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I do a ten minute meditation every day, guided by Sam Harris on his online site, Waking Up.
A constant theme is how everything in our life is sensed in the consciousness generated by our neurologic system. This is easy to comprehend when you consider how the bird hopping on the grass outside the window exists outside of oneself. It is sensed in its color and movement through light stimulating nerves in the retina with neurotransmitters activating nerves in the occipital cortex and, most importantly, the mind paying attention to it at the integrative level of consciousness. The color and movement may be stimulating the cortex but you might be ignoring it aware instead of the music playing and concentrating on plans you need to make.
But what about the thoughts you might have about going to a movie tonight. Which one? Where? Really tonight? Isn’t this part of your intellect and will, two aspects of Aristotle’s soul. Sam Harrison would challenge you to convince him that there is a self, a homunculus somewhere in the “self-central command center” pondering these questions. Instead he would prompt you to look at the thoughts and emotion of uncertainty as an event or occurrence that floats into you consciousness. You can think of it as one of those statements that float up into the window of a toy eight ball which you can ask questions of like, “Is my team going to win today?” All your memories have been lain down in your cortex and processed in the amygdala (emotion) and the hippocampus (memory). These thoughts and emotions happens to be those that “come to mind” or intrude on your consciousness. You did not control this from the “self-central command center.”
Being open to this ever-present process is variously named Awareness, Being Mindful and Being Awake. It calls for emptying your thoughts of all the distractions of preoccupation and focusing on what you are sensing at the present instant, including looking at the thoughts that come to mind and gently setting them aside. Engaging in this process requires Being Intentional.
I love mediation. These concepts are very fundamental to meditation. If I say meditation is a tool that is “useful,” I believe I might be corrected by sensei Harris -though I might be wrong here. Meditation is not a tool to make you feel better, but rather it is entering into reality, of waking from the dream we create of what our life is.
All we have in being alive is the now. We do have our memories of our past. They are lain down like the data in a ROM. But they are not our present, unless they come to mind. It is true that when these memories come into our consciousness they will illicit current emotions of joy and sadness, of agony and ecstacy, of pride and guilt. We can dwell in them and often do. But as for being alive, they are not the present in which we exist, other than being the present in which we dwell in our past. Or in the future. But one can step back and embrace that this is not who you are living in the present. They can be looked at and held onto in the present or put aside in the present which is the only life we have in the now.
Many of us live with guilt. I know I do. For me, some of the guilt is over things I have not admitted to anyone. Sometimes I wonder if I could even admit them “on my death bed.” I know they do not totally define who I am, what my life has given. But I sure can go back to the memories, dwell in them, and sometimes say my life is tainted by them, an area of malignancy. It is pretty easy to think in the present that this is who I am.
Faith can help relieve guilt. If I cannot forgive myself, I have faith God can. The Being behind the Big Bang is so much more powerful than I am and concerned with greater things. But meditation offers the opportunity to contemplate the current reality that is more real than the nightmare of dwelling in actions and inactions for which you experience guilt.
Live in the now. The moments you are given in your life is all you have. Be open to the now for that is the ground upon which you are able to act, to be what you aspire to be. This is not to forget or to excuse yourself. But it is to put the past in a proper place. The past is not what you are now. What you think and the actions of the now will become part of the past that lives next to all of your past. Don’t give up the opportunity to live now.
I think of it as an uncoupling of the past from the present. One can gaze on the cars receding into the past. You might choose to think about it, to look at it and turn it around in your hands as if you were holding something. In fact, you are holding the thoughts in your consciousness. But they are thoughts that have floated up to the window of the now. They can be set down and you can move on to actions in the present.
This is a spiritual discipline to be worked at and worth committing to. You do not experience a lightning bolt completely and permanently purging you. You need to work at with regular intentionality. But the nightmares can be set aside as you wake up to who you are today. And sometimes that may seem like a lightning bolt.
On the Beach At Night Alone 