What do you expect to get out of meditation?
A lot of people sit down to try ‘meditation’ but soon give up because they either fell asleep or ‘nothing happened’. Nobody seems to know what ‘meditation’ is for! ‘Guided Meditation’ seems to be the only game in town!
Today the internet is a like one big spiritual deli counter, offering every dish you can imagine:
- You can follow along with Madonna’s guru to find your soul mate.
- You can listen to a white bald head talk for hours and hours and hours about the nature of infinity.
- You can pay an aging hippy a $125 an hour to open your spiritual orifices.
- I’ve even seen the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene offering to help people with their sexual problems.
Honest! I didn’t make that up!
But the truth is most people turn to meditation because they want to do something about their pain and emptiness. As fun as having your spiritual orifices opened might be, it is just a confection — none of this nonsense helps you do something about the problem of you!
People instinctively long to find a ‘reality’ that exists just beneath the world they live in and they are right — there is a ‘you’ that exists beneath your idea of yourself but Guided Meditation won’t help you find it.
Did you know that Eskimos have over 50 words for snow — that’s how important snow is to their lives. The fact that we only have one word for ‘meditation’ is hugely confusing for everyone! Maybe our poor vocabulary is due to our spiritual ignorance?
Guided Meditation
Guided Meditation is a lot of things but whatever it is, it is not ‘meditation’. It would be more accurate to call it ‘self-hypnosis’.
Like children, we use fantasy to escape our life. If you feel the need to escape, for a few moments, that’s totally fine but you need to know that it is just a fantasy. You will still be you when you wake up.
If you want to do something about your suffering, if you want to do something about you and find out who you really are, guided meditation is a total waste of time. Why would I say such a thing?
Guided meditation reinforces the illusion that we ARE our thoughts and feelings. It is dangerously narcissistic and ultimately self-indulgent.
Our spiritual insights are useless unless they bear fruit in the real world.
True Meditation
True meditation allows you to connect to the you that exists beneath your idea of yourself.
The problems of life are created by our illusions and our intoxication with the idea of our self as the centre of the universe. Guided meditation only reinforces this error of perception and encourages our inherent self-obsession.
Inevitably this will lead to further isolation and disconnection from the real world. Therefore, after 45 years of studying, I can say from experience that Guided Meditation will take you in exactly the wrong direction.
If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like: What is Meditation, Really?
Watch: What is Meditation, Really?
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Non-Fiction Book: “Quantum Mechanics For Your Soul: How to Repair Yourself and Save the World at the Same Time”
