So you want to go to the next level?

Transformational practices like Qigong and Yoga can serve a lot of different purposes in our lives.  Sometimes it's amazing to go to a yoga class and sweat yourself into an endorphin-rich altered state.  Other times it's beautiful to be part of a community that builds itself around the practice of Qigong or martial arts, to be nourished by the ongoing connections that such a community engenders.  Sometimes its beautiful to learn new things, explore new ways of breathing and moving just for the experience of something new and wonderful!

But at a certain point, I've found, we want our transformational practices to become.... well... transformational!

What makes the difference?  What determines whether your yoga will tone your booty but not inform your relationships or whether it will bring you new spiritual understandings that revolutionalize how you show up to your life?  This is a profound question on the path because it enables us to explore how the process of transformative practices really works and what obstacles might show up on that path.  When we understand them, the obstacles themselves become opportunities for empowerment!

The Plateau

In any path of transformational practice or mastery, you're bound to hit a plateau.  Athletes know about it, it's not just "hitting the wall" in a certain training session or event, it's more like a phase in your practice where you are not experiencing profound upward development.  The development in these phases is glacial, is underground, may not even be visible.

Your time for running the mile hasn't budged in months!  Your personal record for a lift has stabilized (or even gone backward!).  The same thing happens in physical yoga or martial arts - flexibility or coordination will at times just up and stop!  In the inner yogas of meditation and the subtle body, the same phenomenon is observed, one day you're vibing with the inner sound, integrating your traumas, experiencing bliss and luminosity... next day, week, month, it's just boring old sitting!

Now a Zen perspective might say "WHAT IS WRONG WITH BORING OLD SITTING!?" and this perspective is often used to point out a powerful phenomenon in how we're conditioned.  Our brains are built to look for novelty.  When we see something new we get a lil burst of dopamine happy drugs, then when we get used to it, we'll actually background that information and hardly even perceive it (like a ticking clock that you don't hear unless you focus on it).  When we meditate on the breath, or sensation in the lower belly, many of us can usually go for a couple minutes of keeping the mind there, but beginning meditators will notice that after that the awareness of the breath will just "go away" and you'll find yourself focusing on thoughts or fantasies or the like.  Your mind has gotten used to the breath and gone in search of novelty.

Anyone who has mastered something can tell you that you will need to push through this novelty plateau if you're going to go to the next level.  Pianists have to be able to play those scales for years and years, runners have to just put in the time pounding the track, and meditators have to just keep coming back to the breath.

In meditation, one of the cool things that happens over time is that you can train the mind to find the novelty within the familiar.  So intermediate and advanced meditators have gotten through the phase of just wresting the mind back to its object of focus, and they find now that there are infinite facets of the breath which delight the mind.  You'll hear yogis speak of state experiences where there is "only the breath", or where one is "being breathed," or all sorts of wonderful-sounding experiences.  Yet somehow even though these are amazing sounding state experiences, they begin to transcend the conditioning to constantly seek novelty.  In a way, that constant seeking mind is one that has shut down the vivid intensity of the living moment.  For a yogin who has settled into the NOW, the breath is an infinitely entertaining object because it is a dancing aliveness filling one's consciousness without obstruction!

If you're lucky, you're heart will break.

This is the title of a book on Zen by James Ford, and I find it so evocative.  So far we've only really talked about how to be with the plateau stage - first know that it's a thing, it doesn't mean something's wrong, it's just part of progress and growth.  Then you can settle in, learn to LOVE the plateau!  But what about moving beyond the plateau, how do we progress to the "next level"?

Well, another thing that someone who's mastered an art will tell you is that just when you've learned the fine art of persevering, you've settled in for the long-haul, you've finally surrendered yourself to the plateau, then your heart will break.

In teaching massage school it was pretty predictable that once you got a few months in, students would start experiencing "emotional release".  Somewhere in the deep tissue module or in energetic healing, things would get profoundly UN-BORING.  Challenging memories might surface, or feelings with no stories attached, and these would move up and out into expression.  Some combination of the students perseverance, and the trust built in the cohort allowed for a deeper relaxation than is usually possible, and the armor would begin to come off, piece by piece.

At this point, you'd begin to see people's lives changing.  People who'd been trying for years would up and quit smoking, or drop 10 pounds, find an insight about their Life's Path.  And often, people would find themselves becoming sensitive to a more subtle level of being - they'd be more empathetic, more intuitive, more in-tune with the world around them.

In yoga training too, ongoing cultivation will regularly result in a re-evaluation, sometimes even a bit of an existential crisis, in which ones entire orientation to life can shift.  And beautifully, in these times, resources will often emerge synchronistically out of the woodwork to support one in advancing to this next level of openness and aliveness.

It comes down to aliveness

Really, it's all about aliveness.  As Jesus said "I've come that you shall have life, and that more fully." The essence of transformational practice is a re-awakening, it's a bringing back to life those parts of ourselves that we've hidden under emotional armoring, or which were compacted through trauma.

This is not always a straightforward path!  In the ancient times, this is why they said that no one should try to practice awakening the Kundalini without direct guidance from an experienced teacher.  What is the Kundalini?  It's the energy of our livingness.  When that instinctual power comes on line, we can use it to vivify all aspects of our life - from our open heart, to our lucid awareness, and even our physical health.  But as it awakens, it must also vivify all those pains and closures that had been put to sleep as we tried to keep ourselves safe.

As this process of re-awakening our livingness occurs, we need to know that something natural is happening, so we don't clinch up and re-inhibit this vital force.  And we need to know how to compassionately and lovingly be with the energies, emotions, memories, and inspirations that may emerge.  We need to avoid the tendency to try to muscle through and induce a type of catharsis that might actually injure us on the one side, and the tendency to shut down and go back to sleep on the other.  We need to forge a middle road of self-compassion and firm resolve, that helps us navigate the profound journey of self-awakening.

So, like the expression goes: "if you're going through hell, KEEP GOING!"  In our transformational practice, sometimes we'll hit a hellacious plateau, with it's interminable waiting.  Settle in, surrender, and learn to love it, you may find it's quite a blissful place in disguise.

And sometimes we'll find ourselves in the hell of our own past emotions, which we shoved down or closed off because we weren't strong enough to integrate them.  Well, good news, if they're coming up to consciousness, you now ARE strong enough.  It's time to learn to love yourself more deeply.  Find a guide who knows the path, and commit to walking it with self-compassion - it's the most amazing journey there is!

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polarity, unknowing, and bliss

Polarization is on my mind a lot lately because the political atmosphere in the world feels very polarized.

Polarization is a time-honored technique in social action and protest movements.  Some people enjoy it, some people don't.  Basically, the tactic is to take a strong stance on something - maybe something controversial.  This will alienate a certain number of middle-of-the-road-ers, but will also mobilize a number of people who were sitting on the fence, unconvinced of the seriousness of the situation.

Perhaps you can see why some people dig this technique, and some people really dislike it!  It can force people to "take sides" in issues that are more complex than just black-or-white, but it can also get people moving, when they might have just sat around waiting for more clarity and remaining stagnant.

It could bring up a wild game of "who's right?" in one's mind.

And it's a great example of what the mind is doing all the time.  Our minds are polarization machines! 

Many of the great meditators claim that there is a state of meditation in which one moves "beyond doubts."  And let me tell you, right about now that sounds SUPER REFRESHING!

But immediately, it sets up another polarity - doubt -vs- non-doubt.  Is there a path "beyond" this kind of polarizing of the mind?  I have to tell you that in any grandiose, ultimate sense, I personally don't know.  Perhaps ask the Dalai Lama, or Matthieu Ricard, or another great meditator.

What I do know, is that on the small-scale, homegrown level that someone like me aspires to, there does seem to be a freedom from the mind's incessant need to polarize everything.  This state, and the method to invoke it, was called by one mediaeval Christian mystic "The Cloud of Unknowing."

In Mahayana Buddhism, too, there are many contemplations brought up that don't have a good logical solution.  They are polarities that cannot be reconciled by ordinary logical means.  This is the essence of the Zen Koan.  There is no good answer that comes from ordinary, dualistic thinking.

It is taught, and it can be experienced that there is a state one can enter that is, as the masters call it, beyond [dualistic] thinking.

This is a beautiful secret of profound meditation.  That the way to peace is not to try to forcefully suppress the thought words that go-round in the mind.  That's actually a losing battle, because it's based on the same fundamental polarization.  By trying to repress thoughts and set up an anti-thought regime, you're back in the same stress-producing game as before!

The trick, it seems, is to fully embrace whatever is happening.  Not to attempt to pick one side of the battle in the mind - whatever battle it may be at the moment.  But just to enjoy the absurdity of the entire thing.  This is not a way of trying to distance yourself from it, no, the very humor and joyfulness of the method is a non-dichotomous way of being.

One method of entering this practice that surprised me was when a meditation teacher gave the instruction to "embrace my doubts."  Rather than trying to meditate right, rather than trying to learn more, rather than trying to escape the discomfort of not-knowing, you just be with what is.  And it was so weird when I tried it, that the uncomfortable thoughts just ground to a halt all on their own.  I was in a totally different state.

Is this state useful?  I can only speak from the limited experience that I've had, which I've related to what I've learned from masters of Zen, Sufism, and other lineages.  These lineages claim that it is only through entering the state that transcends our usual polarizing habit that we can gain new awareness.  So, the point of this meditative state is not to enter a dull, murky zone, where everything sort-of mushes together in grey.  No, when this state is tasted, it is lucid and joyful, and entails the integration of what was previously seen as dualistic.

My friends, in a world that can't seem to come together, one thing we can do is learn to come together within.  Not by staking a claim on one stance to the exclusion of all others.  Not be stiff-jawing a form of imposed confidence.  But by embracing the vulnerability of "don't know mind" - which is found, in practice, to be sublime knowing itself!

End Discrimination - starting within

Ok, first, two disclaimers:

One: discrimination is a serious issue.  Please do not form the conclusion, based on the title,  that I think that you can "meditate discrimination away" from the high seat of whatever life of privilege allows you the time to meditate - I don't.  But I do think outer discrimination and inner discrimination are not unconnected.  Read on if you'd like to hear more about that idea.

Two: discrimination means a lot of things.  In Buddhist psychology, for example, certain kinds of discrimination are considered to be very good.  I am not arguing in any way against having this kind of discrimination.  In fact, I'm one of it's biggest fans!

Ok, so then on to the meat of it.

We humans are constantly discriminating.  And I mean that in the usage that means something like making prejudicial judgements.  This is wrapped up in the kind of discriminating that could be termed "wise discrimination" - where we make sound decisions in the real world, for our own and others welfare, but at the same time, there are sort of different flavors involved here.

The type of discrimination I'm talking about here is one of the Five Heaps, or "Skandas", of traditional Buddhism.  And there's a powerful teaching that helps make it clear what the big deal is about discrimination.  The Five Heaps are:  Form, Feeling, Discrimination, Consciousness, and Other Mental Factors.

Now, the interesting part is that Feeling and Discrimination are "Mental Factors" - so in the old Buddhist Universities the line of questioning you were expected to stumble upon is this:  "Why do Feeling and Discrimination get their own categories, while the other 40-some-odd Mental Factors all get lumped together as 'other mental factors'?"  Because it's kind of weird that these two would get to stand out.  Personally, I think Wisdom and Concentration are some pretty cool mental factors, why wouldn't you single those out?  Why single out Feeling and Discrimination?

And the answer goes something like this:  Feeling and Discrimination get singled out because they, among all the other mental factors, are the most instrumental in the habit of fixating on one's sense of Self.  To Buddhists, this fixed-sense-of-self thing is a big deal because, they say, when we're thinking that we exist in some fixed way, we're actually quite delusional about the open, changing, being of vast potential and love that we really are.  They teach that we are regularly choosing a version of "me" that is cramped, frightened, and uncomfortable - when we have available one that is vast, luminous, and caring.  And why do we do this?  Habits of not recognizing who we really are.

How do Feeling and Discrimination play into this?  Well, we have to understand what is meant by these terms.  "Feeling" does sort of just mean the capacity to feel - but in this Buddhist psychology it goes deeper, because the feelings are always "pleasurable", "painful", and "neutral".  And we are always going around judging experiences on whether they are bringing "me" pleasure, pain, or neutral sensations.  We tend to run toward the pleasurable ones, away from the painful ones, and sort of numb out around the neutral ones.  And now don't get me wrong, pleasure and pain are not anathema concepts.  The Buddha is in fact called "The one who went to bliss" after all, and taught primarily on the "End of Suffering."  But the trick here is that with the Skanda of Feeling, we are interpreting all of this around a false sense of who we are.

We are running around the world trying to look for pleasurable sensations that will ease the pain of thinking I'm a cramped little "me" who's nature is tainted with intrinsic anxiety.  We scurry about trying to avoid the pain that will intensify the low-level discomfort we already deal with, or which will uncover the instability of the pleasures we chased.  And when we find neutrality, we numb out or pass out and have no recognition of the cycle we're stuck in.

Discrimination is all mixed up in this, because it gets put into the service of the "self" project, the affirm-and-protect-the-cramped-"me" project, and it's job is to separate everything into "me vs not-me" or "things-i-like vs things-i-don't-like."  And here's the kicker, according to Buddhist psychology, we're basically doing this 100% of the hours and seconds we are conscious!  Is it any wonder, then, that we are so EXHAUSTED???

So meditation, the real boon of meditation is maybe the fact that we are actively, consciously, intentionally, giving our Discriminations a rest.  And you can tell that this works because people who meditate often gain more energy or optimism for their lives.  They often feel free from the tightness that most humans walk around in.  And the biggest benefit related to this little blog today is that they can find release from the cycle of judgement, blame, make-wrong, and prejudice.

Now, let's get down to how to end discrimination in the world.  The nasty kind, the kind that makes people rent apartments to White people and not to Black people, the kind that makes women get paid 75% of what men get paid, that ugly one.

The truth is that you cannot solve a problem by doing the thing that created it.  I think that this is obvious in the case of discrimination.  You are not going to lesson hate in the world by hating the haters.  That does nothing to decrease their hate (research shows it actually makes them dig in deeper), and then it adds your hatred on top of it.  On the other hand, people who have learned to be kind and welcoming to everyone have often found that through the power of their kindness, they've been able to connect to the "enemy" and come to mutual understanding - to rephrase that in more powerful terms, let's say it this way, they've been able to convince the "haters" to accept new and more loving perspectives.

And this is the true power of non-discrimination.  If we are walking around judging others - even when our moral positions are largely righteous - we are still sowing seeds of distrust, shame, and enemy-hood into the world.  But when we free ourselves from this automatic prejudice, we begin to see others as fields of potential - not unchanging, blameworthy reprobates, but as human beings, with human hearts.  Likely these human hearts are filled with pain or misunderstanding, and every once in a while our kindness and openness is the exact medicine needed to ease that pain and enlighten that misunderstanding.

We can only do this through the power of meditation.  I see a three step process:
1. Put discrimination to rest during meditation
let go of judging the contents of your mind and experiences and just take time to be in a state of open acceptance.
2. This must infect your actions.
 If you're meditating properly and with any regularity, your interactions with others will automatically become more kind and open.
3. Your openness will become infectious.
When you come to others with the light of kind acceptance in your heart, it gives you the magic key to begin spreading the virus of kindness and acceptance.

I believe that we cannot teach others to accept, except through accepting them.  It will be hard.  It does not mean we condone hurtful and hateful acts - that kind of discriminating is completely embraced.  But if we have trained through our practice of accepting our own mind, letting thoughts and perceptions bubble up and pass, with the warm light of love and vast awareness, we may just find that we now have space in our heart to view the potential in things, without cringing, hating, or prejudice.

This will not dis-empower us from acting, perhaps it is only from this place that we will find out what true empowerment feels like!

How to practice when it's difficult

Difficult times are one of the great enemies of establishing a meditation practice.

In master Kamalashila's text, the 'Stages of Meditation', he gives us some good news.  You can get to stage one without being able to concentrate, or hold your breath, or sit still, or anything.  You get to the first stage just by actually doing your meditation.  So, out of the 10 stages he lists, one is kind of a freebie!

Like my teacher is fond of saying "half the battle is showing up!"

But sadly, it's not as easy as it sounds.  The first meditation obstacle is technically translated as "laziness" in this ancient book, but in the experience of many, we should probably actually say it's more about prioritizing things other than meditating.

Because the truth is, you're not lazy.  Many people who cannot start or continue a meditation practice are very vigorous when it comes to business, or play, or the like.  So what's the deal?  It's a matter of priorities.  The classical response to this obstacle of meditation is that one is supposed to give herself a "pep talk".  You have to uplift your faith in what the meditation is doing for you.  If you have some experience with meditation, this gets easier, because you probably already know that it can make you calmer, or bring inspiration, or a host of health benefits.  But even if you don't have this personal experience, you can read the life histories of meditators, or look at the modern research.

In times of adversity, though, the whole thing gets harder.  I think maybe it's because we have this negativity bias in our brains that makes bad things seem much bigger than good, we maybe prioritize focusing on those bad things - to the detriment of things that can help us weather the storm.

It can be harder to give ourselves a pep-talk about the long-term benefits of meditation, when the short-term needs seem very pressing.  On top of this, the brain is loathe to switch gears when it has gone into a fight or flight state.  These survival states route blood into the more ancient parts of the brain that are concerned with the here-and-now, to the exclusion of other perspectives, and long-term visions and goals.

So, since it can be so hard to give oneself a pep-talk, allow me to give one to you!

1. Meditation is for times of adversity
Ok, don't believe the ads in the Yoga Journal.  Meditation is not for middle-class white women who've just had their hair done and currently have not pressing issues.  No.  Meditation is for dealing with the trials and stresses of real life.  Meditation is for school teachers, meditation is for activists, meditation is for prophetic souls.  And, it's also for the ladies in the Yoga Journals.

2. This is what you've been practicing for
These times of adversity are a challenge to the soul, but the practice of meditation is meant to make the soul (psyche) more resilient.  The promise of meditation is not that you'll fly off somewhere to a paradise where everyone is Cherubic and cute.  Rather, it is that even when the circumstances around you are crumbling down, you can find that paradise within.  And you can use it to deal with what is coming up.

3. You're going to need those resources
One of the best things about a meditation practice is that it brings many benefits (as long-term practitioners, and research can attest).  Among these are increased insight, heightened immune systems, greater empathy and compassion, and more psychological resilience.

In times of adversity, this kind of insight and long-view, this enhanced physiological response, this resilience of the psyche, and ability to feel into others' experiences is exactly what we need.  Because meditation is not about checking-out of the world.  The thing about finding that paradise within is not some excuse to shut everyone out in a solipsistic fantasy.  No, we are here to bring that possible peace to others.  To unfold and evolve it from within ourselves.  And to do that, we're going to need all our resources online.

If we can remember to practice - by remembering its importance - then we not only have the calm and peace within that we cannot find outside, but we have even more to bring to the table to make the outer world a better place.

So, if you're struggling, if you are afraid, certainly take good care of yourself.  Don't push too hard at anything.  But DO get on that cushion (or yoga mat, or artist's canvas, etc.) and actively shift your brain from short-term negativity into wider-view peace and compassion.

You'll be glad you did!

Lower your standards

Ok, this is a meditation advice that some of the over-acheivers and perfectionists will not want to hear.

How do I know?  Well, because I'm a perfectionist myself, of course!

To be clear, this is not one of those things where I say that we should have meager, moderate goals.  That maybe the attainments of deep meditators might be good for monks and nuns, but not for modern people.  Oh, no, not that at all.

I, personally, have been taught that for some of us, the lifestyle of a householder or working person is actually the perfect way to gain deep realizations of goodness, truth, and beauty.  It's not necessarily helpful to say that we should lower our standards about what's possible.

In this vein, for a long time, I was very frustrated by some of the Zen training slogans I'd hear, like one that says "Nothing Special".  We can use this in meditation as a way of creating some distance from the thoughts we usually identify with as our self.  Sometimes, though, I was confused because heard teachers using this slogan in a way that turns out to seem almost nihilistic when I'd take the logic to its conclusion - saying something like - "meditation may change you for the better, or it may not, just try not to be too concerned about it!"  I didn't find it especially motivating to be told I should do this thing that may or may not have an effect.  My Western mind was trained that every good thing should have a good advertisement to promote it.  But here these meditators are just saying that their method is "nothing special."

For me, I didn't want to spend my time sitting in an uncomfortable pose, counting my breaths if it wasn't going to actually benefit my life in some way!  I know lots of fun things to do that don't especially benefit me, why wouldn't I just do those?  Why learn to meditate?!

But then, upon reflection, upon tasting (in my own small way) some of the fruits of meditation, I've come to see how much potency there is in a training slogan like "nothing special."

Another phrase I more recently learned from a teacher was this:  "To go fast is to go slow."  Meaning, sometimes the quickest way to accomplish something is actually to take a moderate pace and just go step by step.  This starts to shine a light on the meaning of some of these other training phrases.  That they might be for people who are trying to achieve a lot in their meditation, and by this causing undo stress to their body and mind.  These type of instructions are why in traditional meditation systems, you'd always have a mentor working with you directly - because some people need to be slowed down, while others need a gentle kick in the posterior to get moving!

So this little blog today is not so much for those who aren't sure about whether meditation has many benefits, or can't seem to motivate yourself to practice.  For you, by all means raise your standards!  But for those who are convinced of the efficacy of your inner practice, another problem can arise.  Sometimes people get very concerned about what's the best way to meditate!  What's the fastest method to get results?  What will be the most powerful?!

And I can reveal the secret to you right here - that if you want the most potent meditation and the fastest results, you must lower your standards.
In this case, what this means is that any time you are busy being concerned with whether your meditation is "good enough" or "the right one to progress quickly" or the like, you are activating a kind of grasping in the mind.

In the classics of yoga it is said that this grasping will actually distort the inner energies of the body and make it harder to sink into deep states of meditation.  So when we apply slogans like this Zen saying "nothing special", "to go fast is to go slow," or even "lower your standards," we can combat this type of grasping and energy distortion.

Really, all the gains of meditation seem to relate to coming down and getting very grounded where you are.  This is the source of all power and potency - coming down to the truth of this moment, getting real.   Any actions that we take from a motivation that it's going to be better somewhere else, that where we are is not the perfect place to start, are somewhat misinformed and will tend to unbalance us.  We try to reach out farther than our roots go down, and this makes us top heavy.

It's not that we can be lazy if we want to be happy.  Discipline seems to be one of the best conditions for a fulfilling existence.  But we can have discipline in a way that is somewhat frenetic, or even manic, or we can have it in a way that is relaxed and grounded.

Even the Bible teaches this type of meditation, when it says "Be still, and know that I am God"
That's the most important thing to do, get to this place of stillness - and then, knowledge of Reality - however you choose to refer to it can dawn.  But if we are running around trying hard to know "God" sometimes that very trying pushes what we want even farther away.

We live in a "more is better" culture, but it truly seems that sometimes in the realm of inner cultivation "less can be more" - because when we have this type of inner stillness, we have the power of the Subtle.  When we are grounded and quiet in this moment, we may not even need hours and hours of meditation - we can turn our quiet mind toward an uplifting object and experience insight - we can experience opening and change.  The subtle shifts we make in our minds can have a profound effect, depending on the quality of our presence.

Consuming too much spiritually can give us a kind of meditative indigestion just as consuming too much food give us indigestion in our stomachs.  But just as eating moderately and simply can empower the health of our physical body, meditating or practicing in a humble, moderate, and simple way can empower our mind and spirit.

Like an old analogy states "drop by drop, the bucket is filled" we can practice humbly but consistently and seemingly all by themselves we will see amazing and wholesome experiences arise within.

What if we could lower our standards enough to truly come down to what is happening right now, let that settle our minds, and then start from there?

Being Realistic - Part II

In the last blog I spoke about a topic which feels very important to me at this time - setting realistic goals in terms of our personal, spiritual practice.

It's been on my mind because I've been privy to a number of stories of hardcore practitioners who have "burned out" on their spirituality by pushing too hard.  The effects can actually be quite devastating - people have ruined relationships, jobs, or their health, by aspiring to mythic heights, while having only ordinary resources.

So I've felt that we need to get a little more scientific than mythic in modern practice.  We need to not only take the shoulds of the religions  and sects that have handed down meditative practices to us, we also need to test out the proposals, and do what works, and what is safe.

There is another danger, though, in not having realistic models of practice.  Some of us set our sights too high, but others of us set them too low.

One reaction to the hyperbole used to extol the practitioners of old is that some of us will say, "well, that's just not me, so why should I buy into any of this?"  We either don't believe in some versions of "enlightenment" that are being sold in the old traditions, or we don't believe we will ever reach them, and so we fail to gain some of the riches that are hidden in the traditions which are right at our fingertips.  [If that's not you... refer to the previous blog!]

It is a sad state of affairs:  Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, and the like spend a lot of time speaking of extremely rarified states of purity, but very little about the moderate and beautiful changes an ordinary person can reach in her own life.  It's like we may look at those teachings and say - "nope, that's not talking about me." and we keep on looking for something else.  Or we say "I'll never make it to those goals, so what's the point?"

There's a beautiful quote that says  something like, "Shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you'll land in the stars."  But I think in this case, we believe we won't hit the moon, and so we don't take aim at all.  I think it might not make a great quote to put on a pretty picture, but we need to start saying "Aim for a target that's not too far away, and even if you miss, you will get closer the more you practice!"

So, the main way we set our sights too low is that we don't practice at all.  And I think there's an easy antidote.  We have to get ourselves stoked about all the powerful benefits we could gain by just 5 or 10 minutes of consistent meditation (or walking, or yoga, or tai chi, or whatever).  Because, you see, with just these few minutes per day people have increased their level of emotional comfort, stability, helped heart problems, reduced the experience of chronic pain, gained spiritual insight, and more.

When we put it that way, powerful effects seem very approachable.  It's very different than saying "if you meditate for 4 hours per day for 20 years, you might see some amazing brain changes!"  because only a few people feel that goal is anywhere near in reach.  But if you knew that with 5 or so minutes of meditation in the morning and evening, you might have the presence of mind to speak more kindly to your partner or your kids - would you make that investment?  If you thought about how that might steadily transform your relationships or your health in the years to come, would that start to seem worthwhile?

It's such a small requirement that can bring so many rich rewards.  Setting your sights too low doesn't mean that you are "only" meditating 20 mins per day rather than forty.  There's no one-size-fits-all threshold to reach. No, it just means lacking the confidence and motivation to do what you really can, and which can start benefitting you right now!  Meditation, yoga, playing a musical instrument, or any life-promoting discipline is not a punishment, but a reward.  It's time to stop depriving yourself of that reward.  Take the limits off how wonderful your life can be.  Take them off slowly, but step-by-step, liberate yourself from what holds you back from the powerful disciplines of presence!

Being Realistic

Let's face it, it is hard to be realistic in terms of spiritual practice.

On the one side, I'm inspired this morning by the fact that in the literature of the world's great spiritual traditions, you don't see a lot of ordinary people doing ordinary practice, day-by-day, with consistency, and consistent results.

What do we see instead?  Jesus went to the desert for 40 days and fasted.  Rumi gave up all the trappings of his life and acted crazy/drunk.  When the Buddha got renunciation, he left his wife and child.  Many of the early Buddhist masters and yogis also ran off from their lives to live in austerity.  The Christian desert fathers did so too.  Ascetics from the Vedic traditions seem to imply that the world is impure, and the way to reach spiritual realization is by enforcing a separation from it.

The early Buddhist Geshes (Spiritual Teachers) advise us to practice as if our hair was already on fire (from being reborn in the hell realms of that tradition).

Personally, I find the stories of these past and current masters to be very inspiring, but in our modern interpretation, they miss an important element:  That these great Beings were often seen to have a specific "karma" or life path that required they practice in this way.  Other masters, with different "karma" like Marpa, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, lived as householders, ran a business, and still communed deeply with the spiritual world.

Modern Teachers, too, sometimes advise their students to take up a more conventional life, rather than go in for the granduer that is invoked by extreme spiritual athleticism.

In the Zen tradition, there is a lot of talk about being "ordinary", not letting ambition sink you into a type of attachment, and yet there may be many Zen practitioners who feel that unless they are doing multiple hours of "meditation" every day on their cushion, or multiple retreats per year, they are not really practicing.

The truth is, that there is a kind of survivorship bias in the stories we read.  Those masters who "succeeded" are the ones who get to tell their tale.  The countless beings who tried to go off in a cave and meditate but died don't make the history books.  The ones who went without sleep in favor of their Zazen sitting but developed an anxiety disorder instead of a Kensho (experience of realization) are not spoken of as much.

I think we need to start speaking of them.  When the only rhetoric about spiritual practice is that the harder you try, the better the results you will get, people will think that if their spiritual practice is not bearing fruit, the answer is to just try harder.  And if trying harder doesn't work, or pushes you backward in your practice, the answer must be that something is wrong with you.

The answer, I believe is in the slogan given by the Daoist master Share K. Lew, when he said: "Daoist way is not forced."  To me, I interpret this to mean that one must go along with things as they are, not trying to force things to be different.  If you see that you have the "karma" to be a householder right now, with people depending on you, with debts to pay off, then that is your spiritual practice.  When you settle into the fact that you may only be able to do 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening of formal meditation, you can finally relax wondering whether you are a "real" meditator.  You can set realistic results, and judge your progress by the numerous scientific studies and anecdotes from other practitioners.

Above all, you can let go of the notion that there is a "right" way to do things, and a "wrong" way.  There have been realizers of every station in life.  Some Sufi masters have a husband/wife and kids, others wander in the desert as mystics.  Even others have taken specific periods to do each style and then switch to the alternate.  The great Yogi Milarepa had to undergo deep asceticisms and pain to attain realizations, but his master, Marpa was a farmer when he met him.

What if the life-circumstances, mind, and body you are in right now was the perfect one for you to practice with?  What if instead of looking for a lesson somewhere far off, you took what life was already giving you as the deepest challenge you could possibly face to your presence, ethics, and worldview?  And coming into that deep kind of presence in your life, what if you could set realistic goals, starting where you are, and see yourself succeeding?  What if this began to make you happier, more grounded, and better able to serve all those around you?  These seem like very realistic and attainable goals to me!

In the next installment, we'll talk about the other side of being realistic, not setting your goals too low...  until then, happy cultivating!