*This entry is a deviation from my usual writing, I decided to be more forthcoming about myself — a somewhat autobiographical piece follows.

I have been meditating (on and off) for 20+ years, it started out of curiosity and with an intention of adopting a practice that aligned itself with my conception of ‘things that a spiritual person does’. I desperately wanted to live a waking life of spiritual awareness, one in opposition to the distressing and omnipresent phenomena of a world in suffering. I wanted to bring that light into my own life, in the hope that I would contribute to balancing the scales. 
I looked to texts, figures, and philosophies that I admired and dove into meditation with the best of intentions. I attempted to manifest equanimity.

When I was a child I was full of wonder, I would sit and contemplate everything, I would lose myself in waking dreams. The veil of reality was thin for me, the world was alive with magick and meaning. I felt more ethereal than anything else. I was moved by a presence in all things, I remember this feeling clearly: being a kind witness to what is occurring, curious of the mechanisms, and reaching into experience with a definitive gesture. I also remember being wary of change, my parents tell me I would sit and observe scenes before joining in. I remember being acutely aware of what is kind and what is unkind. That awareness kept me in contemplation of everything I experienced. I reflect back and consider that I was a child with a certain type of bordering neurodiversity, one that went unrecognized in 70’s England.

When I hit about 5-years-old things changed, I was partially forced to live in a very incarnate way by the following 6 years of being bullied and harmed — this caused me to withdraw into a binary existence: one where I was in fear and pain, and one where I was free in the presence of the natural world. I was also resigned to hiding in plain sight as a consequence of this; that I would put on a brave face and just be a person, that I would be more concrete. I learned to keep secrets in my suffering as I resigned myself to recognizing the world to be a cruel place. I remember telling a friend at aged 6 that the world was cruel, that children were cruel because adults were cruel and that I will suffer because of this. My spirituality faded into nihilism, and a thread of existential dread carried me through my teenage years. I became violent toward others, and toward myself, not cruel but I learned the power that comes with physically defending oneself, or hurting oneself to relieve numbness. I also learned to kill other living creatures. I could kill and skin a rabbit or a bird, it was the simplest of actions. 
A stark contrast from the young boy who would build houses out of sticks and stones for fairies, concerned they would have nowhere to sleep at night.

My teenage years were filled with escapism through creativity, introducing me to surrealism and a search for the spiritual manifest through the arts.

Once, when I was about 18, I sat reading part of Ode to a Nightingale by Keats over and over again:

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

As I sat I engaged in a meditation of this poem, with no structural idea or practice I repeated it like a mantra over and over. Something switched, I wept and felt overwhelmed by sadness and regret for every moment of harm I had brought upon another living being, and for every moment of harm that had been brought to me. I felt expansive, reaching out into the infinite and I was overcome with a sense of longing and purpose. The necessity for compassion to be present in the world flooded me, and from that moment I never ate meat again.

Somewhere in my 20s I began to practice sitting with myself, often times I would turn away from the view while on a train and look inward, armed with a mantra from my incessant reading of philosophy and spirituality. What followed was a series of re-awakening moments, some by happenstance, some by work, and some by manufactured means. I was not particularly transformed into a better person, I continued to make poor choices and to be a cause of suffering for myself and others. A twenty something full of lofty ideals with no formal practice and no clear direction is exactly as you would imagine — unoriginal and egocentric.

I oddly found that meditation did not bring me any frustrations, if a thought arose that occupied my mind then I simply turned away from it and returned to the act of meditating. I meditated upon meditation itself. How wonderful. I had a perfectly closed loop that enabled me to sit and fall further into the action of escaping any action at all. I continued this way for many years. I continued to delude myself that I was doing the necessary work.

I had this awesome system: sometimes I would sit and actually meditate, other times I would sit for a moment and breathe into a cultivated space I had created. Time would slow, I would move into a more expansive space, and I would breathe out all stress and fall into the void — opening my eyes would be like returning from a journey to a familiar place, one that was now occupied by fascinating phenomena and a wondrous sense of detachment. I am free. I am mindful of all eminating materia. I am centered. 
I would tell myself these things.

I read, watched and listened to others report on their own meditation. I nodded in agreement and sat in awareness of their awakening. I found comfort and commonality in the practice of meditation as a global phenomenon. I knew that I didn’t engage in meditation like a monk, I didn’t sit for elongated periods of time battling physical discomfort, and I didn’t make it a known thing. I didn’t really tell anyone that I was meditating, because I didn’t always meditate. I fell into a practice of visiting a known space, of resetting myself when I most needed it and allowing myself to dissipate into space.

Somewhere along the path I traded sitting meditation for waking mindfulness — these concepts came easily to me, I found myself as a kind custodian of my spirit. I spent years vacillating between putting energy into cultivating spiritual habits that assisted my being present in the world; additionally that inner space I created permitted me to move away from my less attractive traits like anger and resentment. Freedom was available for me, if I wanted it, and themes of compassion and gratitude appeared to be on tap. In a sense I had become lazy, taking the work for granted.

I had spent most of my 20s pursuing a carer in art, my deep passion, yet found myself increasingly frustrated at how ineffective this medium was in actually attending to suffering (my underlying drive). Little change occurred within my environment, and I lapsed into a kind of mailaise. I desired something more direct, so I humbled myself into volunteering and working with social services to help wherever I was needed. This took me into my current career.

It felt like seeing a sunrise and sunset all at once, for the first and last time.

My investment into a ronin-esque spiritual practice yielded dividends for my professional life — I was able to speak in simple terms about mindfulness and meditation, to communicate the methods I had learned and to move patients toward their own discovery. I would sit with people and guide them through a short sitting, co-exploring the post meditation phenomena with them. I didn’t think this to be anything particularly special, no monumental transformations occurred — this was a coping skill. I was teaching a method of self-assistance that cultivated a space where an individual’s potential to heal could arise.

The breath that passes these lips is considered, time slows, aeons pass between, and I am young again, like the mountains under the stars.

I wrote that poem 14 years ago. I remember how effortlessly it came to me at the time, just like my meditation or mindfulness — I opened myself up and the universe revealed itself to me. This was the underlying principle in my practice, that I would sparkle away into the ether as often as possible, with the intention of returning to this realm with equanimity to share.

If this sounds awfully egocentric I understand, but it really wasn’t like that — for the most part this was a very private experience, I only really shared any of these principles with my clients and a handful of close like-minded friends. So why am I even writing this? Why speak to these principles at all?

Something shifted in me that brought about a monumental change in my approach to meditation — and it is the most simple of concepts (I will try my best to communicate it).

I began to sit and meditate inwardly, as opposed to attempting to release all things into the eternal. I had previously been focused on grounding this vessel and entering the void — as I have said above, it worked wonders and it served a very definite purpose. The change meant that I began to turn toward my own consciousness and surrender. I don’t mean that I adopted a practice of introspection or observation of arising thoughts — though there is great benefit in that — I mean that I squared myself with my own existence as a finite experience, not that I would expire (I am 100% OK with that reality) but that I surrendered to this: I am the only knowable phenomenon.

I literally (and metaphorically) turned around and faced myself. I’d heard Sam Harris (whose broader spectrum of views I am not endorsing) speak about this concept by means of: looking through a window at the world before realizing that the reflection of your face sits between you and the world to be observed — I was fascinated by this metaphor, but meditating on the concept did nothing for me. I fell back into my usual pattern of acknowledging my existence, accepting my finality, and releasing myself to the void. What changed for me was sitting with a particularly adept Gestalt therapist (yes therapists benefit from therapy) and feeling compelled to remain in my experience. I resisted the draw to withdraw. I sat in discomfort and in awareness of my own suffering for longer and more frequent periods of time.

One day, rather suddenly, something shifted — if was as if I let go of all thought/feeling/awareness/attachment/anxiety/acceptance and I turned around. I remember tears coming to my eyes and a laughter rose up as I passed through my own sense of being and looped back around into an awareness that transcended anything I had ever felt before. It felt like seeing a sunrise and sunset all at once, for the first and last time. I sat in silence, and for the first time since being a child I was truely present in my own form and fully accepting that I simply existed. No escape, no high, no concepts, no attempts to silence anything — just awareness of my own existence in a way that obliterated and authored myself in unison. I was awake.

I had spent the majority of my 44 years attempting to ‘get out of myself’ in an attempt to ‘get over myself’, in at attempt to ‘get in touch with myself’ — and yet all that time I had avoided the most simple of premises ‘that all things exist within me, and I exist within all’. That isn’t to devalue all previous experiences, or the sense of peace and communion that came with them — only that this experience resonated a familiarly peculiar frequency that compelled me.

The difficult and problematic mystic George Ivan Gurdjieff warned against the distractions along the pathway to achieving waking consciousness — that falling into the way of a monk, fakir, or yogi would produce addictivepowers that obscured the goal. So too for believing oneself to be a magician of sorts, or believing that emanating experiences gave proof of anything.

I adopted this new practice with caution, understanding that truth is an obscure thing.

No thing is true, every thing is permuted.

A while back I found myself quoting Ram Dass to a group of patients as I encouraged them to adopt a practice of mindfulness: Be here, now. 
“Now, be here” said one back to me, “It works backwards too”.
So it did, and I applied the Burroughs / Gysin ‘cut-up method’ to the phrase:

Be here, now.
Now, be here.
Here now, be.

I have adopted this as a mantra, a reminder of the present absolute in each moment, and of the impermanence of all experiences — the continuum of now.

I have a ‘love/hate’ relationship with the passing of spiritual terms around, especially ones like Namaste. I cringe when I hear it said (living in L.A. and Joshua Tree will do that to you) — I bristle protectively at the concept and of it being used used flippantly. It seems so trite and pretentious at times. I once went to a restaurant in L.A. where the staff would say it to you *insert silent scream here. 
There is some ego defense there for certain, I have a default mode that is suspicious of the high-spiritual-concepts of others — it appears to ring dull rather than true, though I consistently try to check myself in judging others. I am no better or worse, I have myself to work on first, I only have myself to work on — that is the Great Work.

I realized that part of my frustration with Namaste was that I had never said it to myself, I had never closed that loop. It had been an outward phrase, like the motion of meditation. In turning inward I discovered a space that made all prior attempts to get out and into the absolute as folly. In surrendering what presents as me (that core sense of self and ego that acts as a catalogue of being) toward that which is witness to me (the totality of existence) I experienced first hand a theoretical concept that I have been teaching my clients:

You walk into a magical cave, it is immediately dark and you cannot see. As you slowly travel into this cave your eyes become accustomed to the dark and you begin to witness all manner of things unfold before you — some are terrible, and some are tremendous. You become so accustomed to this place that you no longer turn around to look at the mouth of the cave; the light is too bright and you cannot bear it. You travel through the cave for years on end, and it becomes everything that you know. One day you hear your name called from the mouth of the cave, at first you do not look and you do not answer. After a time you begin to answer the voice, and compelled by some familiar instinct you turn toward the light — at first it is almost unbearable, in such stark contrast to your life in the cave. In time you manage to turn to face the mouth of the cave, and open your eyes fully. You find yourself standing in the mouth of the cave, facing outward — you had not traveled anywhere, you had been only standing at the entrance looking into the darkness for so long that it became all you could see. This is your attachment to the experience joys and suffering of your life, and to the sense of meaning it has given you, all the while the alternative was waiting for you to turn around.

I tell my clients this story because I want them to understand how much power they have in framing their experiences. I also want them to know that change is actioned by choice, that we all have a choice in this life.

As I turned away from the scenes I had so delicately woven into my conception of self, and as I surrendered to the reality of my suffering and all suffering alike I became engulfed by that obliterating light, that roar of being that set all things in motion — by the nature of existence. It is what it is, and I am within this self, within it.

I used to hold this notion that my spiritual pursuits would lead me further outside of myself, that I could become more etherial again. I did not understand that a form of liberation is in the deepest acceptance of who you are right now, right here, in this moment — separate to all things, yet witness and witnessed alike. Everything else is just pantomime, a compelling play without a doubt, but a play nonetheless, and like that magical cave it is so compelling that you simply forget to turn around, to put down the pieces of the game and to face yourself, because we are afraid that we will lose ourselves.

The veil remained thin for a day or so, then responsibility and reality took hold once again, drawing into identity and concerns. I remember it though, so I wrote this, just like I wrote that poem all those years ago.

I hope to live inside that poem once again, and I invite you to join me, or me to join you, or simply to be here, now, together.