Meditation Frees the Self to Evolve (Think About This)
“Meditating on zero, or no-thing-ness, gives you a greater capacity to choose evolution versus the status quo,” says EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen in this short audio clip. People have been meditating for thousands of years, but you’ve never heard it taught like this before. Speaking to over 300 hundred evolutionaries during the 2010 Being & Becoming Retreat, Cohen elaborates upon the crucial role that meditation can play in the creation of a new culture (2:20 minutes) :
[podcast]http://magazine.enlightennext.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Liberating-the-Choosing-Faculty-TAT.mp3[/podcast]
Learn more about this evolutionary approach to meditation during EnlightenNext’s second annual Meditation Marathon on Sunday, December 12th. Join hundreds of people around the world for this 24-hour spiritual celebration and fundraising event, which will feature live Q&A with Andrew Cohen.
Filed Under: Consciousness • EnlightenNext Editors’ Blog • Evolutionary Enlightenment • Evolutionary Spirituality • Spirituality • Think About This • meditation
Once again…I concur with Andrew’s main point. This mention definitely caught my attention though, “[cultural values and morays]…which probably doesn’t have anything to do with any kind of liberation.” Now THIS really is the sticky point for many who simply don’t carry any surety that all this experience is virtually meaningless to where they are feeling an impulse to go. And watching others go through a tumultuous time asking about meaning and karma and how their experiences are meant for them, and how they’re supposed to learn something from it, and on and on. Examining this in my own life and watching others has been quite the journey for me!
Is this type of meditation similar to Zen meditation.
Science is focusing on meditation for all the good it promotes–healthwise, mentally, psychologically, etc. The Western world is playing catchup but the focus and research will corroborate what the East has known for centuries. Yoga and meditation are two of the gifts the East has presented to world health.
Jus think–if we could get the entire world population to sit down and meditate for even a few minutes, there would manifest World Peace in effect for that duration. We should do it–World Meditation Minute(s) on a regular basis!
Classical thinkers of meditation – I think with my limited knowledge – never dwelled on the concept of being freed in the context of evolution of culture and things like that. Their main concern was taming the unruly mind for attainment of mental peace ultimately aiding for salvation after death.
The idea of freeing the mind, through meditation of any kind, for creative efflorescence of human talent – to my knowledge – is relatively new. Indeed, it has great potential for evolution of any worthwhile activity – including culture, in all its dimensions.
It is a novel and wonderful concept, although, I don’t believe in God, as Cohen strongly does.
It should be as widely circulated as possible for putting into practice in any profession for availing of its full benefit.
Hi Nali!
The ancients in their pragmatic practice lit on a great idea and developed meditation, not delving into the benefits more than what they observed empirically.
Science is now studying meditation and confirming that there are actual physiological and psychological benefits. On top of disciplining the mind, these other benefits I mention add to the wisdom of the ancients.
Ommm!
If we think of evolution as the modification of a species in an attempt to survive and progress more efficaciously, meditation may be a way our species will develop more peaceably, peace rather than our human propensity to wage wars counter-evolutionary. If humanity persists in wars and overly aggressive behavior that leads to destructiveness, that certainly can’t be a good thing.
Meditation is never about choosing, even less so would be the meditation on zero, on nothingness. Choosing is the faculty of the mind and its product the self – the ego. Choosing means denying one thing and going for another, judging one thing and accepting the other. This is how the mind works – it is always or… or, it is never and … and, never accepting both, the all. Mind is dualistic, it wants to make choices between good and bad, evolutionnary and status quo, being and becoming.
Meditation is exactly the opposite – the choiceless awareness. In meditation you remain aware, witness of everything without any denial or judgment, without any choosing. Then you yourself become the zero, the nothingness, whereas all the boundaries of the ego – self melt and disappear. Only in choiceless awareness the mind is transcended and much energy is liberated for creativity and supreme understanding.
Aliya, there you go again making such dualistic judgements evinced in your comment above.
You must recognize that meditation is a technique there the mind is put into a state of rest which you seem to understand. It is an opportunity to be in neutral for the mind to go into an autonomic process where no thinking is involved, right?
For you to consistently contradict is somewhat irritating especially when you present yourself as so all-knowing and wiser than anyone. You really should attempt to be more democratic in allowing others to present their views without “correcting” all the time. You come across like a scold, complaining too often about how others are not as wise as thou.
Back off, we’d respect you more.
Dear Frank,
The one who “is not allowing others to present their views” is definitely the one who tells them “Back off!”, right?
Otherwise, meditation is No – mind, pure witnessing and there is nothing dualistic in this statement.
HI Aliya,
I apologize for my response to your meditation comments, I misunderstood them with my too careless reading of them.
I think I’ve been too conditioned to react to your use of contradiction, not realizing you were actually speaking truly re: meditation.
Pls forgive my above comments that I now retract.
You are most welcome, dear Frank.
‘I can forgive the whole world for the simple reason that my forgiveness is absolute; it is nonjudgmental.” – OSHO
Aliya has a point, the mind is silent only with the abundance of energy, when there is that attention in which all contradiction, the pulling of desire in different directions, has ceased. The struggle of desire to be silent does not make for silence. Silence is not to be bought through any form of compulsion; it is not the reward of suppression or even sublimation.Thank You.
Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value.
If I conjecture why this happens is that these people who seem to have cast aside spiritual values of any kind operating on a kind of vengeful mindset that casts them as judges of those who violate their principles. They are usually angry with extremely short fuses, violently anti-authoritarian, exasperated that others don’t see them, these people as smarter than everyone except those guys we others excoriate as mass murderers.
History is on the side of this sort of mad anger to last too long but like detonations, isolated delay-timed mines, nihilisticly inspired terrorism can get triggered off long after life has regained a peaceful course.
I love injunctions against the intentional ending of others’ lives. It sure hasn’t deterred murderers, but it gives us who apprehend them to usually decide to kill them with society’s way of murdering or to incarcerate them for life, billing the taxpayers.
Maybe everyone, especially the brighter of the race, has these tendencies but there’s a point where enough is enough about suffering fools and each decides their own line in the sand of patience.
These very angry times have raised the bar with violence becoming not the last straw but maybe with smarty pants proliferating philosophers who espouse the “my-way-or-die” kind of murdering activism who’ve decided the gun is mightier and much quicker than the pen. In fact guns and bombs are the preferred weapons of their choice, lamentably.
I pray for pseudo-humans of this ilk to come to their senses, put aside the rancor that has roots in the distant past and come join the 21st cent. party. Happiness abounds and there’s