Transcendental Meditation

 

Being aware of The All is not based on any information.

More common than ever are the New Age terms, “Awakened” and “Awareness.” We also hear more about “Oneness” than we used to. I tend to explain these terms without making them more complicated than necessary. In fact, I do not believe it needs to be complicated. Formulas and complex theoretical jargon has a way of making awareness seem less than easy to access. It has occurred to me that awareness is likely our more natural state and therefore, less complicated than we sometimes make it seem.

I used to think that “Transcendental Meditation” was one of those terms used by various religious movements; and maybe even something I should ignore. Only recently have I returned to the term and looked at it in a new light. In short, I don’t use this term as describing a way to discover an unfamiliar deity made famous by a religious movement; I only use this term as a way of describing the simpler act of thinking about what exists beyond thought. To paraphrase something Alan Watts used to say, “We did not come into this world; we came out of it.”

This matters if your goal is to become aware or awakened. If we came into this world, the world would be a strange place, where we would have to learn and develop ways of surviving in this environment, but if we came out of this world, then we are its environment, as surely as anyone, or anything could be.

Transcendence is to purposefully shift your attention to The All and your inseparability from it.

As I purposefully isolated that sentence, this idea can be isolated for you, in your present moment, wherever you are and whatever you happen to be doing.

“Once, Jesus was asked to explain, when would The Kingdom of God come.  He answered and said, ‘The kingdom of God doesn’t come by outward observation. I cannot tell you to look here or look there. The Kingdom of God is within you.’” ~ MCV

In this conversation, Jesus was pointing to transcendence. What most seekers are seeking cannot be found by looking here and there; it requires a look within to see that it is there; where everything is.

“To see the world in a grain of sand…” ~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Looking within to consider The Universe could only be possible because of you. You cannot be separated from what you observe within. As Blake said further into his Auguries of Innocence, “If the Sun & Moon should Doubt they’d immediately go out.”

Transcendent Awareness will help you to see that all you observe is only observable as a result of your observation.

Children disappear if and win they close their eyes

While this is true of children, to reason, it’s a lie

What is there that none can sense or witness otherwise

Why, everything, of course, if one turns to look inside

 

Why does any of this matter? It only matters if you’d like to see the real reason why you don’t always feel you fit in with the world. If you ever feel that way, it has to do with the way you are looking at things. You don’t fit in because it is the other way around; it fits in you.

“Consider the rainbow,” Said Owen Barfield, “Is it really there?”

Rainbows require certain points of view. If you see a rainbow which seems to color the entire sky over your town, you might call a friend who lives only a mile away, and you might say, “Go outside and consider the rainbow over our town.”

And suppose your friend goes outside and looks into the same sky and does not see the rainbow. Does your friend suppose you are hallucinating? Do you suppose you are hallucinating? Do you suppose your friend is somewhat blind?

We know enough about rainbows to understand that they are real; even when they are seemingly subjective. However, you know that the rainbow is not merely a matter of your opinion; even if it is there for your eyes only.

Barfield encourages us to accord a tree the same treatment you accord a rainbow.

When he used the rainbow and the tree, Barfield was trying to explain the selfcentric creation of The Universe. It isn’t just the rainbow, but the tree requires an observer as well, and each observer will see everything differently.

There is what is there, and there is what you observe and believe to be there, and there is no difference.

My grandsons enjoy Pokémon Go. With a smart device, they look for creatures I cannot see. As proof of their existence, my grandsons will bring me pictures of these creatures, in places I am familiar with. So are the creatures there? According to the app, yes, they are there. The other day, while taking one of these “in app” photos, Julian said, “People keep walking into my pictures.”

When I looked at the pictures he had taken, there were, in fact, the creatures and strangers alike.

We operate and navigate through our life-story, as a device, with a similar app. Viewing the world through the lens of your app-situation, you sense what is being generated within your system; for your experience.

Awareness is to know that your perception of reality is limited to your device-settings, and to know that beyond your perception, reality’s potential is infinite. And knowing this will allow the device (yourself) to automatically install updates to your overall experience and joy.

Thinking about this infinite potential is to transcend those very thoughts with knowledge beyond thoughts. That is Transcendental Meditation. And that is to see the world in a grain of sand; to see The Kingdom of God within.