Tag: freedom

Meditation–Acceptance

This a meditation of the analytical type designed to develop acceptance, what Buddhists call non-resistance to change. Rigid things break, flexible things endure.  Solid things stay where they are, Fluid things find a way around obstacles. If we want to endure and move beyond obstacles, we must learn to go with the flow of an ever-changing reality. How do we learn to do this?

One way is to accept new things and ideas, making your life a meditation in action. Try new foods. Travel to different places. Talk with people who are not like you. Visualize these activities, then do them.

Another way is to master a sport or hobby requiring fluid movement to excel, such as surfing, skiing, skating, dance, martial arts, tennis, golf, bowling, horsemanship, sailing and such. Then practice until all actions can be performed automatically without thinking. Fluidity and non-resistance begin with attention and acceptance of what-is, ever changing reality. The rigid dancer is upset when bumped by another dancer. The fluid dancer smiles and flows into an open space.

Now try this visualization. Imagine that you are water, a small pool of clear water at a mountain spring. You sprang from the ground and entered a pool surrounded by rocks. You wish to be more than a quiet pool, so you explore the pool and find a small opening. You squeeze through the aperture and become a trickle.

You encounter a pebble on your left and flow past it on your right. There is a pebble on your right, and you flow past it on your left. You gather your waters in a rivulet and flow on.

A rock appears on your right. You splash into it and flow left around it. Rivulets join you. A larger rock is on your left and you flow right around it. You are a stream now, flowing faster, and a boulder is in your path.

You stop for a time, but are buffeted by turbulence, so you let go, split, and flow around both sides, reuniting beyond the boulder. The stream bed steepens, and you encounter many boulders, flowing around some and over others. It is exhilarating. Other streams join you, and you become a river, flowing downward.

You reach a cleft and shoot through it into a wandering canyon, slow but deep. The canyon leads to a reservoir behind a dam where you stay for a while, gathering water from pattering rains. You will not stay still. You find an opening. Down you flow with force through a turbine, spinning the blades to power a city.

Out you shoot below the dam as a river through forests. The path becomes shallow and fast with rock below until the rock ends and you leap off the edge of a waterfall into a turbulent pool below. Now you calm your waters and quietly flow through meadows and past cities.

You feel a pulse, in and out, resistance and release, crashing waves. You flow with the ebb tide into the sea. Consciousness of being expands. You feel no boundaries. You are free.

Meditation–Two Chains

This is a meditation of the analytical type, having a visualized structure. It is designed to rid yourself of the limiting burdens of guilt and retribution (payback or justice). A spiritual friend once explained to me why we can never be free to reach our full potential on earth and why we are doomed to forever reincarnate into suffering.

When we live on earth, we inevitably hurt others, intentionally and accidentally. We feel guilty for harm we caused, so we spend much of our time trying to atone, and we reincarnate to repair harm we caused to others in our lives. In our life on earth, we are also inevitably harmed by others, and we seek retribution for undeserved harm from others in this life, past lives, and lives to come. Inevitably we acquire nemeses, beings that retaliate for our unintended harm to them. We feel guilty for harming them and try to make amends, only to find they seek revenge, striking back, usually hurting us intentionally worse than we harmed them accidentally. We then seek justice against them, causing them intentional righteous harm for which they feel wronged and wish to retaliate.

This cycle of guilt for harm caused and retribution for harm received can continue even beyond the grave, all parties seeking atonement and revenge for eternity, never reaching heaven or heavenly states of mind. I was horrified by my friend’s view of eternal conflict, but had to admit that it is possible to become trapped this way in this life and in future lives. Even killing a nemesis only makes the trap deeper. I knew that breaking this cycle must be possible, so I developed this Two-Chains analytical meditation.

Imagine that you are an angel. In this life you wish to be free to help others and reach your full potential. In your next life you wish to be free to reach heaven. You wish to spread your wings and fly. But you see that you are chained to earth with two heavy chains and you cannot fly. You cannot lift off. You know that flying creatures cannot carry heavy burdens, they must be light. So you examine your chains and see that each link on the left is heavy guilt for wrongs done to others, and each link on the right is the wish for retribution for heavy wrongs done to you. Visualize this until the image is clear and stable. Feel the weight of the chains.

When you strike off a link on the right to retaliate for wrongs suffered, you notice that a new link appears on the left, heavy guilt for harm caused by retaliating. Whenever you remove a link of guilt from the left by trying to undo harm caused, a link appears on the right because the harmed person strikes back, adding a new link needing retribution to the right chain. You notice that the two chains are connected. Removing a link from one side merely shifts the link to the other chain, and the burden remains the same.

So you look at how the chains are attached, and you see that you are holding them in your hands. If you were to drop the chain in your right hand by letting go all wishes for righteous justice, forgiving all for harm done to you, you would still be grasping in your left hand all the heavy links of guilt for harm you caused others, and you still could not fly. If you instead forgive yourself for all harm you caused and let go the burden of atonement but still grasp in your right hand the need for retribution for harm done to you, you are still burdened and cannot fly.

The solution of course is to release both chains. Shout to yourself, “I will no longer play this game!” Simultaneously forgive yourself for harming others and forgive others for harming you. Visualize opening both hands and letting the chains fall, then spreading your wings and flying free of the burdens of life. An unchained angel. Thus freed, what can you do now?