Negation Is The Essence Of Meditation

Other than two wild turkeys calling to each other nearby, and a few swallows skimming over the surface of the water, I saw or heard no animals until the end of the sitting. But after thought fell still and a meditative state had begun, there was a rustling in the dry grass directly behind me. I turned to see a large deer quite near.

The young buck hadn’t seen me through the brush surrounding the tree, so I held still as it came around to the path along the bank above the creek. The deer’s eight-pointed antlers were covered with felt. It was only a couple meters away when it spotted me, but it didn’t so much as flinch.

We stared at each other for some seconds, without the species barrier between humans and other animals that thought creates, or even the predator/prey dynamic of nature. The young buck ambled down the bank into the water and took a long drink. Then it walked across the shallow stream and stood in the shade of a tree along the edge of the creek for some minutes, before slowly walking up the bank.

There is no method to meditation; intentionality and effort are a continuation of the programs of thought and self. But the movement of negation is an effortless state of attention that ends the inherently separative mechanism of thought -- the past as memory and the emotional accretion of experience. The mind knows innocence again and the brain is renewed.

Through passive observation without the infinite regress of the observer the brain effortlessly gathers attention, which initiates the movement of negation. The domination of mental and emotional conditioning ceases, allowing the mind/brain to grow deeply still.

It’s stillness that renews the mind and develops the heart, and gives one the capacity to commune with beauty, harmony and the nameless energy beyond thought. There is no way to it, any method, system or technique, just negation.

I’ve always found “man the fallen creature” mythology rather absurd. But the notion that people once lived in harmony with nature and each other on earth, and then devolved into self-centeredness, greed and suffering, still captures the imaginations of Christians and New Agers in different ways.

For Christians, the mythology infuses the MAGA movement, with its imbecilic call to “make America great again.” Though there is no equivalence with Christian nationalists in terms of politics and power, New Agers place indigenous people in the Garden of Eden, and claim that if we heed “indigenous wisdom” humans will live in balance with nature again.

Better to take an evolutionary perspective. With explosive bursts rather than steady, gradual development, cognitive capability grew in many hominin species along a branching, non-linear tree. Over seven or more million years, humans evolved from defenseless primates literally in the canopy of trees, into apex predators and exploiters of every reified “resource” on earth.

“Fully modern humans” emerged over a hundred thousand years ago after hundreds of thousands of years as hunters and gatherers. Then, about 10,000 years ago, more and more people became settled agriculturalists, with fewer and fewer nomadic peoples. Agriculture allowed the first cities and states to emerge, and humans made increasingly sophisticated and deadly wars on each other, which continues unabated to this day.

Perhaps a subconscious memory of the long and relatively harmonious indigenous period gave rise to the Genesis fable. But Genesis is a children’s story, speaking to how humans became alienated from nature, and becoming so venal, self-centered and warlike.

Even today, the dualistic notion of “a good spirit and an evil spirit battling for control of the universe and people’s souls” persists, and not just in Christianity. However there is no evil in the universe except as generated by man.

Evil exists in human consciousness. But pitting good against evil weakens good and elevates evil. Good stands against evil where it must, but it doesn’t fight it, neither on a terrestrial nor a cosmic battlefield.

Though only darkness appears to be operating in human consciousness at present, an immeasurable inviolability exists beyond thought and self. A lack of insight into thought lies at root of man’s disorder and evil, but we idolize thought more than any imagined god of the past. It’s the basis of the idiocy of AI “sentience” and the “singularity,” the hellpoint when humans will merge with their thought machines.

The self is a conditioned and constructed program, nothing more. There is no ‘Higher Self;’ that nonsense was imported from the East. Initiating, through passive awareness, an involuntary movement of negation ends the domination of the self as a program and operating system within the brain, which in turn allows the content of conditioning from family and culture to come to an end. Whether temporary or irrevocable, that is liberation.

Is there awareness beyond the mind-as-thought, even beyond the silent brain passively observing thought and emotion into stillness? Is the universe in a state of meditation?

One can only find out when the observer/self yields completely to undirected attention, and effortless negation completely quiets the mind.

~Martin LeFevre

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