

You may even notice how the meditation evolves as more and more meditators deepen their experience and contribute more and more powerfully to the group energy.

Then when it is time to finish your meditation take a moment to inwardly stand before each of the souls of your group and offer your reverence and gratitude.

With all your love and gratitude don't forget to offer your highest soulful reverence and gratitude to your own soul. Take a moment to really love yourself, for it is the divine with you that is the doorway to this incredible magnificent reality.