I'd like to use the example right now of what I would call "peak experience."
People have peak experiences in all kind of contexts.
It could be climbing a rock face,
it could be throwing a football,
it could be meditating, it could be doing art, it could be looking at a sunset.
And the characteristic of all of those experiences is that the "me" isn't present.
There's an absorption into the experience.
You might say that you're one with the experience.
It could be an altered state; it's called "the zone." There are all kinds of names for it.
So, when one is in the process of transformation...
and I like to say that healing and transformation are the same function--they're identical.
Physical healing, emotional healing, psychological healing,
and spiritual transformation are the same thing. They're all the same process.
Ok? So, we may need to think about it and analyze it and express it and
look at it for a while, but once we're really in that
intense movement of it, the mind is not in the way. It cannot be.
If it gets in the way then that's the defense mechanism trying to protect itself--
it's the primary ego structure trying to defend itself.
And if that's what happens, then we deal with it; we bring our attention to that--to that contraction.
But once the flow is happening, the mind is definitely not in the way.
You can't make that happen. That happens naturally.
So if people are worried about their mind being in the way,
I mean, people often say, "My mind is like this torture chamber."
Right? They just cannot...they are beating themselves up, or there's this eternal dialogue, right?
Well, what's the antidote for that?
Getting into the senses. Entering the senses.
That's why we've had these practices from the beginning of human history--
all the practices that bring awareness into the body:
yoga, tai chi, qi gong, all these different kinds of practices
that bring attention back into the body, into kinesthetic awareness,
into primary energetic awareness.
The senses are primarily energetic experiences
and out of the mental frame.
So, those... or... the breath, the breath: very powerful way.
So when people...actually, they've found now that if you can...
if somebody's mental process is really very agitated,
and they say, "I can't meditate. I can't sit."
They just teach a person to have awareness of two kinesthetic
experiences simultaneously. And often the mind gets quiet.
Just two.
And sometimes it's very difficult for someone to pay attention to two separate kinesthetic sensations simultaneously.
Like the movement of the breath and the feeling of the feet on the ground or something like that.
So something that simple can help the mind get out of the way.
That's why people did all these different practices like mantra practice,
visualization practice. They're all designed to give the mind something to do.
Or counting the breath.
All these things... it's just the mind, it's like a dog, it needs a bone to chew on basically.
So the mind needs something to do.
So I often say... I had a mind that was a torture chamber.
And one of the things that I learned to do was to have my mind be sort of my coach, my inner guide.
"Ok, now pay attention to the breath. Ok now, feel your feet on the ground."
Just a way to redirect attention into kinesthetic awareness,
so that the mind has something to do. The mind wants something to do.
It needs a job.
And eventually... it's very happy when it can do what it can do.
But when it's given the job of figuring out the meaning of life,
it goes insane, because it can't figure that out.
The mind does not like things it cannot figure out.
And there is a lot that we can't figure out--let's face it.
There are a lot of things in life that have no explanation.
It's the way it is.
And telling yourself that is...could be a platitude, could be a kind of self-abuse.
But to really get that it is what it is, that's a very different place.
To realize, "Yes, it is just the way it is." And then can you feel it--can you allow that to be present right now?
And the space of awareness in satsang and so forth
is that extra support, you might say, that allows people to really, often,
be available in their experience in a way that
they've never been able to be before.
Many people tell me that when they come to satsang or work with me privately,
that they are able to be available to themselves in a way that they have never been able to be on their own.
And that's interesting. So, in a sense, we require a kind of mirroring, a kind of listening.
I certainly did.
To allow that full gestation, that full transformation to happen.
Most people benefit from that kind of support.