Meditation isn’t dog training

In a comment to my “Be a spiritual rebel!” post, Stephen asked if anyone who reads this blog had been successful in meditating for 2 ½ hours daily over a two-year stretch. He wondered what happens after engaging in this much meditation.

My initial response to him was: not much.

Stephen, now that I have more time to reply to your query, here’s an elaboration based on not just two, but about twenty years of meditating for 2 ½ hours a day (following the mantra-based technique taught by Radha Soami Satsang Beas, or RSSB).

For the other sixteen years I’ve been meditating, my daily dose has been more like 1 to 1 ½ hours. So I’ve put in a heck of a lot of meditation time, even after subtracting the hours I fell asleep.

In a nutshell, what I’ve learned is that meditation isn’t dog training. In other words, my big mystical revelation is a negative, not a positive. After three-plus decades of communing with the depths (and shallows) of my consciousness, I’ve concluded that I’m not a dog.

Hey, that’s something! And I’ll take spiritual progress in whatever form it presents itself.

My dog training analogy comes from Anthony de Mello, the Jesuit priest I’ve been mentioning in my posts recently. Most people who meditate view their minds as something to be controlled, wild beasts that need taming. Thus effort needs to be put into changing an imperfect, misbehaving consciousness into what is hoped will be a more perfect, obedient consciousness.

I used to think this way. Now I don’t. I agree with what de Mello says about the folly of trying to change yourself, whether through meditation or some other means:

You want to become more virtuous, more loving, more meditative; you want to find God, to come closer to your ideals. Think of the sad history of your efforts at self-improvement, that either ended in disaster or succeeded only at the cost of struggle and pain.

…There is another way besides laborious self-pushing on the one hand and stagnant acceptance on the other. It is the way of self-understanding. This is far from easy because to understand what you are requires complete freedom from all desire to change what you are into something else.

You will see this if you compare the attitude of a scientist who studies the habits of ants without the slightest desire to change them with the attitude of a dog trainer who studies the habits of a dog with a view to making it learn something.

Most meditation practices, such as that taught by RSSB, have the aim of achieving a particular state described in a holy book or by a holy master/guru. Thus the devoted meditator is always focused, either consciously or unconsciously, on moving from a present “bad” condition to a future “good” condition.

The mind is considered to be the “bad dog” that prevents movement to the state of self- or god-realization. Generally lots of time and effort is needed to whip this recalcitrant animal into shape. For example, here’s a Buddhist perspective on what is needed to succeed in meditation:

Learning to stay with ourselves in meditation is like training a dog…So whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to “stay” and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Discursive mind? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What's for lunch? Stay! What am I doing here? Stay! I can't stand this another minute! Stay! That is how to cultivate steadfastness.

I used to believe that this was the way to approach my daily meditation: as a battle with my mind. I’d force myself to sit for the entire 2 ½ hours no matter how bored I was or whatever other activities were competing for my attention. I thought that discipline was key to making spiritual progress.

If I didn’t force myself to tread The Path, how would I ever get where I wanted to go?

Well, that attitude of mine assumed two things: (1) There was somewhere I needed to go, and (2) There was some technique that, if engaged in with enough vigor and determination, could get me there.

In other words, I had bought into the dog training philosophy. I was sure that I’d be able to get the barking, disobedient animal of my mind hooked up to a spiritual sled that would take me all the way to God’s North Pole. Mush! (more accurately, Hike!)

Only problem was, the damn dog never got moving. Thirty-odd years of daily dog training and no results to show for it. At least, not the results that I was told to expect by RSSB. I did get results, exactly the results that should occur given my present understanding of what meditation is all about: letting go.

When I try to control myself, it isn’t surprising that I’m going to end up tying myself in knots. The consciousness that is Me is trying to train the consciousness that is Me. I’m chasing my own tail. I’m going around in circles.

I still meditate every day for about an hour. I don’t worry much about the length of time I put in. I figure that I’m trying to grok what, if anything, is beyond space-time. So it’s nonsensical to sit on my cushion thinking about how much time I’ve been meditating.

I still mentally repeat a mantra. Except when I don’t. I use a one-syllable mantra of my own choosing, not a mantra tied to the concepts of a particular religious or spiritual tradition. Like de Mello says, I want to study this anthill of a cosmos without preconceptions or filters.

That’s the scientific way. I don’t feel anymore like I need to change myself into someone new. My goal is to let go of the old that is keeping me from realizing who I am, and what is happening, right now.

Which is…a spaghetti dinner that needs to be cooked.

I hope what I’ve written makes at least a little bit of sense to you, Stephen. It isn’t easy for me to describe.

Comments

[tao]

Brian makes a very significant point in this article. Not only is is significant, it is the axis of the whole matter. Without openness and freedom from rigidity, there will be little if any true spiritual undersranding and growth .

These de Mello quotes are so central:

"the way of self-understanding" ... "to understand what you are requires complete freedom from all desire to change what you are into something else"

Brian's article concludes:

"I don’t feel anymore like I need to change myself into someone new. My goal is to let go of the old that is keeping me from realizing who I am, and what is happening, right now."

I deeply resonate with this essential point and goal as well.

--- tao

[Cynthia]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your post. I was going to email you to ask what you use now as a mantra for meditation. Since leaving RSSB, I find that it is easy to slip back into using the mantra given to me during initiation. I can't imagine what it must be like to try to change that after 35 years of saying the same thing!!

I, too, am sitting for meditation daily and am not concerned about the time. What matters to me is the "letting go" that I get from sitting there, with no expectation of doing it the "right way". I liked your analogy to dog training. I have a new dog right now that is having some housebreaking challenges. In this case, she NEEDS to learn something!

Anyway, I enjoy my meditation periods more now since they are "mine" and are not periods where I am focused on pleasing others.

Take care. And by the way, Carmine says "hi"!

Cynthia

[ET]

Well Brian, I have read your Blog now and again for a year or so and carefully considered your open and honest thoughts which I appreciate. I usually keep quiet, especially when it is obvious that you know much more than I do about all of this stuff.

Today I appreciate your sharing your experiences with your RSSB approach to meditation and the apt metaphors of training your dog and watching an ant hill. I appreciate your sharing very much, thank you. Your experience does seem to be pretty much in line with everyone else in this cult who has shared their thoughts and experiences with me, or their lack thereof - that is they can’t sit for more than an hour or so, they don’t have any fun when they do, and worst of all -- they never have any experiences!

However, this has not been my experience with my meditation. Let me digress-- Before coming to the RSSB path, about 20 years ago, I had already been moderately successfully meditating for perhaps 20 years using another method that I developed myself. After initiation I combined my method with the RSSB method and found that it was a helpful refinement.

At first I was excited about this and told other RSSB friends about my experiences, but they hushed me up in a big hurry! They told me not to talk about it. They said that many satsangies had been meditating all of their lives and had not even seen the light or heard the sound, let alone gone inside even a little ways and that I would hurt their feelings if I continued to blab it around.

I found this rather shocking, so I wrote a letter to Master Charan Singh explaining my experiences and asked him about this. In his reply he kindly explained that my experiences were due to being on another path in another life time. He said they were a gift from the Father.

So from that feedback I decided to be quiet about my experiences, and that the other RSSB initiates were just supposed to sit and struggle and have no experiences until perhaps the very end of their life. Perhaps they are burning off their karma or developing spiritual muscles so that they can make the big leap to the radiant form of the master one day. Who knows? So, I thought okay - mums the word for me.

So Brian, and any other spiritual seekers out there, I am now, in this very brief post, coming out of my cave for a paragraph or two to give a very different paradigm. Forgive me if you are offended. I know that some of you think that I am just blowing hot air, and others are thinking that I should not speak at all about this, but please remember that I don’t have a dog in this race, and I’m not seeking any notoriety, and this will probably be my last words on this subject, and that I am not sharing any spiritual experiences – just a slightly different attitude and a twist on the technique -- a paradigm shift.

I am only sharing my slightly different approach which apparently makes a big difference. Naturally, since this is a very public forum, I am nervous about exposure and so my comments are going to be very brief.
Finally, before explaining what I think the important differences are let me make one thing very, very clear.

I am not talking about meditating and going all the way to the higher spiritual regions, like seeing the radiant form of the master. No! That is very advanced and very deep. What I am talking about is for simple folks like myself. Just meditating and then seeing some light, hearing the primitive sounds of the Sound Current and going into the lower astral plane – maybe a little beyond.

That should be very easy and it is for me, but -- unless I am missing something here I have yet to talk to anyone, -- even those who have been meditating for 30 or more years, who have done a damn thing! Must be very discouraging. So -- since we are all using about the same meditation practice and I am having some luck and nobody else (that I have talked to) is -- I must be doing something differently-- something that makes it work for me. After all as you say Brian; Life is Fair.

So with that lengthy introduction let me very briefly state what I think the main differences might be. First of all my philosophy is that meditation is not a slap-bam-thank-you-mam affair, it is not a slam dunk. It is more like fishing. Sometimes when the fish are biting you make a great haul, more often you can fish all day and not get a bite. So if they are not biting you still enjoy the experience. It is time off from the mad world and very worth while. That is my context.

-- Now the main differences as I see it – 1) My attitude is not stiff, formal and reverent, rather I am like a kid going fishing. I look forward to my meditation and in the fun and adventure, and the surprises that I will find there, God only knows what kind of a fish I will catch today.

2) All day long and just before meditation I give myself a continual suggestion as to what I will experience; -- see the light and experience that peace and bliss within -- go inside and visit the astral plane -- travel outside of my body and explore my house and yard, --or whatever interests me at that time

3) I prepare for each mediation by loosely thinking about this all day long, sort of at the back of my mind, but always there and then usually I do a little warm up of say a half hour or so in the afternoon or evening just to prime the pump, not trying to go inside, and then just before meditating I spend some time completely relaxing my body, often listening to some very relaxing music.

4) Then being very relaxed, I firmly tell myself that after sitting for awhile I will start to fall asleep and just then as I slip down to my throat center I will become aware and catch myself – like catching a fish when it bites, I set the hook

5) Next when this happens, I am suddenly very alert and often I hear a very high frequency sound, perhaps 10 or 20 kilocycles a second and I simply pull myself up – like sitting up out of my body

6) Bingo! The sound stops as I pop out of my body and float over it and can see my body laying down there and then wonder around at will or – sometimes something else happens -- I see light, like a round foggy window in my forehead, and can go inside through that window, in the latter case there is often some primitive clicking sounds.

Okay, I have said enough, I hope this helps. Good luck in your fishing.
ET

[Brian]

ET, thanks for sharing some details of your meditation experiences. Very interesting.

I appreciate your willingness to talk openly about what works, and what doesn't work, for you. That's a scientific approach -- communicating results of the experiment of meditation.

I took the liberty of adding some paragraph breaks to your fairly lengthy comment. They didn't show up on my (Firefox) browser and made your post a bit difficult to read.

It sounds like you're able to relax and let go, as opposed to (so to speak) holding onto the leash and keeping the dog-mind under control. Could be a lesson for all of us here.