Column: The Spiritual Realist
Ask Ray !
Q & A section of “The Spiritual Realist” column
by Raymond Siew
What do you do when you meditate? Just let your mind run free? I'm learning not to control my emotions, but to observe them as they come. By doing so, I learn to tame the impatient side of me, so that I don't express my emotions too much. I find your writings interesting and gives me insight to the deeper meaning of life. Thanks for the patient explanation. Appreciate it.
Jing Wen, Malaysia
Dear Jing Wen
Thank you for your questions. To me all emotions are valid. The genesis of all fear-based emotions, and I include happiness, euphoria... come from the body — I talked about happiness in the last issue. In euphoria, it is usually accompanied by depression and so I have included it as fear-based as well — So, together with all the more apparent fear-based emotions like grief, sadness etc, it tells us something about ourselves. And the way out is NOT to block out the experience, but rather to understand them. Each emotion you experience defines who you are in the moment.
Emotions create the tapestry of life and the dramas around us. Without them life would be boring. Nevertheless, they remain an illusion and take us away from the path we want to go... IF the path is towards enlightenment, serenity and wisdom. So, it is a journey.
The first step is to EXPERIENCE, to find out about yourself, and you cannot do that by suppressing your emotions. However, if you observe carefully, you may find that your emotions are not taking you where you want to go. Usually, people come to that conclusion towards the twilight of their life but it is possible, I believe, to do it sooner. But it cannot be rushed, and there are no short cuts. I will talk about this in my future writings.
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With regards to meditation, the first level meditation I use is what is called "concentration meditation" — It's a simple exercise of just staying focused on your breathing. I believe Gerald Lopez has written on that, so have a look at his "Breathing for Health" article. Gerald's description is a little elaborate. You can do a simpler exercise by just observing your "in" and "out" breathing naturally.
The point of that meditation is to see how easily you are distracted — Observe the thoughts, observe the emotions that accompany the thoughts. However, DO NOT engage them, for the moment you do you have been distracted from your goal (which is concentration on the breathing). See what I mean? It is to teach concentration, discipline. You merely have to observe as a third party observes.
The type of meditation to avoid, at least in the beginning, are the ones that tell you to build "safe places" in your mind — Those only help to entrench illusions. Particularly stay away from meditation techniques that tell you that you can attract wealth in abundance, etc etc, by doing nothing except meditating. That leads to delusions.
The purpose of meditation, in my opinion, is to take you BACK TO REALITY... and not away. The purpose of meditation is to help you see the beauty of God's creation and his/her imagination. And that means even seeing the beauty in all of us. It is not to escape. The big question is "Does reality suck?", or is it our thinking that makes it so. And, do our illusions create our own world?
I hope this is clearer.
About Ray:
Raymond Siew is the CEO and business development strategist for eMasters as well as her two online publications: It's My Life! (lifestyle ezine) and in-the-loop (business ezine). eMasters' core business is Design, Advertising & Promotions — Visit www.eMasters.info to view eMasters' suite of products & services, or to read Raymond's bio.
About It's My Life! content: All content on It's My Life! belongs exclusively to eMasters and may not be reproduced or reprinted in any manner without permission from eMasters. If you wish to use any of our content, please contact us.
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