by Lorin Roche
As part of life on Earth, our bodies are permeated with the adaptive wisdom of billions of years of evolution. Millions of tiny processes are at work right now in each of us, keeping the breath and blood flowing, keeping every cell suffused with oxygen and nourishment, carrying away wastes. As you read this, a dance of nerves and muscles is keeping the body balanced as the eyes move over the page, computing what the words mean, and associating that meaning with experiences you have had. When we run out of fuel, our instincts motivate us to take a break and get a meal.
The body's wisdom takes care of turning that food into the energy of moving our muscles, thinking, feeling, and perceiving. When we get tired from a long day, Nature invites us to sleep by giving us the craving to lie down and rest. A whole myriad of processes then take over that leave us renewed and refreshed the next morning, and then we want to get up and do it again. This is the rhythm of a day. And in a way, it mirrors the rhythm of meditation.
Meditation is something the body learns to crave as a way to fulfill its needs, just as it craves everything else. Just as a person might walk in the door and say, “Whew, I need a glass of wine,” after that person has experienced meditation, he or she may walk in the door and say, “Whew, I need to grab a few minutes of meditation.” Many people have found that meditation satisfies the need to relax much better than a glass of wine. Then after meditation, the wine tastes better. And in the morning, if we know meditation, we have a choice: go to that cappuccino bar on the way to work or grab twenty minutes of meditation. Or both. Meditation becomes part of the life of desire.
Meditation is, in fact, the main time that the body has to sort through all its desires and fine-tune them. When else do we allow ourselves to just stop and feel? It is important for our survival to know the essence of desire: that we want water, not diet cola; that we want to be loved, we don't really want chocolate ice cream; that we want to have a long conversation with our spouse, we don't really want to start a fight; that we need a long weekend or a vacation, we don't actually want to get drunk or take that drug. Desires can and often do get confused and substituted for each other. Meditation time is not at all about denying desires; it is a time to enter them more deeply, let them educate us, allow the basic impulses to connect with what is available for us now in the outer world.
Everyone who meditates has had the experience of opening the eyes after half an hour or so and having greater insight into a current life situation. Sometimes the insight comes with the kind of clarity that generally happens only after weeks or months or years. That's pretty good for something that would take up less than half of a lunch break. This has obvious survival value for people, whether they are hunting rutabagas in the primeval rain forest or hunting for a job in New York City. Yet it is as natural and instinctive as a catnap.
Unless we cultivate the attention so that we stay a little longer with these powerful experiences, we miss out on fully participating in life. The enlightenment is there but we do not stay with it long enough for it to make us brand-new. We turn away, shy of being changed. There is a tendency for these experiences to last only a fraction of a second before we leap up and are on to the next thing. This is natural because such perceptions are so impactful that we run away from them. We retreat from the intensity, even if it is intense love. But what happens then is that we feel only half-alive, if we pause at all to notice how we feel.
Meditation is the contrary impulse, also natural, to enter such a moment, prolong it by cherishing it, and thus allow it to reconfigure our senses so that we are better able to perceive life's richness at all times. When we do this, we risk being astounded and brought to our knees in gratitude just to exist.
The original idea of being on one's knees in prayer or meditation is not to force humility on ourselves. Rather, it is the movement of being so in love that you are weak in the knees and almost overwhelmed by the perception of immensity. Almost everyone is afraid to enter the perception fully, because it really feels like dissolving into infinity. Each time you never know for sure that you will come back until you find yourself in your chair wondering, What was that? And the truth is, you are not the same person you were half an hour before. In some ways you are older, as if weeks or months have gone by, and in other ways you may feel more childlike, with a renewed innocence.
Meditation changes our contact with the essence of life. As we develop a new relationship with ourselves, we find, to our surprise, that an immense love is awakened within us. And yet there is something terrifying about such a moment of direct revelation. What if it goes away? Are we up to the task of honoring the beauty? Are we worthy? The challenge is to put your attention right into the middle of your heart to practice tolerating the intensity of love that is there. The final meditation, if there is such a thing, is to learn how to live with the richness of being alive. Can you take it? Can you take it for five minutes? Can you find a comfortable spot, breathe, and soak it in? And after you soak it in, can you get up, go outside, and spread it around?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I remember being about ten years old, reading a book, and marveling at the dozens of people listed in the acknowledgments page. I thought, “How can it take so many people to write just a simple book? What's wrong with the author?” Now I know: even if the author sits alone for a couple of thousand hours to write the book, he is listening to and weaving together the voices and intelligence of everyone he has ever talked to on the subject.
Thanks to my father, for the hunts in Africa, and the many days in the ocean together. Thanks to my mother for gestating me at San Onofre while surfing.
THE SIXTIES
My gratitude to Laksman Joo for teaching me the wisdom of the Vijnana-bhairava Tantra, and Paul Reps for his exquisite translation. Thank you, Jim Fadiman for Psychosynthesis, and Ed Maupin for the Structural Integration sessions. Marshall Ho taught me Tai Chi. My gratitude to Rabindranath Tagore for translating Kabir's poetry into English. Thank you, Maharishi, for your exquisite insights into the simplicity and naturalness of meditation. Thank you, Kiefer Franz, for the Jungian dream work sessions.
Soundtrack: The Doors.
THE SEVENTIES
At the University of California, Irvine, School of Social Science: Thanks to Douglas Chalmers for the steady mentoring, to Dwayne Metzger, for teaching me anthropological interviewing methods, Kim Romney, for his good humor and irreverent science. Thank you, Carol Knight and Acumana, for the amazing teachings. Edward T. Hall, I can hardly express how profoundly your work has influenced my entire development for the last thirty years. Thanks to Barbara DeAngelis for the many stunning conversations.
Soundtrack: J.S. Bach, The Brandenburg Concertos. The Vedas, chanted live. The Gayatri, The Shiva Sutras.
THE EIGHTIES
My thanks to Camille for her dances on all levels.
Soundtrack: Bach, The Passion of St. Matthew. Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 2 in E minor. Sade.
THE NINETIES
My thanks to Camille for her immense good humor as I worked. Slayer the cat for keeping me company from 3:00 A.M. to dawn while I wrote. Thanks to my sister Dale, for encouraging me to develop my writing, and to my brother Peter, for keeping me entertained by calling at odd hours and reading to me from Churchill's memoirs and reciting entire chapters of Bored of the Rings from memory. Thanks to my amazing buddy Ilene Segalove, who has been immensely generous with her time and skill. Thanks to Wendy Holden for the gift of her time and attention. Thanks to Gareth Esersky, my agent, and The Twins. Thanks to Caroline Pincus, my editor, for the wonderfully humorous rock 'n 'roll email editing.
Soundtrack: David Parsons, Dorje Ling. Everything Rogers and Hammerstein ever wrote. Maria Bethania.
You are welcome to write to me with your comments and questions.
[email protected]
Also check out the web page for Meditation Made Easy at
www.lorinroche.com
About the Author
Lorin Roche, Ph.D., has been a meditation
trainer for three decades. Since 1975 he has developed and taught innovative meditation techniques that are specially tailored to North American lifestyles. He lives in Marina del Rey, California.
Credits
Illustrations by Richard Kinsey
Cover illustration: Tana Powell
MEDITATION MADE EASY. Copyright © 1998 by Lorin Roche, Ph.D. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition June 2004 ISBN 9780061747557
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Being unnatural with yourself in any way; leaving out or editing parts of yourself to fit into what you think “meditation” is. This includes trying to be spiritual. When you try to be spiritual, you edit out the parts that seem “unspiritual,” such as sexuality, anger, jealously, ambition, grief.
Trying to control your experience.
Trying to slow down.
Not giving painful sensations a chance to resolve into relief.
Depriving yourself of sleep.
Being the Thought Police.
These reminders are to help you educate your reflexes so that you cooperate with the process of meditation. They may seem obvious when you glance at them, but they are not obvious to meditators when they are learning. When you close your eyes, your experience is so immediate that you will respond more from reflex than from intuition.
Speak, sing, or hum any vowel sound in any language you know, perhaps your mother tongue if you are bilingual.
If you find yourself singing, you can also hold on one note and then glide through the vowels, noticing which ones give you the most pleasure. If you are saying the vowels, just notice which ones you feel attracted to or enjoy the most.
Glide around, because the vowels are mixed anyway—in English, for example, a, e, and i all have the “eee” sound. Make up variations of the vowel sounds. Play with them as a child would. Take an “oh” sound and let it shift to “ou” as in “you.” Take the “ay” sound and notice how it feels to say “ah.” Notice the way you shape your lips and where you position your tongue.
Select one of the vowels and hum it, with the lips closed, to sense the vibration in your mouth. Do this for several minutes.
Then say it quietly, barely mouthing the sound.
Listen inside yourself as the sound shifts from being something you make in your throat and mouth to a sound that is echoing inside you.
Take the attitude of not caring whether the sound is there or not, and simply pay attention to your bodily feelings.
Do this for five minutes or so.
This exercise will help you appreciate poetry as well as vocal music, because poets and singers use many exquisite techniques in placing and shaping vowels. The more you explore vowels in meditation, the more your body will open to take pleasure in poetry and music.
THOUGHTS. Welcome thoughts, even painful thoughts. Thinking is the brain's natural sorting process.
EMOTIONS. Accept the review of emotions. You will feel all the emotions you missed or did not complete during the day, the week, or your lifetime.
SENSATIONS. Welcome the sensations of relaxation and tension release, and get used to them. You will have thousands of kinds of sensations, and most of them will be side effects of relaxation. There is no way to relax for long without the body going into a cycle of releasing built-up tension.
NOISE. Noise is no problem unless you decide to make it a problem (see “How to Make Yourself Miserable in Meditation”). If you can read a newspaper in a restaurant, you can handle external noise while you are meditating.
Ahhhhhh. Physical relaxation.
Ouch. Reliving tension as you release it. Mental review of what you are tense about as you release the physical tension.
Ah and Ouch. The sensations that go with deep physical relaxation are sweet and painful at the same time, similar to sitting down or lying down when you are really fatigued. Attending to and feeling into your frayed nerves hurts at the same time it is kind of blissful.
Oh, No! Suddenly remembering things you forgot to do or realizing that you blew it. Usually there are things you forgot, or ways you could have done something better. Usually this is about small, daily things. Once in awhile it is about something on a larger scale, such as, OHMYGOD, I have been forgetting to enjoy my own life for like the last ten years.
Grrrr. Anger comes up, whatever you didn't have a chance to feel through or express during the day.
Boo Hoo. Tears of relief or grief, as the heart opens up to feel. Many times women cry during meditation without knowing why specifically. No particular incident in mind, just a feeling of catharsis. Sometimes there are no tears, just a sinking down into sorrow.
Ommmmm. There are almost always a few moments of pure repose, very fleeting, but very refreshing. The words Om and home are related somehow. Om is being at home in your body and soul.
Zzzzzz. Sleep. Usually there are a few moments of sleep.
Hmmm. After being relaxed for awhile, a sense of reflection about your own life, a sense of wonder, a larger perspective, emerges.
Wow. As you get used to relaxation, your senses unfold and bring you news of the universe, new perceptions.
Whew. What a relief.
Ah Ha! Surprise insights and mini-revelations. I see how to do that!
Har Har Har. Humor about yourself and life.
Yahoo. Excitement about what you are going to do after meditating.
Make Not Gods of Thy Gurus. If they have made gods of themselves, which is typical, then watch that you do not wind up a sacrifice on their altar. Don't make meditation your religion. Let religion be religion and meditation the realm of pure experience.
Thou Shalt Not Covet the Experience of Others. Be centered in your own self.
Do unto Your Inner Life as You Would Have It Do unto You.
Know Thy Preferences.
Beware of Those Who Would Enslave You in Their System. Let others waste money and time with the latest self-improvement fads.
Thou Shalt Not Delete Any Part of Thyself, No Matter How Troublesome. Work to bring the troublesome part into the fold.
Cultivate Thy Passions.
Validate Thy Individual Path Through This World. Rather than bow down to an image, be in awe of the infinite vastness of life. Salute that infinity in your own way.
Repress Not Thy Instincts. Express them within the legal limits.
Love Thy Breath. With each breath there is an ending of all that is past and a newness to life.
When people talk socially, you can see them gesturing, moving
their eyes as they speak. If you ask a friend a question, he may look up and to the side or down and to the side. It's as if people are inside their minds, inside their own amphitheater of thinking. This is the normal unconstrained mode, in which we have plenty of room. In general, most people scowl only when they are angry, and then only briefly.
When “meditating,” though, people often abandon their natural mode and try to constrict or “concentrate” their minds. You can tell because they furrow their brows. You might have a friend peek in on you when you are meditating sometime and let you know if you are furrowing your brow. If you are, do brief mini-meditations and take walks or naps instead of meditating. Do not let this habit set in.
Accept the Rhythm of Your Experience.
Accept the Blues.
Accept the Motion of Emotion, Desire, and Passion.
Accept All Parts of the Self.
Accept the Wisdom of the Instincts.
Accept the Play of Universality and Individuality.
Accept Surprise and Uncertainty.
Accept Your Boundaries and Grow Beyond Them.
It is traditional in meditation books to have some incomprehensible jargon. If you want to learn a bit of technical talk to impress your friends, go ahead. Just don't believe that it will help you in any other way. It won't.