I heard recently about a new initiative, which is for the School, in co-operation with a number of similar organizations, to promote meditation as a part of daily life.
When I heard about this my immediate response was not "wow, that's fantastic" but "OK, now we're doing what we should". We are not going to transform the School by action, but since we are all bound to act, it makes a great difference what actions we engage in. Would others agree with me that this is the kind of thing we should be doing?
For me, an important issue is that we ought to be capable of giving more than people who are not actively involved in spiritual work.
Development, according to His Holiness, depends upon having more energy available than we need to live our lives. If our lives (including duties) are so exhausting, then we really aren't living properly. If we have nothing to spare for others outside School, we've forgotten the point. Do we expend all our efforts on School duties and on raising the funds to send our children to The Right School? Or is the School the "backstage" that enables us to perform our parts much more brilliantly than we might otherwise do?
There is no possible contradiction between philosophy and an expansive life that is of service to the entire community. Or is there?
Incidentally, if there are many more initiatives such as this (AND if the results are not claimed by the School, as so often) will we need this blog?
Monday, February 26, 2007
Developments
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5 comments:
The Maharishi promoted this idea before - the intention being to get a certain percentage of people meditating and this would then leaven the whole of society. I'm quite sure it would, indeed, we ought to be confident of its effects already.
I heard a report on the televison not long ago about an invitation to all American meditators to converge in Washington for a week of meditation. During that time the crime rate dropped very significantly.
This is anecdotal evidence but I'm not inclined to doubt it. Why? All one needs to do is refer to oneself.
Last Sunday I saw Into Great Silence, a remarkable film (recommendation posted elsewhere). The cinema was packed and for two and a half hours the audience joined with the monks in a great silence.
So, yes, despite all the pushes and pulls of ordinary life, there is a great longing for a more peaceful and unified life.
We have the tools and the knowledge to promote meditation, and to pass it on. So, let's get weaving!
I think the only problem with the Maharishi approach is him - he is apparently certifiably loopy.
I'm really not sure about the idea that meditating causes a kind of change in the atmosphere that affects crime rate, etc. My doubt is not because I think it's right or not, but because it is so easy for people to use that concept as a way of getting out of work. "I meditate twice a day, therefore I am helping to raise the level of consciousness".
It's a great way for people who meditate mechanically and live mechanically to avoid waking up.
I am sounding more and more like a Gurdjieffian by the day.
Last night I was walking down the High Street in town and a taxi driver called me over. "Excuse me," he says, "This is going to sound really silly, but, can you tell me how to spell 'conscious'?"
Seriously.
Can this be it - the definite sign that I have at last reached that level of wakefulness that means People Ask Me Questions? That The Teaching is Working?
Fortunately I was able to help the poor man in his hour of need - in a very real and literal sense, to give him "conscious"-ness.
Taxi drivers - the brightest beaks in town! I don't doubt he saw in you the Great Lexicon.
On a similar note - but, in the end, much less convincingly - for a time I kept getting stopped by bright-eyed people near Hyde Park wanting to ask me about consciousness. They found a ready audience and I even attended a meeting - only to discover they were devotees of that Korean guru (name forgotten). Ah, well.
The Maharishi may (or may not)have gone up the wall, but it wasn't always thus, and we owe him a debt.
I'm beginning to realise that every step is bound to have its pitfalls as well as its opportunities. But 'The man who never makes a mistake usually doesn't make anything,' as I've just read on the Motley Fool site on share-dealing.
So I'm not too worried about mistakes, mechanical or otherwise. It's possible to learn from them. Why should we always have to work? The lilies of the field didn't....
Meditation is of being, I feel, rather like the lilies. If there is work it's of the undoing kind.
The SES has during its history, been restricted by certain ideas about itself which became more pernicious because they were not questioned. For instance, in early days, that it was a sort of secret society. This was explained as a way of containing the (undoubted?) energies created, a sort of cyclotron which harnessed too early, would dissipate..
This in time gave rise to other ideas about itself -- such as that it was a perfect form of institution, which did not need to change its structure.
And this in turn gave rise to other ideas held without discussion which still linger -- such as the sense that the only important activities are those which take place within a group, within the school buildings, or under the aegis of a 'career tutor'...
I've always said to other students, especially those thinking about leaving, that the SES is a great adventure, a delicate developing organism, expanding by --- sshh -- enthusiasm...(Greek word for the god always within..)-- enthusiasm and experience and real knowledge and love and example... and stuff...
So it's nice to read of these developments. (They don't appear in Convivium, I wonder why not ?)
One suggestion which comes out of those ideas mentioned above : there's a fear of 'leaving' the School, which used to be heavily endorsed because LM once said that 'people who leave the School find it difficult to come back...' (he never got asked why, to my knowledge).
I think that if a student feels some lack of enthusiasm, that should be recommended to take a term off. If they do return because they feel a real lack,this would undoubtedly restore their enthusiasm... (Laura might like to comment on this, although she has spoken about it before...)
All the developments you mention sound to me as if they come from enthusiasm, and the confidence that comes with enthusiasm, and ought to promote more enthusiasm...
And my limited experience of students being given the chance to take a group, oversee an activity,
or give a talk, is that it does wonders for the understanding of those students and their shared enthusiasm..
Thank you, Anon, for sharing your understanding of how the School came to be perceived as 'secretive'.
That harnessing of energies in School is not way off-beam. In the early years, it can be very intense.
I'd also understood that it was a hangover from the days of the Russian secret police when meetings had to be held in secret for fear of persecution. But perhaps I've lost my compass here...
Anon raises the question of fear of leaving School and the difficulty of returning.
Fear may come in more than one guise. There's the fear of leaving a relatively closed and certainly well-ordered society, as there would be with, say, the army. There's an 'identity', support, structure and purpose which has to be forgone - it simply vanishes overnight. There's a raft of attitudes, language, in-jokes(!)which, however irritating, also serve as guy-ropes. I missed the company of School friends more than I thought I would. I missed the single-pointed attention, the affection, and I missed the sense of direction.
If I hadn't had meditation I'd have been adrift. But I did have meditation and so was happy.
There's also the fear - more difficult to deal with - of expectations, both those of oneself and also of others. Allied to this is the fear that one may have damned oneself to perdition, or at any rate cast oneself into a miasma.
From this type of fear anger arises and it is this anger, I would suggest, that may prevent former students from accepting invitations from the School.
I rarely felt anger against the School but this was because, at the time of leaving, I quite deliberately promised myself that I would only remember the benefits and be grateful for these.
However, I do know that many former students feel anger and resentment. They get stuck in a sense of being cheated.
Once left, it's certainly difficult to return. However forcefully, or gently, the door has been closed and that part of your life gets put in a box and labelled 'the past'. The 'great adventure', as Anon says, is over because, rather than adventure, it became like endless washing-up....
Getting a term off as a treat for lack of enthusiasm? Somehow I think not. Dynamics all wrong.
More tomorrow....
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