this age, it is increasingly easy for us to remain aloof from suffering and death. Because we are not faced with it every day, we become oblivious to our connection with it. We fail to realize that one day we too must die — we too must suffer the pain of loss. The impersonal way in which we are exposed to pain and death, via movies and television, only serves to further separate us from its reality and to desensitize us to the suffering of others.
When faced with the shock of loss, we long for some kind of eternal base for our lives — for the knowledge that will enable us to understand these events and thus cope with our fear and loneliness. Many people turn to religion, but turn away again after their crisis has passed and their mental stability has been restored. This is because often religion can offer only a temporary solace that is no real base in itself. Religions that require faith that is not firmly rooted in personal experience or knowledge, that do not give specific practices by which that knowledge is acquired, often fail to offer the continuing growth and the real answers that the rational individual seeks.
Meditation is a practical connecting link to the eternal base. Rather than acting as a crutch in times of distress, it is a tool with which you can find real answers from within. The realization achieved through meditation is not faith or belief, but knowledge, and as scientists, psychologists, and philosophers have shown us, fear and all of its accompanying anxiety can only be banished by knowledge. The realization attained through meditation enlightens religious beliefs, enabling you to understand the deeper meaning of your chosen religious teachings and apply them to your life.
When that connecting link is established through meditation and you gain some personal experience of your goal, you will begin to gain a sense of discrimination— the ability to place finite events and objects in their proper perspective with the infinite from which they have all evolved.
As it reveals the subtler aspects of your mind, meditation brings you to this fine sense of discrimination, which in turn leads to nonattachment. According to some philosophies, nonattachment means avoidance of the things of the world. Thus some spiritual seekers have mortified themselves to renounce the pleasure and pain of the body; have tried to create aversions in their minds to the natural instincts of eating, sleeping, and sexuality; and have escaped from society to live in jungles or caves far from the “temptations” of worldly life.
Volumes of psychiatric research have shown us that repression is never successful. Such methods of dealing with attachment merely create more obstacles for the practitioner, because they require the mind to be absorbed in negative thoughts rather than in truth. If you adopt such measures you will ultimately turn away from your goal; repression forces your mind to be more deeply entrenched in those things from which you are trying to escape. Although solitude may remove you from the immediate agitations of the world, it does not remove those agitations from the mind, which is their source.
Meditation can reveal truth and calm the agitations of the mind, and it can be practiced anywhere. True detachment is never a negative approach; rather it is a positive attitude of love for the goal, seeing universal consciousness in all forms, and attaching the mind to that infinite essence rather than the finite form in which it appears.
Negative interpretations of discrimination and nonattachment developed through the ages as a result of priest-classes controlling spiritual practice and knowledge. It was expedient for them to retain their power and prestige by preventing ordinary family people from practicing meditation, especially women, who historically have been most “attached” because of their guardianship of home and children. Even today many people avoid meditation because they associate it with solitary asceticism and detachment.
Discrimination also means understanding that pleasure is not the goal of our existence. You can, rather, identify with the broader context within which both pleasure and pain exist as polar expressions. Your attitude is one of dynamic simplicity. You strive without ambition, neither avoiding pain nor seeking pleasure but accepting yourself as you are, letting the process of meditation unfold all of your potentialities naturally within you. Meditation helps you to live your life in balance, and a balanced mind gains deeper realization in meditation.
When the realization of oneness develops within, a feeling of attraction for the goal intensifies. As you begin to understand yourself and the universe, as your perfect nature unfolds, you realize that a magnetic attraction to infinite consciousness or truth is the force that has guided you from the beginning of your life. This same force is the essential energy of the universe, which keeps everything moving in perfect balance. This realization will awaken in you a special kind of love.
Until now, you have been pulled along the path of progress purely by the force of evolution. At a certain point, though, you are bound to discover that the force that is pulling you is infinite consciousness, your innermost being. This discovery is one of great joy, and you begin to use more of your own conscious energy to move toward your goal. It is as if you have been lost in a forest, finding your way home only by vague feelings, memories, and landmarks along the way. You wander slowly, carefully, sometimes taking wrong turns, stumbling, confused. But when in the distance the light of home can be seen, you cry out joyfully and run straight for that light, all doubts gone, confusion and loneliness replaced by joyful anticipation and relief. No longer is every fallen log an obstacle, every dark corner a menace, every divergent path a temptation. You return home with speed and confidence. The awakening of devotion —intense love for the higher self— in the heart of the spiritual seeker is such an experience. With it a new relationship develops between you and your spiritual goal that changes the very quality of your meditative practice.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow described these two stages of motivation as “deficiency” motivation and “growth” or “being” motivation, and the two different kinds of love they produce as “deficiency-love” and “being-love.” Deficiency-motivated living is based on needs that must be met from without and by others — the need for security, respect, and acceptance. It is an attitude of defending and preserving oneself, of fending off attack rather than reaching out for fulfillment. Deficiency love (called kama in yoga terminology) is based on the need of the limited ego; it can be grasping, fearful, insecure. It is an emptiness that must be filled.
Growth— or being-motivation is something different; however, it is not contradictory. One passes into the other as childhood passes into maturity. The growth-motivated individual has seen the light of home and no longer feels that previous emptiness. Secure and self-directed, with growth-motivation you are able to fully give of yourself because you are no longer motivated by fear. This change does not, however, mean you are exempt from conflict or unhappiness. As a growth-motivated person, you are better able to deal with conflict through meditation and self-searching. Thus, from this perspective, you are better able to see problems clearly and be open to accepting help, when necessary, from outside sources. Being-love, or prema is fearless. You love the essence, the being, rather than its changing physical attributes or its capacity to fill the ego’s needs. It is open and selfless, and ultimately, beyond the limitations of the emotions or the physical body.
The infinite consciousness within you seeks expression. When you begin to live your life in a way that allows your higher nature to unfold, door after door will open to you. Others begin to seek you out because of your harmonizing energies. You live, work, and play from a center of focused attention that not only allows you to experience limitless energy and tranquility but draws into your world only the best for you.
Throw a rock into a pool of still, clear water. What happens? The water reacts. It changes shape, emanating rings of waves that are strongest at the point of contact. The reflection of the moon above is broken up into a thousand moving pieces, made unrecognizable.
Do you love your son? That is perfectly correct. But on the son’s death you will have