How Meditation Keeps it Really Real

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Aug 19, 2015

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Im not going to lie. Ive tried sitting for over an hour a day consistently for more than two decades. While Ive been
able to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat on a rare occasion, I know of yogis and sadhus that have gone
into deep meditative states for twenty years or more. The entire time Ive been trying to sit in meditation, theyve
been actively doing it. Or not doing it, would be more accurate. What compels someone to try to calm the mind
when the very nature of the mind is to think? Is meditation all its cracked up to be, or is it some glori ed practice
meant just for saints and not the every-day-Jane and Joe of the 21st century?
Examples of professional meditators abound. Theres the Buddha Boy, in Nepal, who some think is an incarnation
of Guatama Buddha, and others think is part of a sinister crowd-manipulating game of charades put on by his older
brother. He was observed meditating beneath a tree for months at a time, without food or water, whereupon

thousands of devotees descended upon the area. Buddha boy disappeared form his tree, and authorities found him
later meditating in an underground chamber.
Then there are the claims in famous books like Paramahansa Yoganandas
Autobiography of a Yogi. He describes sadhus sitting in caves for months, even
years at a time in deep contemplation, some barely breathing.
These stories are told with straight faces, even to unbelieving questioners.
When coupled with tales of the 82-year old Indian man, Prahlad Janim, who
claims to have had neither water nor food in over 70 years, you have to start
to wonder if there are other ways to sustain an individual besides on the
material, energetic mana most of us are accustomed to.
Though these claims are inspiring, and on the outside chance, even possible
for the average person, most of us have trouble sitting still for ten minutes, let alone quieting the mind for years at
a time.
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For me personally, meditation has turned out to be better than all the best books claim, and nothing like the wild
assertions on the Internet that the practice will make us happier, healthier, more peaceful, and live longer
though these claims are not untrue.
Allow me to explain further. Lets assume we all come to this planet with our own bag of tricks that means some
of our karma will serve us very well, and other bits of our karma, which is really just a term meaning our most
consistent habits of thought and action, wont make living on earth such a walk in the park.
Your bag of tricks will be very different than mine. Whether or not you believe in past lives, we can at least agree
that we are profoundly in uenced by the mental and emotional programming of our families and the multiple
generations of karma (most common emotional trend of their ancestors) that they experienced while they were
raising us. If you factor in hundreds or even thousands of lifetimes of this programming, you can see why dipping a
toe in the unconscious material of the mind might not always be like taking a walk on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Meditation unearths the not so sublime and the incredible. It keeps things really real. Similarly, the reason
subliminal advertising works so well on us, as in every magazine, television, and radio ad weve ever witnessed, is
because it speaks to the parts of our minds that are truly running the show. If our conscious mind is the tip of an

iceberg, the unconscious mind is that looming monstrosity of impenetrable ice beneath the surface of the water.
When we meditate, we start to become conscious of the vast in uences lurking in the deep. Some of these are good
in uences, and others are, well, every bad emotion we could think of from greed, to lust, anger, hatred, and selfserving tendencies, to laziness, workaholism, cheating, lying, etc. Most of these emotions are tucked away because
no one wants to admit that they are ever angry or jealous or petty. Even more surprisingly, some of us dont want to
admit we are all-powerful, and capable of vastly more than we are eking out in this life!
Heres where it gets really, really real. While meditation, in time, will make you a more compassionate and peaceful
person, it takes getting down into the dark abyss below the surface to dredge up some not-so-pretty stuff before
you can ever oat around feeling like the world is beautiful and everyone in it is your best friend.
Some people have a mistaken idea that all thought disappears through meditation and we enter a state of blankness.
There certainly are times of great tranquility when concentration is strong and we have few, if any thoughts. But other
times, we can be ooded with memories, plans or random thinking. Its important to not blame yourself. ~ Sharon
Salzberg
Meditation allows what is called the gap in some traditions, where you have a split second, or if you are lucky, a
few of those seconds, to really think about an action you are going to take, before you take it. This gap, a small,
quiet moment when you arent thinking of your next move, usually a reaction to some past experience, and not at
all a clean, unfettered, pure action based on the moment as it truly is, is invaluable. Some people look at a problem
for a lifetime through psychoanalysis, through conversations with friends, through a dozen other methods of
problem solving and they dont have the same insight as a gap moment can provide. This is why it is called an aha moment. It is the same type of mental clarity that creative people experience when they come up with a great
work of art or a phenomenal musical masterpiece. The amount of mental clearness that can be achieved when the
mind becomes still, even for a second, is absolutely earth-shattering.
Mediation is life altering but sometimes the a-ha moment allows you to realize what youve been doing to
others or to yourself was really hurtful, exceptionally misguided, or sorely small-minded. Without the awareness of
what we have been doing that hasnt been so wonderful, we cant truly become who we were all along before the
small-mindedness, or anger, or fear crept into our most common emotional stance or way of interacting with the
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As Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School explains:

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Wefound long-term meditators have an increased

amount of gray matter in the insula and sensory
regions, the auditory and sensory cortex. Which
makes sense. When youre mindful, youre paying
attention to your breathing, to sounds, to the present
moment experience, and shutting cognition down. It
stands to reason your senses would be enhanced.
When we meditate we are giving the brain, and ourselves more of our full potential to see things as they truly are.
Sir John Eccles has stated his feelings on the in nite potential of the human brain, and he won the Noble prize.
In a lecture delivered at the University of Colorado, he stated in regards to the percentage of which humans use
their brain, The human brain has in nite potential- so how can you calculate a percentage of in nity?
If your reality is closing in due to old patterns and erroneous reactions to people or circumstances, wouldnt you
want to wade through some of your mental detritus to get to that higher percentage of in nity?
Maybe you cant yet sit for hours like the Buddha Boy, or eschew food and water for several decades, but you can
start to get real about life and your part in it. It starts with just a few minutes sitting every day, and when those aha moments come, and I assure you they will, the eeting sense of time where everything becomes crystal clear,
youll know the cumulative practice of meditation was worth it.
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