The Bliss of Being

Today I found myself getting angry at someone who was visiting the house. I said some smart things then he said some smart things and I noticed that old familiar feeling of anger start to creep up inside. This feeling of anger made a lot of negative thoughts seem justified. Feeling angry I felt justified in having thoughts like “He shouldn’t be here” or “What is someone like that doing here?” among others. Thankfully a friend came in the door and asked if I wanted to meditate with her, I agreed noticing that it was about that time.

The power of meditation

Sitting to meditate I had to face this angry feeling head on, there was no computer, food, or conversations to distract me, it was and always is just me and me on the meditation cushion. As I sat slowly but surly the anger started to fade and with that my thoughts also began to change. The key turning point from negative thoughts spurred by anger to positive thoughts came when I realized that I create my reality, that is; that I am responsible for my reactions at all times and therefore I am responsible for the reality that is created around me.

I have the power to react to this person in whatever way I want, it just happened that my default mode at that time was to react with anger, and this was further justified and therefore spiraled off by my thoughts. The moment I realized that I have the power to create my own reality my anger was soon replaced by feelings of empowerment.

The power of taking responsibility.

By meditating I am not ignoring the problem, I am facing the problem head on. In my meditation today I became aware (yet again) that I am fully in 100% responsibility for the “problem” in the first place. In fact the “problem” really isn’t a problem at all it is more like a learning opportunity. With the strong knowing that the reality I create starts within at the thought level, I gain a tremendous amount of power. No longer was it this persons fault that I was angry it is my fault that I reacted to him in that way, even more subtle and powerful is the realization that it was my “fault” (or in other words I caused it to happen) that he and I had an interaction at all.

This is to say that everything around me, everything that is going on has been caused by me in some way or another. I am the causer of my reality, truly and fully 100% I take responsibility and therfor I have the power to change it.

Sitting in meditation tonight I couldn’t stop thinking about what I wanted to be different. I wanted this person to be there or I wanted that noise to stop or this or that pain to go away. My mind kept creating all these desires, all these wants. Sometimes desires would be somewhat hidden in the form of ‘it sure would be nice’ statements: “It sure would be nice if the whole house was meditating right now,” or sometimes my desires would arise as questions: “Why doesn’t that person stop playing the drums, don’t they know its time to meditate?”

To me my desires are very rational, they make perfect sense, and these “rational desires” can be a big problem in meditation. My mind believes in the correctness of its desires. It seems like my mind can come up with 100’s of different reasons why its justified in having a certain desire. In the case of todays meditation I kept having the desire for everyone in the house to be meditating with me. The thought loop of rationalizing was triggered by the desire to have the whole house meditating together. It was such a “noble” desire that I couldn’t easily put it down. It makes so much sense to my mind to be live with people who all meditate together, it is such a nice desire to have because it aligns with so much of who my mind thinks it is. My mind likes to think of its self as a “meditator.” So a desire for others to meditate with it fulfills a deeper desire of the mind, the need for identification. The mind wants to feel like it exists, and the best way to feel like it exists is if it feels like others are acknowledging it. So by having more people meditating with me my mind then further strengthens the idea that it is a “meditator.” In other words, the mind loves to show off, it gives it a sense of existence.

In the end all this desiring and rationalizing why the desire was OK only accomplished one thing: it brought me away from what actually was going on. Instead of being present and peaceful with what was, I was desiring and thinking about my desires of what wasn’t. The phrase: “What we want clouds what is” is the phrase that snapped me out of this thought loop and brought me back to the present moment. It rings so true for me, “what we want clouds what is,” meaning that my desires stopped me from being truly present to what was happening. I was so concerned with what wasn’t that I wasn’t with what was.

How will this help me in my daily life? This realization (if it can be called that) has shown me how time consuming and depleting righteous desires can be, that these type of desires are the ones I should be extra careful. All desires seem to do is take me out of the moment, and that is to detract from the blissful experience of just being. On a deep level to desire -really is- to suffer, more and more this becomes clear.

I have been busy the last couple days setting up not just one, but TWO new websites. Here is a sneak preview:

Spiritual Rush
-A youtube mashup site that specifically focuses on spiritual masters.

Spiritual Guru Books and More
-A Amazon/ebay/youtube mashup site that lists current ebay auctions, amazon books and a youtube video of the teacher searched. Navigation is on the top.

Both sites default teacher is Eckhart Tolle at the moment.

Of course these sites are fairly new so bare with me as I continue to tweak the layout and iron out any bugs in the code. Let me know what you all think.

In peace,
-Wayne