One Foot After The Other Into Perfection

         "If you want to experience enlightenment in a simple way, all you have to do is stop your thoughts. When there is no thought in the mind, no thought of no thought, when the mind is quiet and it rests but is fully alert, we experience a little bit of enlightenment. A little light will filter in.". ~Rama

Every brilliant journey begins with the first step. How do you start meditating and allowing your being to dissolve into the endless ocean of eternal perfection? It's easy to start. What makes it easy is your decision to be committed to meditating every day. Once you come to that decision, it will be something you love doing, like taking a shower, going hiking, finding a glimmering surprise, having sex with someone you love. Meditation, when done correctly, brings you into the oneness, into the beauty of existence - something we all seek, but usually in transitory ways. Meditation is not transitory in that the awareness you experience becomes who you are. It brings new colors into the palette of your daily experience - new colors that you can paint your daily painting with. And as you experience new and varied things with more awareness, you begin to love the expansive perspective meditation gives you. So, it's not hard to meditate, just as it's not hard to shower, or have a great meal, or find a new mountain to hike.

Every meditation is different, though, and the important thing to remember is not to judge your meditation. Allow yourself to experience whatever comes your way, with the intent of not letting yourself get caught up in thoughts. Instead, gently move your mind back to your focus. As Rama said in his talk, The Awareness of Meditation (click to follow link), it's not so much being creative in your meditative practice that brings you to perfect awareness, it's consistency. So, start building up momentum by meditating each day for a short period of time, once a day, preferably in the morning to start your day off feeling high and clear. Try meditating for 15 minutes. Sit on a pillow, or against the wall, or in a chair - as long as your back is straight. Have something in front of you to focus on, such as a rock, a yantra, a flower or a candle flame. Focusing on something inspiring in front of you helps you to wrangle all your wild thoughts into one corral - one focus. Once you've done that, it's much easier to discard them.

Focus until you feel your mind is still. Then, move your mind to a chakra. Chakras are energy centers that have various attributes associated with them. The concept of energy meridians in the body is part of the ancient understanding of the orient that is just making its way into western civilization now. But these concepts have been well developed and understood for centuries. Human incarnation - this world, is made of the union of matter and energy. Yet, no one teaches us about this energy and how to deal with it, to take care of it, to cherish it, and keep it healthy. Yet, without energy, we die. So, coming to understand energy and how it plays out in our lives is inherent to becoming an empowered meditation practitioner. This starts with understanding the subtle physical body, which is our energy body. We have seven major chakras, starting at the base of the spine and moving up our energy spinal cord, called the shushumna, to the crown chakra. Rama describes it in his talk The Subtle Physical Body (click to follow link), as follows:

"The subtle physical body is made up of ether. The physical body, according to the ancient yogis, was made up of fire, water and air. These elements, these three elements, would constitute the physical condition. Think of them as symbols. There's not too much that I can say or explain about them. It's something that you just have to feel inside yourself.

Think of fire as heat - one aspect of the kundalini or of the infinite awareness, one way of seeing life, the fire of the sun that generates life. The fire of the sun is in the solar plexus, in the navel chakra, and in the root center, the base chakra at the bottom of the spine. Think of those two chakras in your being as fire.

The heart chakra and the throat chakra you can think of as water, if you will. The lower three chakras could be fire, and the chakra, the energy center, in the center of the chest and also in the throat would correspond to the element of water - just to try to give you a sense of the tonality of these things of which I speak, for which there are few if any words. Air would be connected with the third eye, between the eyebrows and slightly above, the Agni chakra, and the crown chakra would also be connected with air."

So, you start your meditation by focusing on something outwardly as suggested above, then you close your eyes and bring an internal focus to one of your chakras. Start with your navel chakra which is located just below your belly button. Imagine yourself as a luminous egg, and right at the core of that egg, right in the center, is your navel chakra. It is the chakra of power, will and strength. When focusing on it, you draw from the bottom three chakras. Focusing on it will not only help you wrangle your thoughts together so you can discard them more easily, but will also begin to engender those qualities in your life. Chakras are also a doorway to the fields of energy beyond the physical, which is the whole point of bringing an initial focus to your meditation - to move you beyond the physical. As you continue your meditation, move your focus to your heart chakra. This chakra is located exactly where you point to yourself when you say "me". It is referred to as the throne of consciousness. This is where your spirit resides and is the source of who you are. This is the chakra of love, beauty, compassion, joy and silence. Focus on the heart chakra, and you will begin to engender these qualities more strongly in your life. Then, move your focus up the shushumna to your third eye chakra. This is located in the center of your forehead, an inch or so above your eyebrows. This is the chakra of intuition, intelligence, wisdom, vision, clarity. Focusing on all three of these chakras in concert during your meditations will bring tremendous balance to your life, but will also give you an immediate boost in being able to move from the physical plane to the planes of energy, and eventually, to the causal planes - or the planes of light. A great talk on this is Meditation (click to follow link).

At the end of your meditation, it's great to bow - as a gesture of gratitude. In bowing, we begin to reverberate with the essence of existence that is within us, we acknowledge that with reverence, we give our meditation away to eternity, and simultaneously, we realize that we are a tiny drop in the endless ocean of awareness, making sure to allow the purity of our meditation to pervade our awareness with humility and understanding.

If you meditate every day, you will start picking up a momentum, of strength, power, clarity, joy, lightness of being and unadulterated love. You'll begin to feel whole, like you don't "need" people in your life to make you feel okay, to fill a hole that comes with being alone. You'll realize that you are connected to all of existence - you are perfect in your essence. If there are people in your life, you'll have so much more to offer, because you won't be needy - you'll be free. Free to listen, free to love, free to give, but also free to walk away if that's what's right. Being whole in life is called Integrity of Being. It means that you are happy with who you are, and who you're becoming, and ultimately, you actually welcome being no one in particular, because that means living in the fullness of truth beyond the limiting ego - as buddhas before you have done. You accept yourself as a being in progress. You accept wherever you are right now, while also continually moving your mind out of the negative patterns that defined you, that were conditioned into you and that made you unhappy.

From Alaska-in-pictures.com

Your meditation practice will ensure a life that's filled with extraordinary adventures - explorations into the mysteries of existence. You'll begin to see life in its myriad forms, colors, understandings and connections. To see, amidst the chaos, illusion and horror that humankind has perpetrated onto this earth is the most beautiful gift that is available to us, and that we have to offer each other. May your adventures be filled with beauty, light and love.

Meditation Is Soaring Through Light

Meditation is the way to truth - to our own inner truth, and ultimately, to the truth of existence, beyond the puny man-made human condition with all of it's arbitrary rules and limitations. Real meditation isn't what they sell in the mainstream. Real meditation is revolutionary. It's a way to change - to rewire - to undo the damage done to us as individuals through the false, hypocritical, binding conditioning that we all get as humans. We're swept into the club of the human condition from birth without even knowing it, and then expected to kow-tow to the "modality of the day", that is, to act like everyone, behave in a way that is in line with society's expectations, and generally, to not bother to notice that the human condition is a sad, dull reflection of man-kinds' inability to perceive truth, magic and awareness.  

Meditation shows us The Way, beyond the limiting factors of our
 upbringing, perceptions and opinions. It is a way to move into
 fields of light - the energy of the universe that we're all made of. Accessing that light and dissolving into it is what happens when you really meditate. At the end of the meditation, you feel lighter, you see more brightness in the world around you. You have insights that allow you to understand who you are and how to proceed in life. How to keep moving your attention into brighter fields, into more expanding understanding that leads to wisdom and compassion.

“Beyond the world of thought and sensorial impressions, there are planes and dimensions of perfect light, knowledge and radiant perfection. Meditation is simply a process of moving your awareness field from the awareness of this world, from the awareness of time and space, into eternity, into the eternal dimensions.” ~ Rama

What is this light? Light is just a word. It's impossible to discuss with our language because human beings tend to be so "out of it", so in the dark, that as a race, we haven't even come up with ways to discuss our experiences in truth. Maybe that's better - it keeps them more pure, more untouchable - unstainable by human ideas. Sanskrit was a spiritual language and had ways to discuss these things, but most languages these days don't even know there is something to discuss. As Rama pointed out, "What people do here is obviously not working. They sit in their commuter traffic hour after hour, making the earth a toxic waste dump."

Referring to humanity as being in the dark does not refer to individuals. As individuals, we have the capacity to be fabulous, funny, intelligent, insightful, selfless - to soar! But as a race of beings, we've fallen far short of our potential to know and interact with the truth (that is our source of life) in our societal mores and transactions. We tend towards the lowest common denominator, and that's what then defines us as a particular society of a particular time. But, at any moment, any one of us can jump out of our molding and try new things, be heroic, offer inspiration to the world. And meditation gives us the insight, energy and inspiration to do that - frequently, until it's what we are. But it's actually fairly uncommon, to meet a truly heroic person. Yet, we're all built that way. But, as Rama simply states,

"A society that destroys the environment that supports it, I would not consider to be intelligent life.

A society that can destroy itself and places the largest amount of revenues

in instruments of destruction is not evolved or intelligent."

It's worth taking note of this sickness, of the dullness of a race that is mindlessly driven by the status quo. Looking honestly at the state of affairs, at what the world has made of this miraculous opportunity of incarnation, can perhaps be one of the most inspiring reasons to meditate and find truth in your own way, since we can, since it's been done before, since Buddhas of yore have shown us that it's doable. Rama made the teachings accessible to us in today's modern world because he himself yearned for and reached pinnacles of brilliance in his everyday life, and shared how to do it with the rest of us. He rebelled against the status quo with quiet commitment to truth. And there are those who wanted to tear him down for his  Why accept this dismal planet's view of life when you don't have to?  So, back to the question - What is the light of existence that begins to peak through in the beginning of our meditative forays, and then bursts through as mind-melting torrents of liquid ecstasy more and more frequently as time goes on? And which eventually brings us back to the beginning, with innocence and sparkling eyes wide open?

All there is to say about it is, if you want to experience that light, that ecstasy, life in its true state, then meditate, with heart, with aspiration, with your total being, with one-pointed focus - everyday. If you've come to the conclusion that the grayness of settling for what society, what the powers that be, have to offer, which is only as good as the best TV show, or Las Vegas show, or Comedy show, or Discovery show, all of which are highly entertaining but won't ultimately fulfill your life - if that's it - if that's all they have to offer, then meditation is an exquisite alternative for discovering brilliance that keeps coming on - stronger and higher.

When you see the illusion of life, that is, understanding that everything in our lives is transitory - every part of this earth, everybody and everything currently in our lives, will be gone soon, then it's easier to get to what's real - what lasts. That is, awareness, light, love, Truth. Understanding that and living with that in mind allows you to move your mind and life away from the cravings and desires that may or may not bring short lived satiation. It allows you to move your life toward that which is eternal, toward that which is beyond words, beyond the mind's knowing, and into the endless ocean of perfect light.

For talks on How To Meditate from the master, Rama, an enlightened Buddhist monk who lived in our time, in modern society and offered truths relevant to seekers today, visit

http://fredericklenzfoundation.org/Free-MP3-Dharma-Talks-C7.aspx