When You Are Meditative The Whole Day

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Consciousness Is A Continuum 

“Meditation cannot be a fragmented thing.

It should be a continuous effort. Every moment one has to be alert, aware and meditative. But the mind has played a trick. You meditate in the morning and then you put it aside. Or you pray in the temple and then forget it.

Then you come back to the world, completely unmeditative, unconscious, as if walking in a hypnotic sleep. This fragmented effort won’t do much.

Consciousness is a continuum. It is like a river, flowing constantly. If you are meditative the whole day, every moment of it – and only when you are meditative the whole day – the flowering will come to you.”
— Osho
 

Does this happen to you? You meditate in the morning, then you jump up to get ready for work and off you run into your busy day.

The next time you connect to mindfulness or meditation is in the evening when you get home.

Oops. What happened during the rest of the day?

Meditation Throughout The Day

In the beginning of our journey, it's not uncommon that we "pop in and out" of a deeper awareness. It can be a challenge to bring the awareness from our meditations into our minute-to-minute lives that are stuffed full of outer activities.

Even if our goal is to have less busy-ness, sometimes we don't have a choice. Work demands gobble up our days and time-consuming obligations take us further away from our own center point.

Whenever you remember, bring yourself back to the awareness. Don't beat yourself up over forgetting. It's okay. It's part of the path in our personal growth.

Expanding Your Awareness

Once you have studied The Radiance Technique® (TRT®), you are able to use TRT® hands-on throughout your day. TRT® enhances your dedicated meditations and also benefits and expands your awareness throughout your busy days.

You can integrate mindfulness into your daily life, such as when you get ready for work, while you are at work, watching tv at home, whatever you may be doing. It's effortless with the use of your TRT® hands-on, for example, with just one hand placed in a position in the midst of talking, walking or in a meeting.

Integrating TRT® into your daily life doesn't make more work for you. It doesn't require extra effort. It's easy to blend your TRT® hands-on into daily activities; TRT® makes it simple to bring increased awareness to all you do.

The more you practice, the less separation there is.

Allowing you to expand your knowingness of wholeness and to be in touch with the continuum of consciousness.

 

 

Imperfections As Part Of The Path

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Imperfections And Acceptance On The Path

 
“We must be willing to be completely ordinary people...,
which means accepting ourselves as we are without trying to become greater, purer, more spiritual, more insightful.
If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path.
But if we try to get rid of our imperfections, then they will be enemies, obstacles on the road to our self-improvement.”
— Chögyam Trungpa
 

From the book The Myth of Freedom by Chögyam Trungpa.

Does the line “willing to be completely ordinary” make you cringe even just a little bit?

Competition In Everything

Being ordinary isn’t what we’re taught in our society. Competition reigns supreme in our outer world and that means you’ve got to be greater, better – no matter which game you're playing.

Run faster, leap higher, stay up later, have more projects than the other guy, and yes, shine brighter, be more enlightened, than your meditating neighbor. You'll find competition even in the "game" of meditation.

Naturally, we are all growing and striving to be the most authentic that we can be — and yes, we want to lessen or even eliminate our faults.

But, the first step is the acceptance of who we are?

Well, how could we begin without it?

Finding Acceptance Within Ourselves

On days when you are being particularly hard on yourself, the above quote is a nice reminder to be more gentle. Students of The Radiance Technique® (TRT®) can support themselves on the path with ongoing use of TRT® hands-on.

Use of TRT® supports us to be the observer. It’s like turning up the lights in a darkened room. With increased light, we’re able to see more clearly.

TRT® hands-on helps us to relax into a deeper awareness of ourselves.

 

Freedom On The Path

The fact that Chögym Trungpa chose the title The “Myth” of Freedom is a bit daring, don’t you think?

Isn’t that the dream of all meditators — to be free? Free from it all? And yet, many of our teachers remind us that the path of meditation is not an escape.

There’s no escape from ourselves.

What is freedom? Where is it? Is it inside or outside of us?

Open portals are all around us.

Step through the gateways that you find in your meditations.

 

The Way To Do Is To Be

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The Way To Do Is To Be

“Always we hope someone else has the answer, some other place will be better, some other time it will turn out.

This is it. No one else has the answer, no other place will be better, and it has already turned out.

At the center of your being, you have the answer: you know who you are and you know what you want. There is no need to run outside for better seeing, nor to peer from a window.

Rather abide at the center of your being: for the more you leave it, the less you learn. Search your heart and see the way to do is to be.”
— Lao Tzu
 

Presented in this poem by Lao Tzu is a koan for us to ponder between "to do" and "to be" – as they are both movement and stillness, each in their own way.

 

Doing And Being

Do you ever find yourself running after a better place as mentioned in this poem?

Do you find yourself searching for something else out there, not even sure what it is?

It's tricky, because we want to plan and prepare for things, such as going to school, working on a project, planning a trip. These are all with a future event in mind – school graduation, project completion, a place experienced. These are good and lofty goals.

Yet, our planning and projects co-exist with our challenge of being present while we're doing all of that.

In this very moment.

So easily said, and not so easily done.

Inner Heart Guidance

He writes: "At the center of your being, you have the answer."

Perhaps this center is our Inner Heart. When we are guided by our Inner Heart, our steps of doing are taken from an interior reference point. But how do we "hear" the guidance of our Inner Heart?

Students of The Radiance Technique® (TRT®) have a simple way to support themselves to access their intuition. Use of the TRT® hands-on connects us consciously to universal, supportive energy that allows us to better "hear" our inner heart.

When we are guided from within, and not from outside of ourselves, our doing reflects our being; the two are in alignment.

 

A Butterfly In Your Radiant Hand

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The Fluttering Of A Butterfly's Wings

 
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which,
if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
— unknown
 

Sharmon Davidson, artist

 

Butterflies Inspire Our Imagination

The metamorphose from wiggly caterpillar to cocoon to "flying flower" enchants us. 

Butterflies flit about our gardens, sipping from flower centers, in the intricate dance of pollination. 

Is that a smoldering tango that we see between butterfly and flower? Or an airy waltz?

Our hearts smile as we watch a butterfly's crooked flight path on the warm air. These tiny creatures fill our sense of sight, but what if we could perceive them at a micro-cosmos level?

What if we could actually hear their feathered wings in flight, beating upon the air, just as we can hear a bird's wings?

What if we could hear the siren song of a flower as it calls, coaxing the butterfly to take a delicate sip?

What a melodious mini-duet that would be.

A Butterfly In Your Radiant Hand

To enjoy a butterfly, stomping and yelling are not terribly effective. Rather, focus on moving gently or holding still. "BE the flower," I can hear the Zen teacher intoning.

Imagine yourself sitting in a meditation. You radiate such stillness and peace that even a butterfly feels safe to rest gently in your Radiant Hand – like the first image above.

You may not actually have butterflies landing in your hand (although you never know), yet this is a lovely image for our meditations. It supports us to remember the energy of stillness and goodwill to all creatures of this Earth.

 
“Only your surface is disturbed; in your deepness there is stillness and total tranquility.”
— Bryant McGill
 

Butterfly Spiral In Your Heart

In this artwork a thread comes from another level and then turns in a counterclockwise spiral within the heart – imagery that reminds me how The Radiance Technique® (TRT®) gives us access to universal energy. The use of TRT® hands-on allows us to go deeper, to become more aware of the loving energy in our hearts and in existence.

Stillness Within Us

Exploring the energy of stillness we see that it can be found within us. The world spins ever faster, we, ourselves, are running madly sometimes, yet this stillness continues to bear silent witness.

Are we aware of it?

 
“When you gaze out on a quiet, peaceful meadow, next to a still pond, under a motionless blue sky, you wonder how the noisy, busy cacophony of life could have arisen from such silent, motionless beginning. ”
— M..
 
 

Happiness In Balance

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Happiness In Balance

A fellow meditator on Insight Timer shared with us:

“Happiness is being free from Anxiety, Depression, Loneliness, Grief.”

Immediately upon reading this, questions started to percolate inside me. I launched an exploration of ideas.

Happy Or Sad

Happiness is part of a pendulum that swings from happy to sad, always in motion, always with the knowledge that no matter where you are on the pendulum of happy, sad is on the other side, waiting for you.

The same is true when we are in sad, but from that perspective, it is sometimes hard to remember that happy is also waiting for us.

As long as we are in a human form, we are never free from either sadness or happiness. These feelings are conditions of the emotional body. If our emotions cease to exist, so too, will the human form.

The fact that we are here on this planet, means we are going to experience happiness as well as anxiety, depression, loneliness and grief. It's all part of the package.

We seem capable of getting stuck on sad for a long time, but it's interesting to note there are not so many reports of getting stuck on happy. 

The Story Of A King

The idea of impermanence and the pendulum of our emotions is often captured in the Zen phrase "this, too, shall pass."

Sufi and Zen stories, and biblical parables as well, tell of a great King who was given a ring with this phrase inscribed inside. In either moments of joy or sorrow, he would look at it and be reminded of impermanence.

Here is a link to one version of the story:

“According to an ancient Sufi story, there once lived a king in a Middle Eastern land. The king was continuously torn between happiness and despondancy. The smallest things could make him really upset or give him an intense emotional reaction, so his happiness easily turned into disappointment and despair. One day the king got tired of himself and started seeking a way out.

He sent for a wiseman living in his kingdom. The wiseman was reputed for being enlightened. When he arrived, the king said to him, “I want to be like you. Can you bring me something that give balance, peace and serenity in my life? I will pay whatever price you like.”

The wiseman replied, “I may be able to help you, but the price is so great that not even your kingdom would be enough payment for it. Therefore I will give it to you as a gift, if you will honor it.”

The king gave his assurances, and the wiseman left. A few weeks later he returned, and handed the king an ornate box carved in jade. The king opened the box, and found a simple gold ring inside. The inscription on the ring read, This, too, shall pass.

”What is the meaning of this?” asked the king.

The wiseman replied, “Wear this ring always. Whatever happens, before you call it good or bad, touch the ring and read the inscription. That way, you will always be at peace.”

Balance Between Happy And Sad

With ongoing use, The Radiance Technique® (TRT®) provides a supportive tool for deepening and expanding your awareness. 

Whatever you are experiencing – happiness or sadness – TRT® is there for you. With your use of TRT® hands-on, you access universal energy to apply to your own personal situations. Use of TRT® helps bring balance to your emotions, helping you to center yourself and see the bigger picture.

Use of TRT® provides you inner support and balance whenever you find yourself in a position that you need to say, "this, too, shall pass."

This, Too, Shall Pass

Walking carefully, we realize that enlightenment does not eliminate our human daily life. Someone may be enlightened, and yet they still have a human form and still experience the wide range of human emotions. 

All of our emotions, however, are not who we really are. They are something happening, almost accidentally. They are on the periphery. We are in the center, the observer.

"This, too, shall pass" is a bridge to higher wisdom. It can take us to a point of transcendence in our awareness.

We may even find that happiness embraces sadness and sadness holds within it happiness.

 

Bring Mindfulness To All That You Do

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Ajahn Chah On Meditation And Mindfulness

 
“Sitting for hours on end is not necessary. Some people think that the longer you can sit, the wiser you must be. I have seen chickens sit on their nests for days on end. Wisdom comes from being mindful in all postures. Your practice should begin as you awaken in the morning. It should continue until you fall asleep.

Don’t be concerned about how long you can sit. What is important is only that you keep watchful whether you are working or sitting or going to the bathroom. Each person has his own natural pace. Some of you will die at age fifty, some at age sixty-five, and some at age ninety. So, too, your practice will not be all identical.

Don’t think or worry about this. Try to be mindful and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become quieter and quieter in any surroundings. It will become still like a clear forest pool. Then all kinds of wonderful and rare animals will come to drink at the pool. You will see clearly the nature of all things (sankharas) in the world.

You will see many wonderful and strange things come and go. But you will be still. Problems will arise and you will see through them immediately. This is the happiness of the Buddha.”
— Ajahn Chah
 

Meditation In Your Daily Life

This is what we seek.

To bring our awareness to all that we do. No separation.