podcast Transcripts

0:00:22
Welcome back to the Logos of Experience and Truth Podcast, where I continue to unlock the mysteries of the Beatific Vision of God.

I am going to continue this examination of meditation, in general, the specifics. I have spoken about meditation in the West. Did it come from the eastern religions or was there meditation prior to this? I have spoken about it, is there a correct way to meditate? In this episode, I am going to attempt to describe or explain what is occurring in the mind when we meditate. It is exceedingly difficult, I think, to attempt to do this because it requires a massive amount of self-reflection. And in general, that is what meditation is . . . does, or the mental activity through which one swims through when you are meditating. I wrote a post as well on whether the mystical experience or the culmination of the mystical experience is entering into the unconscious mind. In one of my podcast episodes, I believe, I spoke about science or scientists saying that it is impossible to enter the unconscious mind. And yet from my experience with the mysteries, that is exactly what the mysteries are. It is the path to enter the unconscious mind. Thus, meditation is the path of entering into your conscious mind, of course, but also your subconscious mind. But what is occurring when we are doing this?

0:02:17
Now, there are many assumptions that we make on a day-to-day basis. Right? And it is difficult to discern whether these assumptions are correct or not. It is based on our own personal experience whether my assumption is a correct assumption about another human being or not. Until you dive deep into this type of concept, it is automatically assumed that what I assume about somebody or about other people or about all human beings must be the same.

0:02:51
What I am aiming at here is I assume that everybody is self-reflective, that everybody thinks in-depth about themselves and not so much in a, like, what do I want to do or what I want to eat today, but in the, what am I? Where do I come from for real? Have I always been like this? How do I change myself? Why is it so easy for marketers, the algorithm, to convince me of x y z? Do I have free will or is free will an illusion and the only reason they are telling me I have freedom, for instance, in this country, is to throw me off.

0:03:40
I assume that everybody questions these aspects to our own reality because these are the things, I am asking myself. These are the things I have been asking myself. Is it because I meditate? And it is because I have been self-reflective and thinking for an exceptionally long time. And I simply assume that these are the types of things that other people think about. Now, obviously, I think about how I had to pay my bills today. I had to take the trash out yesterday. I had to throw out some extra trash that was in the garage yesterday. We went to the movies yesterday. I have a mountain of yard work that must get taken care of.

0:04:18
You know, I mean, I think about other things. I think about these other types of things, of course, but thinking about thought itself is also something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I think about thought itself. And I simply assume that that is what other people do, but considering the algorithm and how easy it is for that algorithm or those algorithms that exist on the Internet and social media to influence people, I am not entirely sure, and I should stop if everybody thinks to the depth that I do. But that may be because I meditate.

0:05:04
So, what occurs in the mind when we meditate is we gain control of our ability to think for ourselves. Again, I mentioned in another podcast that meditation . . . which is the path, or which creates the steps towards experiencing the mysteries is one of the methods of which the mysteries were imparted onto a human being. These were once the possessions of the elite in the ancient world. And if we are so easily distracted by this or that, then we are being kept from thinking for ourselves and the path towards achieving this is meditation, contemplation, being able to focus inside our mind. Doing this is like carving a path in our thoughts. The way I like to think of this especially when I’m struggling, if I have a day where the meditation just isn’t working, I’m just thinking about too many things is I like to picture Moses dropping that staff into the Red Sea and splitting it because that is what you are attempting to achieve, at least, with and through meditation.

0:06:24
You are carving a path through your conscious thoughts, your everyday thoughts, to dive into the mind and the mind for some reason . . . it is very weird . . . does not like this, especially not at first. This is why it is considered or seen or been shown to be some type of a battle, right, a war. This is Isaac wrestling with the angel. There is this combat that we do in our mind at first, especially which is why it can be so difficult for a beginner to meditate, especially if you are getting into it later in life. It is difficult. You have a lot of conscious thoughts to get through, a lot of memories that exist in your conscious mind to get through. But that is exactly what occurs in the mind when you meditate. You are taming it.

0:07:25
This is classic yoga; classic Hindu teaching of what yoga is. You are yoking the mind into submission is the way I was taught what yoga means and stands for, the actual definition of it: you are yoking . . . It is like yoking a beast of burden is the way that I was taught it when I was in school. It is like yoking a beast of burden and that that is how the mind should be viewed. It is your mind. Seeing it as this apparatus or seeing it as like another limb instead of solely seeing it as the complete reflection of myself because that is when it is still part of the illusion that you are your mind, that you are entirely your mind, especially your conscious mind, and that that is you. That is the illusion. Part of that is true. The automatic aspects of mind, of thought, I need to eat, I need clothing, I need shelter, and this is why Jesus says, these are not the things you should be concerned with. God knows you need these things. These are not the things you should be concerned with. Because by concerning yourself with these things, you are identifying that as yourself. So, meditation and the path that meditation creates in the mind is the path towards actual freedom.

0:08:53
If we use neurological terms, building the routine of a specific time when you are going to sit there and stare inside of your mind with your eyes closed or focus on your breathing with your eyes closed, sitting in some type of a position, or if you’re going to do that and pray and have some type of prayer that you’re going to do, this is literally carving neural networks and paths inside of your brain, or reinforcing ones that you’ve already built in there. And by doing this, if you begin to meditate on something, once you have done this enough and you have created those pathways in the mind, and you can more easily focus on topic a, b, or c, well then, what neurology has taught is that you begin to make the neural connections. Associative memory. That aspect of the mind through the new neural network you have created begins to make connections with other parts of your mind. And then that is how you begin to increase your mind. Seems weird to say the increase of mind because meditation is teaching the decrease of thought. But again, that is the other separation of mind versus thought.

0:10:19
And that was the clearer way of describing the difference of thinking about clothing or food or shelter and that type of thought versus mind itself and that they are different. They are related. There is an interrelation between them. But they are also different. These are the types of things that meditation brings. Differentiation between thought and mind. So, that is what occurs when you meditate. Think of it as Moses parting the Red Sea. If you reflect on your own self and know my mind, my thoughts, are in control of me. If you are honest with yourself and if you can say to yourself, my thoughts are in control of me: I cannot focus or it is difficult for me to focus, then that is one of the reasons to meditate. To gain that focus, to gain that control because that brings you freedom. Real freedom.

I will leave you with that. Until next time.