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Hello there. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the madness. In today's podcast episode, I want to talk about my perspective on meditation and I want to encourage you to stop trying so hard. That may sound strange, but let's get into it. I have spent a very long time working on my own enoughness, my own shame, working through trauma, going through abuse, drug use, recovery. I've had religious trauma. I've been kicked out of multiple spiritual organizations and left to find my own path forward. Meditation has been a very significant part of that. When I say meditation, I'm referring to all of the things that might be associated with a meditative type state that includes spiritual practice, as well as the traditional forms of meditation and mindfulness and things of that nature. I've tried a lot. It's been an enormous effort and I want to be really, really clear. All of that effort has led me to where I am today. So I don't in any way, as I talk about my perspective on meditation, I don't want it to come across as me saying that any other form of meditation is less effective or inappropriate or harmful or in any way, because all of these forms of meditation can be beneficial to different people at different times in their journey. I just want to share a highlight of how it has worked for me. To start, I want to talk about some traditional approaches to meditation, the way that I understand them. And of course, I'm not an expert, I'm not a guru, I'm not a teacher. While I know some about these approaches, even if I've studied them thoroughly, I am never going to say that I am any kind of an expert on them, because I'm not. What I'm going to share about these practices is coming from a very rudimentary level. And so I will likely talk about them in a way that is not fully respectful of all of the nuance that likely is coming from a profoundly deep relationship with these practices. So one of the traditional approaches is what I call a contemplative emptying. This is really about quieting the mind, observing thoughts, exploring meaning, deepening understanding with openness and curiosity and reflection. And this can be really, really valuable. There's actually studies that quantify its benefits. So this is a beautiful process. I've done much of this and I still do much of this. And it can still be a form of spiritual achievement. The way that contemplative emptying type practice meditation can still include this sense of there being a pursuit, an evasion of the busy mind. And there can be attachments to Becoming empty enough or quiet enough or still enough, or attached to relief or insight or something of those types. And so there's no shame. All of those things are part of our human experience. They can be helpful in our process. And we're just acknowledging here that you may have experienced, as you have sat in meditation, some of these ideas of my mind isn't still enough and why can't I get this right? Right. You may have experienced that. That's there kind of inherent in the practice. Unless you're like going to the full extent of the practice the way that it was originally prescribed in the traditional religious contexts, then I imagine that those types of subtle traps are not included. But the way that we are practicing it today, they are included. Another really, really widely taught meditation approach, especially in the west today, is what's called mindfulness. And this is being present with your experience without judgment. You notice all your thoughts and feelings and sensations as they arise and cultivate acceptance. And this practice has also been well studied and has been found to be very, very helpful. It can literally pull someone out of a sympathetic fight or flight response into a more relaxed, calm state. That's beautiful. Who wouldn't want that, right? That's amazing. And mindfulness often still gets reduced to stress management technique or a way to cope better with challenges. So it can become another self improvement project. Something we're trying to escape our chaotic life and have these moments of mindfulness where we can calm down in the midst of the chaos. A third type of meditative practice is called what I call devotional filling. This is a practice that I have long engaged in and I continue to engage in it. It's very nourishing for me. I'm particularly referring to the Sufi practice of remembrance, which is about opening the heart and drinking from source, whatever divine quality we might need. Ultimately, that quality being love, drinking in the love and developing the perfect thirst so that we never stop drinking. It's a beautiful practice. And it can also reinforce the illusion that there is something out there that we need to take in that isn't already here. It subtly reinforces the illusion of separation. I am this incomplete, needy being who must rely on some external source instead of recognizing the unity and oneness as the default state that is already present. And so this devotional filling type practice can unintentionally reinforce the idea of separation, which I believe, and I'll record another podcast on this. Specifically, I believe separation, the idea, the belief of separation is the root of all the pain and the suffering. And this isn't my own unique perspective, this is very common in many spiritual practices and lineages. Another type of meditation, Transcendental Meditation, is also very well known, also amazing and beautiful, has profound impacts when practiced effectively. And Transcendental Meditation, again at a very cursory level, using mantras, focus on objects, other specific techniques to access transcendent states. And in these states we can experience amazing things, clarity and connection, and beautiful, beautiful things. And while beneficial, this approach can also become a form of seeking a seeking special experiences, transcending a human experience, getting relief from our life, escaping the stress, transcending the stress. And yet then we find ourselves right back in the stress if we're not taking the time out to do the meditation. And so there's a lot of good that's being done by all of these different techniques. And I want to share a different perspective. The way that I think about meditation is inclusive really of all of these approaches, and yet it drops all of the effort. What I'm hoping to share here is I want to point to something even deeper. The recognition that there is no separation between the meditator, between you and the meditation, the practice. There's no separation between awareness and experience, between consciousness and content. This is commonly known as non duality. But I find that a lot of times when people start talking about non duality, it starts to get really weird. Not wrong, just weird. It's difficult to follow. And my mind gets engaged in a way that I can't really, I can't really follow along. And that may happen here too. And if so, I apologize and I invite questions. But this understanding reveals that we're not actually a separate self trying to achieve a particular state or experience. The key point here is that we are not the awareness, or as I like to call it, we are the love. We are the love itself, the space in which all states, all experiences arise. And this is really practical. You can look at your experience, your own exact experience. And when you look at it and you see that all the experiences happening within you, we stop trying to get somewhere or become someone better. We see that the peace and the love and the fulfillment we seek isn't something that we have to achieve or chase after, but rather it's our essential nature. And the thing that gets in the way when we're not experiencing the love and the peace and the ease and the fulfillment that we seek is because we are veiled by our belief. The illusion of separation, spiritual seeking and meditative practices and all the different things, the self improvement techniques are all really just different. Ways of trying to get back to what we already are in our most natural, inherent state. Love, peace. And so what if meditation didn't require so much effort? What if you couldn't really do it wrong? What if meditation was actually not about achieving anything, but actually about achieving less, putting in less effort, not accepting what is arising within you, but allowing. And if it's arising within you, allowing isn't a task. It's simply an observation. See, accepting in mindfulness is a task. It's something we have to achieve. And if you notice, like pain arising or fear arising or hurt arising, it's difficult to accept that acceptance doesn't always feel acceptable. But the way that I teach meditation, you don't have to accept it, just allow it. It's here, it's already here. So there really is nothing to allow, because it's already here. So I'm making some concessions with my words here, my language here, because there's really no way to. There's no language to talk about this very effectively. But it's allowing. And if acceptance arises, you can allow that too. And if resistance arises, you can allow that too. You're not trying to deny to escape or to pursue anything in particular, but to be here, to be the space within which it all gets to arise. And it's the same space in which all things arise, including you as a unique individual. You are the loving presence. You are not separate from it again. You can go back to your own personal experience and notice that this awareness, this loving presence, is who you've always been. It has witnessed all of the different phases of life that you've gone through. Everything has changed. Your circumstances have changed. Your body has changed. Your mind has changed. Your skin has changed. Your experiences have changed. Your feelings have changed. Your thoughts have changed. The sounds have changed. The tastes and the textures have all changed. But the you that notices them all, that has experienced them all behind all of those things, is still the same, the loving presence that you are. So the radical shift that I'm inviting in meditation is to be fully present with what is. To let go of the practice, to let go of the effort, because you can't do it wrong. You don't have to change anything. You don't have to achieve anything. You don't have to become anything. You don't have to transcend anything. There's no special state to reach. We can reach special states. We can transcend our human experience. That's obvious. I mean, there's a lot of people who can say no, this is true. I Can totally do that. Plant medicine is one of the ways we can do that. That psychoactive drugs definitely a way that we can do that. I have plenty, plenty of experience with that in my past. But what I'm recommending is a type of meditation that is so present that the veils of separation fall away. Like clouds in the sky that separate and the sun shines through. The sun was always there. The sun didn't go away, the sun was always there. Just like the light of your being is always there. Meditation is simply remembering who you are. It's the end of evasion and pursuit and the beginning of true meditation. Not as a practice or as a technique, but as a way of being, a way of knowingly being. This loving presence that we already are behind the veils of separation. When meditation is practiced in this way, it really becomes a joyful exploration. Not seeking to find a thing, but simple presence. And what it allows us to do is to approach everything in life, even meditative practices such as mindfulness and contemplative practices and devotional practices and transcendental practices, from a place of wholeness rather than lack being, with those expressions and experiences, from a place of fullness, of love, of peace. Because nothing that we can do, no practice that we can engage in will ever be able to give us what we already are. They can only point us back to this ever present reality of our loving, aware being. And that's really all we're trying to do throughout all of our life, is we're always seeking and trying. All of this evasion in pursuit, the getting away from the discomfort, in pursuit of the pleasure or pursuit of the fulfillment or meaning or however we want to word it, is really all trying to get us back, pointing us back towards the ever present reality of love. And it's already here. And we have moments where we experience it. These are the best moments of our life. They might happen if we see something that gives us a sense of awe. Studies have been done about awe and how awe affects the nervous system. Because it kind of places us in this grand reality. And it in those moments, like in the most beautiful sunset we've ever seen, or a shooting star, or a full moon rising over the horizon, everything stops. And like the veils of separation fall away. And in those moments we realize the loving, aware being that we are the oneness, we lose the sense of separation. It happens at times when we fall in love, when we orgasm, when we see a baby, Separation disintegrates. And we have this moment that our essence shines through like the sun. And so I want to invite you if this sounds like a type of practice that maybe your heart has been craving, where there's just less effort but there's more benefit. If that sounds good to you, I want to invite you to take a look at more. I wrote an article about this. I'll put in the show notes that goes into a little bit more detail than what I've shared here in this podcast. You're welcome to read that. And there's an invitation at the end of that article to the village. The village is a place where I and others are exploring this territory. It's a field of loving hearts. There's an amplified field when people come together and we drop the seeking, we drop the pursuit and we drop the evasion and we can be with what is the loving presence that we are and yet also and importantly not bypassing our human experience. There is an enormous amount of spiritual bypassing, both in non dual teachings, the way I have heard them taught, and in regular spiritual settings, whether they be Christian, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu. Not saying that the way that I've heard them taught is the only way or the right way, but there's a lot of bypassing. And even in non dual understandings, you know, eliminating or not eliminating, but realizing the separation is an illusion and unity. Oneness is the greater reality, love is the greater reality. There are subtle ways where your experience can be dismissed, it can be neglected. Often you'll be told it's not real, your experience, and that's not how I engage. If you're in pain, that pain is valid. That gets to be here, that gets to be held, that gets to be loved. If you're scared about what's going on in the world, that fear is real, it's rational, it makes sense. It doesn't need to be dismissed, it needs to be held. You'll also notice I'm not saying healed. There's nothing to heal. There's a lot that needs to be held. And we hold hearts in the village and we remember together always pointing back to this ever present loving awareness that we are within which all of our experience, the joy and the fear, the pleasure and the pain arises. It can be held fully and completely and lovingly in this field. And doing it together is a real special experience. So if you'd like some of that, please check that out. You can find it at the end of that article that I wrote. Thank you so much for being here. I hope this is helpful. I'm curious if it has helped you to understand meditation. My perspective on meditation. And a reminder that you are the awareness, you are the love. And that is the deepest meditation of all. I wish you more love, not less. Always. Bye for now.