David Simon on Meditation

Hello everyone . . . it’s so nice to hear your vibrational resonance. This space of calm is always the most important and valuable place to put our attention when we talk about meditation, and today we have an opportunity to expand our sense of what it means to meditate and how that process of allowing ourselves to emerge from local to more expanded states of awareness can really shift our whole world view.

A Tale of Two Minds

You know, I’ve been practicing meditation in some form or another for decades. It’s actually funny . . . I was thinking about when I was 9 or 10 and I was taking a class in social studies and had a very interesting teacher named Mr. Chaka. We were studying Eastern philosophy at that time and Mr. Chaka said, “You know, in the Western world, we really pride ourselves on having an active mind. In some way or another, the Western mind-set says, ‘Whoever has the most thoughts wins.’ But in the Eastern world there’s a much greater appreciation for quiet mind.”

“So we have these two world views,” Mr. Chaka said. “The one we’re immersed in is about keeping our minds active, having our thoughts going all the time, memorizing lots of information . . . and then there’s the Eastern view, which is about, and ‘How do we find silence?’”

Most of my young colleagues, upon hearing the idea that there was any value to silence, thought it was pretty funny. It seemed like it was just so easy to have a quiet mind . . . so what could be so important about it? Then Mr. Chaka said, “Everybody close your eyes right now and see how long you can go without having a thought.”

Of course, anyone who has tried this . . . anyone who has practiced meditation even once will recognize that it doesn’t take very long until we have thoughts. And I remember my very first thought, having had this first awareness of meditation, was “Uh oh . . . what if they’re right? And what if we’re not right that having a big, active mind is the best use of our awareness?”

That experience really stuck with me, as I learned that there’s a skill set in learning to quiet our mind. Yet practicing that skill set in itself is kind of useless, to tell you the truth. As long as we’re in the gap (the silent space between thoughts), as long as we’re expanding our sense of self in meditation, it doesn’t accomplish anything, it doesn’t achieve anything, it doesn’t get us anywhere. But when we come back out of the gap, it creates meaning and power and value and enthusiasm and creativity that really energize our ability to access that deep, transcendent experience. 


The Great Paradox

That’s the great paradox of meditation: If we transcend everything, then there’s no need for accomplishment or achievement. But since most of our lives, we are engaged in that conversation of how do we achieve, how do we accomplish, how do we discover, how do we create, how do we manifest love, and how do we attain the things we are perpetually seeking . . . then taking a little time to go out of our individuality is invaluable. Meditation is like a bath for the mind . . . it allows our mind to be clear, to be refreshed, to see the same experience from a different point of view, and as a result of that slightly different point of view, we don’t get stale.

So I learned meditation for the very first time, formally, in the early ’70s, and at the Chopra Center, we’ve developed these meditation programs that have been running for the past 15 years or so. I was thinking again recently that what I love about our Primordial Sound Meditation is that it’s systematic and simple. We don’t have to get all obsessed about being in a certain posture or a certain position or learning a whole set of complicated instructions. We simply close our eyes, quiet our mind, and allow our individuality to begin to expand. And that refreshment allows every aspect of our lives to become more clear . . . more balanced.

We use this technology of meditation to open our hearts and bring us out of our mind, which usually keeps us obsessed about what scary things are going to happen in the future, or worrying about what has happened in the past . . . and just that little bit of clarity is like a reset button. It refreshes our bodies, influences our mind, quiets our thoughts, and opens up our soul . . . reminding us that beyond our day-to-day, transitory experiences, we have the ability to access these more liberated points of view and perspective.

Keep in mind that we don’t ever want to have the mind-set that one meditation’s right and one meditation’s wrong because they all have great value. I think that any experience that takes us to quieter levels of awareness – where our sense of individuality begins to become less focused, more nonlocal, more about our connection to the deeper aspects of life – is of value. Anything that brings us in that direction can help, whether listening to music or even going for a walk. My experience is that taking the time to close our eyes, quiet our mind, and go within offers a particularly profound opportunity to connect more deeply with those less local, more expansive states of awareness.

Meditation is not the goal; the goal is transcendence. But the technologies of meditation really help us to remind ourselves that life is more than just these day-to-day challenges . . . that we can go beyond the challenge, the emotional turbulence, and all the thoughts about what is happening . . . and return to that state of greater freedom, appreciation, enthusiasm, fun, and love – all these beautiful words which at some level, the deeper we go , are just expressions of that same underlying reality that moves us from less personal to more universal.

The Funny Thing About Meditation

The funny thing about meditation is there’s actually not that much to say about it, because as soon as we start talking about meditation, we move out of meditation. So the best use of meditation time is to really just go within, quiet down, find that sense of centeredness, that sense of peacefulness . . . to let the mind still . . . and then when we come out of the mind, there is a greater sense of clarity and of freedom, because we are not our minds.

It’s becoming so clear to me these days that we have a mind but we are not our minds. Our mind is just one aspect of our ever-present field of awareness. We can’t really talk that much about the mind because as soon as we’re talking about the mind, we’re moving away from that sense of expanding awareness . . . but when we quiet down the mind, then we’re not so constricted and that allows us to celebrate that deep connection to our own self, to our own individuality.

As we become less localized, even our sense of reality becomes less localized and then we begin to recognize that although I may appear to be a body, I may appear to be a mind, I may appear to be a person, that’s just one more vantage point. The deeper we go beyond the boundary of me and you, between self and no-self, between individuality and universality . . . then we really do recognize that we are all in disguise . . . we are all Shiva in disguise, we are all divinity in disguise, we are all the infinite in disguise. And when we realize that, then we play! We play in that dimension that allows us to connect. It’s a great, great dance between our individuality and our universality… both are completely beautiful, but our sense of universality lasts longer than eternity . . . if it’s possible to last beyond eternity

So let’s not talk so much about meditation . . . let’s just take the time to practice it, use it as a refreshment, use it as a way to move back to centeredness and to help balance ourselves. Meditation ultimately expands our sense of self and allows us to really enjoy every day . . . to recognize that life is short and that the best way to move from a short life to an eternal life is to take time to go beyond our boundaries and enjoy this vast cosmic dance.

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