Martin LeFevre: Meditation Isn't Navel Staring

A reader asks, “Can the people who have a natural talent to quiet their thoughts and clean their mind, not by effort and struggling, but only through insight, point the way for others?”

I feel they can, or I wouldn’t be writing this column, though each person has to awaken meditation, or whatever name one gives it, for oneself.

But why does meditation matter? Meditation, as I’m using the word, is the highest action of which the human being is capable.

But so what? Isn’t sitting quietly and observing one’s thoughts and emotions a form of navel staring?

It can be. But another reader from Turkey clearly states a painful truth: “Without clearing the human mind of all limiting beliefs, the modern age epidemic of self-righteousness will prevail.”

One feels that if even one tenth of one percent of the people in the world ended the observer through regularly sitting quietly and passively observing the movement of thoughts and emotions as they arise, humankind would be prepared for the next leap, and effortlessly take it.

The first reader insists, “as soon as you try to put this experience into words, your real experience and insight start fading away and the thought invades back into the mind.”

Words aren’t the problem. Did Rumi lose his insight because he wrote beautiful poetry? Obviously not. One can indeed lose insight by writing or speaking, but only if one makes the words more important than the thing, out of a desire to make a name for oneself or some other motivation. As long as one is enquiring, asking questions within one, insight is not lost. Indeed, it is nurtured.

Is there an observation in which there is no observer? Clearly, yes. It is possible for the brain simply to observe, holistically, not from the thought-made entity ‘I.’ Though it’s difficult, one simply has to observe the observer, and in doing so, the deep habit of thought splitting off from itself as ‘I’/’me’/the observer ends, at least temporarily. Then there is just observation—that is, meditation.

Because the human brain has lived for so long in terms of symbols - words, images, concepts, etc. - we have to constantly remind ourselves that the word is not the thing and the map is not the territory. What I mean by the word meditation is the effortless state of awareness that comes into being when the observer is negated.

I don’t accept the irreducible premise of the self. If we start from self we will end with self. ‘My self’ is not only an illusion; it’s a redundancy. The ‘me’ is an emotional separation made by thought that seems to have permanence. For most people, the feeling of ‘myself’ lasts a lifetime, with no true break. For people who actually meditate, the continuity of self ceases, at least for some timeless moments or minutes.

But isn’t it the ‘I’ that has the desire to meditate? The urge doesn’t come from the ‘me,’ but from the feeling of imbalance and disharmony. The body, if one listens, tells you when to meditate, which is also a form of deep rest for the brain.

Of course motivation, much less the cognitive and emotional constructions of thought, is very subtle. That’s why continual questioning and skepticism of one’s motives are essential. That need not lead to self-doubt, though I would rather risk a day of self-doubt than a lifetime of self-ignorance.

When I was a young man, I noticed that the mind was always separating itself from its own content. So I unwittingly asked the right question: What is this observer that always seems to be separate from what it is observing?

Even as a kid, I liked to watch nature, even just from the backyard. One day in my later teens, having forgotten my question while watching a robin probe for insects or worms in the grass, there was an explosive insight. Where the mind is concerned, the observer and the observed are parts of the same movement!

At that moment all separation instantly evaporated, and one truly saw a bird for the first time.

What saw the bird, one might ask? Simply the senses, fully awakened, and the brain, fully present, without the mediation of words, memories, knowledge, experience.

Someone might still ask: How does one negate the observer? ‘How’ implies a method, and the first thing is to be finished with all methods.

Nor is it a matter of avoiding judgments, evaluations, or reactions. One simply sets aside analysis, and observes everything as it arises, with the understanding that judgments are part of the entire field of thought/emotion. Judgments and evaluations are secondary, self-perpetuating reactions, and when one observes them as such, as part of the whole movement of thought/emotion, they fall away without one doing anything.

Can judgment exist without the illusion of a separate observer?

When the observer dissolves, there is just the movement of thoughts and emotions as they arise. Observing without the observer, the whole mind/brain falls silent, and one sees and feels many things.

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net . The author welcomes comments.

© Scoop Media