You’ve got to put it to the test in a VERY serious manner.

With this purpose in mind, I will give you some questions that could lead you to this answer, but at the same time I will contradict myself. This is to make you think because there are many currents of thought to answer this question, including yours and mine. Yet, I am going to approach to it through a different lens, a practical and experimental one.

First of all, what is the objective of meditation? Some might believe it is to reach enlightenment, so I ask… What is enlightenment? Is it a supernatural thing? Although, this could be deeply phenomenological I still want to be cautious. We cannot simply accept something that is out of our experience (although this experience might be false, will not go here right now, but it is about how our senses and brain tricks us); we need to ask questions because blind belief has a done a lot of damage to our societies.

So, let’s put an idea forward as a possibility of enlightenment:

Love, the feeling of loving when it is overwhelming and completely embracing to the point your ‘self’ is not longer that ‘self’.

You could have felt this when you were hugging your child, even a dog, or simply by being totally out of time and space when doing something for you or others in a brief moment of space and time, a deep fulfilling moment. My point in comparing it to this: I want to bring enlightenment to something experimental, something that can be actual in yourself, but is not dependent of your desires of wanting to be ‘enlightened’ but in giving “yourself”.

Now, to be very clear I am not saying this is enlightenment, but I am not saying it isn’t either: I am just setting a ‘common’ ground that will put forward the possibility of love being enlightenment.

Now, if love is enlightenment? Then, ask yourself: What could be the most incredible moment of love I have lived? Why haven’t I lived it constantly? What is stopping me from living a constant wave of love within myself?

These questions are very interesting because they could lead you to ask: Who am I? Who is that ‘myself’? Who is this being ‘I’ who thinks I am which is constantly talking to me? Is there a moment in our minds where there is complete silence of chatter? Does chatter stop when I love? Can I be aware of something without the need of words and chatter? Can I be aware of the words and chatter without judging them, but loving them?

Loving my CHATTER?! Could that mean love myself? Could loving ‘myself’ mean enlightenment? Is this egoism? How does egoism differ from ‘enlightened’ love? Could egoism mean my chatter, and ‘enlightened’ love the awareness of the chatter? Could it mean to love the chatter, but at the same time improving it by being aware of what is going on inside of it without judging harshly (with love)? Am I that chatter? If I can be aware of my chatter, can I be aware of the things that surround me without that chatter? If I am able to see everything around me without chatter or judgments, can I feel that love that makes it all bloom?

Don’t make your need for answers or ‘quest’ be the opium of your mind, let it rest, so when it does speak to you, you will be ready to hear.

Now, awareness… How does it relate to meditation and the idea of enlightenment? Well, meditation is said to take you to this state of silence, but is this silence necessary? Isn’t awareness more fulfilling than meditation? Could awareness be the silence when observing deeply our chatter or nature? Could meditation be at tool that we believe is the ‘method’ without seeing that the tool as a tool is meaningless if there is no understanding of what it does and how it does it?

With awareness, you can have chatter, but you are aware of it. With awareness, you can have silence, and be aware of it. In awareness, there is love… Why? You have to love to see the awareness or you have to be aware to see the love. It is in actual experience that this can be realized, not as a myth of enlightenment, but as an actual thing that can be achieved when you decide to put your effort into it.

In meditation there is the belief that there is a ‘method’, and methods don’t work for everybody. So, we must doubt the method, and find our own ways to see our minds ‘through’ our own forms of meditation or reflection. You can try the method, but don’t be blinded by the method… You are the ultimate source of meditation… You are the experience that is observing everything that happens around you.

You Choose!

Meditation, awareness, love, enlightenment, or another… Whatever you choose, do it, but try to ask why? Find your own answers, and if they lead you to fulfillment (a deep sense of love)… There is something good there to be explored, if they lead you to depression and suffering: STOP. Analyze yourself.

Ask: What am I afraid of? Nothing…? Then, let it be for a while, stop the questions, live and experience of being in the tree of life. Perhaps, in the moment you least imagine… An answer will pop! You will know it is time to ask the questions, again. However, don’t ignore it totally… Listen.

It is all about deep observations, awareness, love, YOUR method of meditation, and perhaps enlightenment, and again be cautious… Self-delusion is always a possibility, yet… I ask: Is the love you feel an illusion? How is it real? Could it be even more real? Could you live it to its full potential? What is that potential?

This goes way into the way we process information through a possible prediction system (Hawkins, Blakeslee) or an interpreter (Gazzaniga) in the brain that creates justifications to sustain beliefs.

The studies about how the brain works are in process, but in between…

We have an urgent thing to answer: What is violence? Where does violence come from? Where does violence lie within us?

There are people who talk about freedom of the mind, and its emptiness. It is my concern that their beliefs and their concepts about all these theories fill the same void religion fills. The only difference is that their ideology changes to their new adopted behaviors of meditation or whatever ‘fashion’ is available to them that makes them feel good or safe.

The problem of ideology and belief is the lack of questioning the fundamental reasons: Who are we? What is a concept? What is to think? How do we think? What is love? What is to observe? Etc. These questions may seem obvious, but it is in that trap that we have been living, a trap that can no longer be contained. It is ready to explode.

There are philosophers, religious figures, and others who have attempted to give answers to these questions. However, it can no longer be a state of complete denial where deep thought is left for some, it is our responsibility to ask questions, and try to answer them, not for the sake of knowledge, but your own fulfillment.

Now, it seems easier and more tempting to just read a ‘guru’, and believe everything he says, instead of challenging him and giving him your own level, you as ‘he’ as the same capacities, the only difference is that he made a living by being ‘a guru’. You haven’t chosen that path.

Most of us have to work or do things to survive and being a guru is not an option, unless you are one of those writers who say to know everything about the world, but in fact are a bunch of copy pasters from different traditions of thought.

Therefore, this post today will be to challenge you…

I dare you to think! To ask questions. To forget about the ‘guru’, to face life with all you’ve got, painful or not, it is all we actually have, our experience, and if we continue to rely on those ‘mythical figures’ (academic, political, or religious) we will fail to see our mistakes, and will be keep doing them for centuries to come.

So, how to ask questions? With more questions, without “definite answers”, however you will gain new perspectives about life. You will be able to see how there is no actual “true” or “false” (in a deep sense), but perspectives that have different ways of seeing and experiencing life. As I said before, these questions are not about finding perfect answers or new beliefs… It is about experiencing life in a new way… BEWARE the guru, the knower, the whatever… better know thyself!

Let’s confront the gurus, prophets, philosophers, etc, and realize in yourself the correct perspective of what they are saying. Got a belief? Challenge it. Challenge your own belief. Don’t fall into the your own guru bias. You have to be very careful, very aware of your thoughts, and how they arise, and how they dissolve. Why? You use your thoughts to understand life. It is a source of your ‘experience’, you cannot simply trust your senses because it is ‘obvious’ to do so, you need not only to challenge others, but to challenge yourself to the extreme. This might sound difficult or extraordinary, and it might be… Until you realize how relevant, and transcendent for your experience it is to see beyond concepts, to observe beyond beliefs, to actually LIVE, and instead of being in a ‘virtual reality’ of yourself.

Ask questions: Use one question, and answer it with another until you have a bag of questions you are constantly trying to answer day and night. You will reach answers, doubt those, and start again. Why do we want to feel security of knowing? Is there something else beside knowledge? What about experience? Is experience knowledge? How can live an experience if I am always thinking about nonsense? Or is the experience a thought? If experience is a thought, then… Is all reality a product of thought? Is there something beyond thoughts?

How can you assure that the mind is never empty? How can you assure everybody lives a mind without emptiness? Why is emptiness so important if you have never had your mind empty? Isn’t that same “idea” of emptiness the same thing that “prevents” you from being empty? And if you reach emptiness how can you be sure that there is this divine? And if it is divine, how can you be sure that divine is not obtained through untraditional non explored ways that only you can reach through self-contemplation with or without thoughts? Why do mediators want to empty the mind? Isn’t the mind already empty, but we strive to “live” the illusions due to the security felt by what we know? Why would you want to achieve one-mindedness if one-mindedness already is? Why try to achieve something that is not achievable because it already has been achieved?

Why is there a classical sense of traditional meditation? Is meditation total awareness (Including your thoughts whenever they arise and non-thoughts)? What happens when there are no thoughts? Is this possible? How can you assure that there is no possible existence without thoughts just because you haven’t experienced a life without ‘constant thoughts’?

For example, I am observing the conflict inside my head without judging, but just listening to it and trying to understand it. Could this be meditation? Why should you follow a tradition about what is a ‘meditative state’? What is justice? What is freedom? Do you really have free will? If so, could the idea of having free will a belief that you want to nurture to feel security and feel you have control over something?

Ask about contemplation, how does contemplation relate with thought? How could awareness of these conflicts change things? What is contemplation? Could there be a state of constant awareness?

These questions are not easy, some may find them too difficult to answer because that means to change your entire way to observe and experience the world. You will change, and in this change if there is no peace, but more conflict, your answers are creating more and more beliefs that do not have a foundation of truth.

Keep asking! How? Why? Yes… Keep going!

What is truth? What is peace? What is violence? How does violence work within the mind? Is our nature violent? Why? Why could you accept a concept like that seeing the implication of such violence in the world? Could concepts and beliefs be the source of violence? Could our identification of ourselves with these beliefs create violence to defend these beliefs that create us security? Where does true security lie? Could security be related with violence? What would happen if we understood security? Would fear disappear? What is fear? How is fear felt? What are the consequences of fear? How does frustration relate with fear and anger? Can you live without anger? How is fear helpful? What are the limits of fear? Are we really free? What is freedom?

Grab a book if you need inspiration. Yes, keep reading until you are tired to death, but do not fall into the trap of the tradition you are reading. Build a safe zone if necessary in order to rest, but then… Keep going!

Changing the way you experience life, love!

• Is love just a concept (an idea created by the mind producing a result as a feeling)?
• Is love just a feeling (a cascade of emotions bringing hormones into action)?
• Is love something more than just a concept and feeling?

How can we really express love? Where is love? How can love transform our lives? Does love bring us true happiness?

If so, why do we stop expressing love? Are there different levels of happiness? How does that relate with love? I ask you all of these questions with the intention of giving you a pathway of questions, and become aware of the dimensions of love.

If you can extrapolate love into different spheres of existence, could we relate love to energy, action, or as nature? Could it be that all beings have the nature to be love (lovable and loving)?

So… It is up to each one of us to discover love. However, if you have decided love is something more than just a subway passenger, love is the motor of the world, love is the true way peace can be achieved, love is the way the universe manifests us beauty, and love is it all: Welcome to my world!

What would happen if we could always remember others need our smiles and hugs? We would never miss a sweet caress of those who do. Would we?

There is a reason to exist. What is it? Question it all. Find it. Be happy, live without stress, and be more alive through awareness!

It doesn’t matter if there are dull, angry, or sad days… It is about trying your best, not into being a perfect robot, it about learning from those mistakes, and become aware of them.

It all comes in time when intention is on the way.

A perspective about what could be love: Find out what is your perspective deep inside “you”.

Photo Credit: By Leland Francisco