The rising of the sun on the morning of winter solstice comes after the longest night and shortest day of the year. The pendulum swing hits its furthest point, stands still (solstice literally means, stand still) and then begins its swing back the other direction, and the ceaseless cycling of the seasons continues. This moment has been marked by mankind for centuries. Read more!
From the perspective of a modern spirit, immersed in overwhelming noise, general overstimulation of the senses, and the growing pain of the world, escape from this agonizing cacophony has become the ultimate advantage.
And many perceive meditation as a way to escape, deep into the peaceful consciousness of their existence, where the ripple effect of the world’s troubles is subdued, and they can calmly enjoy the serene surface of their inner reflection.
However, meditation serves a purpose on the opposite end of the spectrum. It aims to create a peaceful enough environment within your being in order to face the chaos. Meditation is not an escape, it is the only healing entrance into the deepest wounds of our collective existence. And it serves to give you an oasis amidst turmoil, even in the heart of urban lifestyle, and help you transcend the various conditions in which you may find yourself.
When we are in a hurry to the office, waiting in line in the bank, in a crowded public bus rushing through the traffic jam as much as possible, we are surrounded by the clamor of people, machines and our own thoughts. Everything feels as if we’re overpowered by sensations, flooded with perceptions that are disguised by our own emotions towards them.
Some would say that meditation is impossible in those circumstances. We know it’s necessary.
Still deeper in the undisturbed essence of your being is the clarity of unencumbered perception. A view that is not guided by your personal anguish, impatience or anxiety of such commotion. Tapping into that deeper, most profound awareness is the first prerequisite of meditation, not in spite of your surroundings, but precisely because of them. Silence becomes the most prominent in the middle of chaos.
If you free yourself of expectations, and focus on pure facts, repetitive facts, disengaging from the self-centered mind we constantly occupy, you can let go of the feeling that you are overwhelmed and suffocated by the crowd and the noise of the city.
We are all different, and yet the same when it comes to struggling with distractions. From noisy car alarms, honking, yelling, to the constant pulsating of our footsteps in the streets, it’s difficult to let go of these superficial layers and remain anchored into the present, unbiased, unaffected.
For some, it’s enough to find a solitary corner of the bus and focus on the rhythm of the street while repetitively touching their rosary and using visualization. For others, a pair of noise-cancelling headphones with soothing sounds of nature or music serves as the ultimate healing tool for a mind bruised with distractions. Ultimately, all of these methods serve the same purpose – focusing your mind on perceiving rather than feeling.
In addition to understanding and observing the natural pattern of your breath, and slowly clearing your hectic thoughts, you can use the pace of the city to your advantage. Every metropolis has its own heartbeat, and every soul you pass by in the street contributes to this timeless rhythm – use it to shift your focus.
Abandoning self-gratification
Our survival instincts are deeply rooted in our being, and affect our daily conduct towards others, as well as ourselves. We’ve naturally become the central point of our universe, perceiving the importance and value of everything through the prism of “I, me, myself”. Yet, this is a very limited insight into the world, and a very self-centered way of attributing values, and meditation gives us a mindset that surpasses these primal, ego-oriented perceptions.
It is precisely when you are surrounded by others, waiting for the green light, or stuck in a stuffy tram, that you have the opportunity to shift your pivotal point of perception onto those of around you. When you let go of those suffocating thoughts “I hate this commute”, “I cannot bear this heat”, “Why does this always happen to me?” – you realize that you are not, and never have been, alone.
True meditation, the essence of inner harmony, can never rely only on self-gratification, the illusion of control, and that famous desire to escape. Meditation, through practice of continual mindful existence, through visualization, and growing awareness of yourself and others, embraces the reality of chaos, it thrives in it. When you let go of searching for literal, physical silence, and create it within, you will have unleashed the extraordinary potential that already resides in you.
An Excerpt From “Evolutionary Love Relationships: Passion, Authenticity,and Activism
It is critical to remember that this crisis we are facing is a crisis in which the sacred powers of love in the human soul are being diverted by distraction, by greed, by ignorance, by the pursuit of power, so that they never irrigate the world and transform it. What is needed is a vision of evolutionary relationship as a relationship that helps us come into the real, take responsibility for it, and enact our sacred purpose with a partner, and for the world: when two lovers come together in this dynamic love consciousness, they create a transformative field of sacred energy, from which both can feed to inspire their work in reality.
There are seven requirements necessary, I believe, for this tremendously potent vision of evolutionary love to emerge in the world.
The first requirement is that both beings need to be plunged individually into a deep and passionate devotion of the Beloved, by whatever name they know the Beloved, because without both beings centering their life in God, the relationship will never be able to escape the private circle. From the very beginning it must be centered in the Divine. It must be a relationship that is undertaken in the conscious presence of the Divine for the Divine’s great work in the Universe. Only a relationship that is centered in God, and that has God as the prime actor in the relationship, will be able to bear the vicissitudes of authentic love, of dealing with the challenges of life and service in the world.
The second requirement for an evolutionary love is that both beings must develop a mastery of solitude. In his Letters to a Young Poet
“Authentic love is where two solitudes border, protect, and salute each other.”
They “border” each other, they don’t infiltrate each other’s domain. They “protect” because they realize that the solitude that each one has is the source of inner wealth and inner revelation; they “salute” because they understand that the work of solitude, the work that goes into solitude, the heart work, the yearning, the longing, the deep contemplation of one’s gifts and one’s faults, is a sacred work that is the secret foundation of healthy relationship. In too many relationships in our current narcissistic model, what threatens the person most is the solitude of the other. In a true evolutionary relationship, what can exhilarate one person the most is the other’s solitude, because they know that solitude has the potential to make them a billionaire of generosity, of insight, and of creativity.
The third requirement is that in a true evolutionary relationship there is an equality of power, and that equality is born out of a profound experience of the sacredness and dignity of the other person’s soul. This new relationship that is trying to be given to us by the Mother is what I call the beloved-beloved relationship. One person isn’t the beloved and the other only the lover. Both partners recognize in each other the unique face that God is turning to them in order to bring them the essence of divine truth, which is embodied love. From that recognition of each other as the Beloved flows a natural movement of passionate honoring and service of the other’s life. This gives each person the freedom and the energy and the joy that they need to go out into the world and fulfill their destiny. This is crucial because in the past there has been a vision of inequality of power.
The male has often had the power and the female hasn’t. Dominant and submissive roles between two people have been seen as inevitable.
Now what’s emerging is the mutual recognition of holiness and sacredness expressed in tantric rapture, in an adoration and worship of the other in the core of life.
The fourth requirement follows on from the third: if you are going to have a beloved-beloved relationship, you have to center your whole being and work and evolution in God. You have to be a master of your own solitude so that you can work on what is necessary to deepen that sacred relationship of the Divine. You must also bring the sacred practice of prayer and meditation into the very core of your life, so that the whole relationship can be enfolded in a mutually shared sacred enterprise.
The fifth requirement is that both lovers completely abandon any Hollywood sentimentality about what relationships actually are. As love becomes more evolutionary and conscious, so does each lover’s understanding of each other’s shadow. One of the essential roles of this new love is to make each person in the relationship the safe-guarder of the other’s shadow—not the judge of the other’s shadow, not the denier of the other’s shadow, but someone who recognizes where the other has been wounded, and safeguards and protects them with unconditional compassion without allowing themselves to be mauled or manipulated by the other. This takes an immense effort, because it takes an immense effort to understand your own shadow, and an even greater effort to face and comprehend, without illusion, denial or repulsion, the shadow of the other.
The sixth requirement is that if you are going to enter into the evolutionary process, you have to accept that it never ends, never stops unfolding.
There is no end to transformation, because divine love is infinite.
Evolution is fundamentally a death/rebirth cycle that repeats itself in higher and higher dimensions, and any authentic evolutionary relationship must have the courage to go through the deaths that engender the rebirths. Marion Woodman, the great Jungian analyst and pioneer of the sacred feminine, said to me, “I have had four marriages with my husband, and at the end of each marriage there was a crisis that we had to make the commitment to go through, a projection that had to die. But we stuck at it and we went through it, and the love that we know now in our eighties is the greatest and deepest love we have experienced.”
The seventh principle requirement is that from the very beginning of this adventure into evolutionary love you must make the commitment for it not to be just a personal orgy, a cultivation of an oasis of private pleasure. You must engage consciously in this relationship to make you stronger, to serve the planet, to recognize that it is a relationship not only grounded in God, not only infused by sacred practice, but it is from the very beginning dedicated to making both people more powerful, more reflective, more passionately engaged with the only serious truth of our time: The world is dying, and we need a major revolution of the heart to empower everyone to step forward and start doing the work of reconstruction and re-creation that is now desperately needed.
About the author: Andrew Harvey
Andrew Harvey is an internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, translator, mystical scholar, and spiritual teacher. He has written and edited more than 30 books — including the best-selling titles The Hope and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. He has won the Christmas Humphries Prize (A Journey in Ladakh), the Nautilus Prize twice (The Hope, Light the Flame), and appeared in two recent films (Dancing in the Flames, and Ethan Hawke’s Seymour: An Introduction). He was also the subject of the 1993 BBC film documentary The Making of a Modern Mystic. He has taught at Oxford University, Cornell University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, The California Institute of Integral Studies, and the University of Creation Spirituality as well as at various spiritual centers throughout the United States. He is the founder and director of the Institute of Sacred Activism. He is a kind-hearted rascal with a penchant for red pashminas, Maria Callas, white lions and Chicago pizza.
Welcome Spirit Scientists! I’m so excited to introduce you all to an incredible series by Ryan Boyd that explores in depth the infinitely profound and often overwhelmingly complex realm of the spirit world and our place in it. This is an absolutely invaluable resource for those of us on the spiritual path who are seeking enlightenment and ascension.
This is an ongoing series that will be released in order. I encourage you to clear your head, grab a notebook, take a few moments to deep breathe and prepare to have your mind blown!
Index:
Preface: Fundamental Principles of Reality
Part 3: The Three Great Planes
