The Experience

'Without going out of your door,
you can know all things on earth
Without looking out of your window,
you can know the ways of heaven...
See all without looking.'
George Harrison, 'The Inner Light'

reprinted by kind permission of Northern Songs

WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE?

We've looked at the psysiological changes that take place during the Calm Technique. We've looked at the benefits that accumulate through regular practice. But what is it really like? How does it feel?

Obviously, different people react in different ways, and for many, the feeling is very difficult to articulate. To ask someone what took place during meditation is the most intimate and personal question a researcher could put forth. Still, in the interests of science, the question has been asked.

There is universal agreement that the most significant feeling is one of great peace and calm. A feeling which, for many, is more peaceful than anything they had ever experienced before. Yet the majority consider that feeling to be strangely familiar, as if they had experienced it before, but couldn't bring it to mind. One man compared it to how he imagined he felt as an infant: loved, safe, no worries, happy, content. Another desribed it as 'nothingness: empty, floating, detached'. Another as 'radiant'. 'Pure.' 'Not aware that I'm meditating.' 'Sensitive.' 'Aware.' 'Alive.' 'Time stands still.'

There is a place within all of us where, on very rare occasions, we feel completely at peace with existence, completely calm. Let's fantasize for a moment and see if we can recreate just a hint of that feeling. I've listed four scenarios for you to indulge in for your next quiet moment. Select one (or create one of your own), memorize the concept, then close your eyes for a few minutes and try to imagine yourself in that situation.

Do it in some peaceful, dimly lit place.

1) You are an eighteen-month-old infant. You're sitting on your favourite soft blanket in the warm sun. You've found something new to play with and you're totally engrossed in it. So engrossed that you do not bother to look up to see your proud parents standing nearby, beaming. You don't have a worry or a concern in the world; no doubts about the future and no regrets over the past. With you on that blanket is everything you've ever wanted in the world - one scruffy toy.

2) You're a young adult lying on your back in the lush green countryside. Lying beside you is the most important person in your life. You have nothing to do for the rest of the day. No work to worry about for a couple of weeks. Nothing at all on your mind except how much you are enjoying lying there, without speaking, but sharing the experience. You hear birds some distance away. You stare at the clear blue sky as one lonely cloud slowly passes through the heavens.

3) You have been bushwalking. It has been a very hot day. Ten minutes ago you came upon a beautiful mountain rock pool. The air is cool and moist and refreshing. The water is crystal clear, but very dark. There are cool ferns reflected around its perimeter. The still, clear waters of this pond are mirror-flat except where a gentle waterfall flows, a hundred metres away from you. You are amazed at how calm and still the water is.

4) You are lying on an inflatable mattress on a sheltered South Pacific lagoon. You feel absolutely safe. There is nothing you have to do. The sun is a trifle too hot, but a gentle breeze keeps you feeling comfortable. There is no possible risk of sunburn. You can hear the water lapping against your inflatable mattress and the shore. Every now and then the shadow of an overhanging coconut tree shelters you from the sun. You are feeling quite drowsy.

Most people find that one of the above fantasies can produce a brief experience of great peace and calm. If you can imagine yourself in one of these situations for however short a time, you will have an inkling of what the Calm Technique feels like (on a superficial level, obviously).

During the Calm Technique, you should feel as peaceful as that. However, at the same time your mind will be fully alert - not thinking, but extremely aware.

In an ideal meditation you would have no recollections and no onvious feelings (either good or bad). In fact, you would be oblivious to every other thing that's going on in the world, even of the fact that you are only feeling peace and calm at the time. This is not to suggest that you are experiencing 'nothing'. You will be aware of everything, just thinking about nothing.

However, it will be a long time before your meditation is 'ideal'. As I've said before, the experience is subtle. You will experience moments (sometimes only for a few seconds each time) during the Calm Technique when you are aware of nothing at all, yet you are aware. After it happens you're usually so impressed by your 'achievement' that you begin to congratulate yourself. That congratulatory thought is just another distraction, so you'll have to start over again. But you will appreciate even those brief moments so much that you will continue to be attracted to the Calm Technique. And the more time you dedicate to it, the more those moments of absolute peace and calm will grow. This should not in any way suggest to you that your meditation is limited to the pursuit of these fleeting moments. If you spend twenty minutes on the Calm Technique and only ten seconds result in absolute peace and calm, it does not mean you have wasted nineteen minutes and fifty seconds. The fact that you sit in meditation for twenty minutes (ignoring that wonderful ten seconds) is what produces your sense of calm and strengthens your personality.

The entire twenty minutes should be a time of deep, enjoyable relaxation, a new and completely different experience each time you do it. Expect it to be different. Expect it to be close to perfect sometimes, and almost frustrating at others. Learn to accept it as it comes, be a passive observer. If you try too hard to influence the outcome of your own meditation it becomes counterproductive: you introduce an element of stress into an activity which is meant to be the antithesis of stress.

My explanations of what the Calm Technique 'feels like' must leave something to be desired. It is not an 'experience' as such, it is a state of being. And a state of being cannot be described. You try to describe calm. Or happy. Or love. They are states of being which defy description. You could come up with very creative and poetic sets of words, but the concepts would be meaningless to someone who has never experienced these states.

Perhaps it is more understandable now why 'the best definition of meditation is the act of meditation itself'.

--This excerpt was taken from The Calm Technique by Paul Wilson