Meditation & Enlightenment

Artsy Shot: Let Light In (© Ljubomir Trajkovski)

A post by Mehmet

»The paradox of life lies in accepting everything as it is,
and still striving further.«

Sam Harris

»The paradox of life lies in accepting everything as it is,
and still striving further.«

 

In a nutshell

Meditation is one of the most valuable tools for dealing with our reality. Used correctly and coupled with a curious mind that questions everything, meditation can lead to self-dissolution and enlightenment.

☝🏻 Disclaimer: This text contains exclusively my subjective perception of reality. Even if words are chosen as if they represent a supposedly objective description of any situation, it is still only the opinion of an arbitrary person. Question everything and find your own answers. Nobody but you can find your truth for you. Awaken your mind. // If you want to meditate with us, be sure to check out our event page or subscribe to our newsletter, where you'll always be the first to know about new dates – no experience needed, we look forward to seeing you!

Your Why.

Perhaps you're wondering what meditation and psychedelics have in common? Many who have already consumed psychedelics will surely remember isolated moments of complete "perfection" during the psychedelic journey. These moments, which cannot be surpassed in clarity and beauty, are also the reason why many consume psychedelics at all. Precisely this state can also be achieved through meditation and maintained for longer periods. But not only can this state be achieved, all other states, such as anxiety or panic attacks, can also be met with an inner calm that is indescribably empowering. During a psychedelic journey, all sorts of feelings and thoughts emerge, including those that we have difficulty dealing with. Some have already experienced a subjectively perceived "bad trip," which means nothing more than experiencing thoughts and feelings that trigger anxiety and even panic within us. To maintain inner calm in the face of fear, confusion, and panic allows us to walk through life with greater self-confidence.

There are more than enough articles on the internet explaining meditation. While I will touch on the different types, I believe it's far more important to first clarify why you want to meditate at all. What is your goal? What do you want to achieve, and what do you want to avoid or reduce? What are you running away from and what are you running towards? The first step is to ask yourself why you're taking this first step at all. Many people are concerned with stress management or distraction from their own negatively perceived thoughts and feelings. However, so much more can be achieved through proper meditation that it's "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut" if it's only used for stress management. In my opinion, there is only one goal that does justice to the added value of meditation: enlightenment. Thousands of descriptions exist of what enlightenment is supposed to be. The definition I use is that it is the dissolution of the feeling of "self," sometimes also called "I" or "ego." Some also describe this dissolution of the self as "ego death." I suspect that for all of you who have not yet experienced this state, it is extremely difficult to grasp. Some may have even experienced it during a psychedelic journey. But it is completely irrelevant how many eloquent words I use to describe it, because it will make no difference if you have not yet experienced this state yourself. Nevertheless, I want to share this quote with you, because it comes very close to reality:

»You live in illusion and the appearance of things.
There is a reality, but you do not know this.
When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing.
And being nothing, you are everything.
That is all.«

Kalu Rinpoche

Your body.

I'd like to discuss a few basics of meditation with you first, before returning to the topic of enlightenment. Most people meditate sitting with their eyes closed on a meditation cushion, with their hands in their lap or on their knees. Meditating lying down is also fine, and even desired for some types of meditation, though there's a slightly increased risk of falling asleep. Whether you're on a cushion, a chair, lying down, or in the lotus position is completely irrelevant for the meditation itself. Ideally, however, you should be in a position that allows you to rest for the duration of your meditation. So, make yourself as comfortable as possible, but with the knowledge that our bodies are not made to rest awake for hours, and pain is an inevitable part of long meditation. You can also meditate with open eyes, but I've found that people find it difficult to fully surrender to meditation if they have to blink repeatedly. Therefore, I recommend that everyone new to meditation start with their eyes closed. Also, try to move as little as possible, but at the same time, if you want to move to relieve pain, just do it without much thought. Pain in the context of meditation usually involves tension in the back, knees, or hip area. Simply put: if the body is calm, the consciousness is also calm. If the consciousness is calm, the body is also calm.

»Calm body, calm mind.
Calm mind, calm body.«

Your consciousness.

The most common form of meditation is to direct attention to an object, either sensory impressions or thoughts and feelings, and to dwell there with concentration and attentiveness. Most people start with the breath, but ultimately any object can be chosen as a meditation object. Every moment of your reality can be used as meditation. Thoughts and feelings are also objects of your reality, so they can also be part of your meditation and will be in the course of your process. Many, however, start with the breath, because it is always and everywhere available. Especially for stress management, the breath is a good object, because slow and deep breathing can quickly bring us to rest. Less common, but usually the next step, is to expand attention from one object to multiple objects simultaneously. The goal is to be able to fully perceive more and more objects simultaneously without any effort. This is ultimately what your subconscious does. It perceives all senses at all times, but filters out everything it considers unimportant. So, only a fraction of what your body and subconscious perceive ends up in your consciousness. For example, I like to meditate in nature and listen to the birds and the wind rustling the leaves of the trees, while I feel the wind on my skin and "see" the sun's rays in my consciousness. Just as gladly, I meditate in busy cafés or crowded trains and perceive everything that is happening around me, for example, the vibrations of the train.

There are many other forms of meditation. I summarize these as active meditations, because something is done with our mind during them. This can be repeating and chanting mantras, prayers or declarations of love to all living beings (Metta meditation), visualizations of objects, saints, or gods, but also the uninterrupted repetition of a word until ecstasy. These forms of meditation have their raison d'être and many people achieve all their goals they have set for meditation with them. The reason why I could never get used to them is that I always feel like I'm actively doing something during this type of meditation. In other words, willpower is constantly exerted and concentration is necessary. However, this is counterproductive for the goal of enlightenment. The reason for this, very simply put, is that the "self" must lose the supposed power it has over you. But this cannot happen if your self is constantly being used. In my meditations, therefore, I always try to exert less and less willpower during the meditation and just as little as necessary to not "get lost" in thoughts. Some call this a deeper and deeper letting go. For me, it's more the act of literally doing nothing. The following three lines essentially summarize my entire meditation practice well:

»Go from doing to non-doing.
From being aware to being awareness.
If you’re not getting rid of the meditator, get rid of meditation.«

Your discipline.

My recommendation is to meditate daily. Ideally every morning before you've even looked at your phone. Start with 10 to 20 minutes every morning and increase the duration as it feels right for you. If you're completely new to meditation, I recommend using one of the well-known apps. I myself have used Waking Up (not an affiliate link) by Sam Harris and can especially recommend the 30-day beginner's course. After a certain amount of time, however, you will hopefully realize that you no longer need guidance. I have been meditating for a long time without guidance, without a clock, and without choosing an object. Simply put, I sit down and close my eyes, without any expectations of the meditation and exerting only minimal or even no willpower. On some days, that means I do nothing for an hour but watch my thoughts play their games. On other days, however, I feel deep inner peace and serenity for an hour and a half. Then again, there are days when I cry, laugh internally, feel fear, or sometimes fall asleep again, and all of that in one meditation. You may notice that meditating doesn't mean experiencing less and shutting yourself off from the world, but quite the opposite: everything should be experienced as intensely and clearly as our subconscious perceives it. It's not about living less, but about experiencing more, regardless of whether you're sitting with your eyes closed or standing at the checkout in the supermarket. And to achieve that, benevolent discipline is needed. Meditating daily is good, but don't make it a chore. If you don't feel like it, then be kind to yourself and allow yourself breaks now and then. And eventually, when you've shown enough benevolent discipline, every moment is meditation and you no longer have to "formally" sit down and meditate: you meditate continuously.

»People think you lose the world,
but you actually gain it.«

My life. My journey.

I've tried many times to start meditating, but I could never make it a habit or routine. I suspect it was because I only ever meditated when I wasn't feeling well and needed short-term relief. Because the moments when I wasn't "doing well" became more frequent and longer, I started psychoanalysis at the end of 2021. Meanwhile, I go to therapy three times a week and observe my thoughts and feelings. I share this with you because therapy is essentially equivalent to the function of meditation: an object, namely either thoughts or feelings, is chosen and complete attention is given to it for an hour. The comparison fits so well because on the one hand I rest physically and on the other hand I also close my eyes, just as in meditation. But therapy was not the decisive reason to start meditating. That only came when I read Jan Geurtz's book Addicted to Love. The first half of the book deals with how we can learn to love others and ourselves unconditionally. When I finished reading the first half of the book, I felt nothing but pure love for weeks. The second half of the book says a lot, but in principle the message was: If you feel good now and want to maintain that feeling, then meditate. And that's what I did.

I started with 20 minutes of guided meditation every morning. After a short time, I meditated for 20 minutes several times a day. After four months, I stopped meditating with guidance and simply sat for as long as I could meditate. For several weeks, I endured a lot of inner restlessness because I tried to keep extending the duration. Eventually, I realized for myself that there's actually nothing to do in meditation and I can just sit down without any expectation or judgment. I simply accept everything I experience in meditation. Since then, I formally meditate, meaning sitting with closed eyes, usually only in the morning for about 45 minutes to an hour and a half. But I don't set an alarm and only meditate as long as I don't have to exert willpower to sit in meditation. I use the word "formally" because by now almost every moment is meditative. Whether it's refilling my water glass or sitting on the toilet, everything deserves my complete attention.

After a few months of meditating, I began to perceive my senses much more intensely. This is certainly because I go through life much more attentively and no longer "get lost" in thoughts. This more intense perception of the senses will be familiar to everyone who has already consumed psychedelics. This state of intensity can be experienced daily and at every moment. Not only does it lead to a more intense perception of the senses, but thoughts and feelings are also perceived much more intensely and immediately.

Psychoanalysis means questioning everything. Every belief, every worldview, every self-image, every relationship, every thought, simply everything is first observed and then questioned. In this process of questioning, it becomes clear that all the views we carry around with us are subjectively created and, except in our consciousness, are not real. Furthermore, we don't even perceive objective reality, but only what enters our consciousness. And what enters our consciousness is exclusively shaped by our past. Every single person on this planet perceives a completely different reality at every moment. Everything you believe to know as objective truth is exclusively created completely subjectively by your senses, thoughts, and feelings.
Session after session, week after week, the self thus works to question itself. It seems paradoxical, but through this questioning, and the realization that one's own problems and traumas exist exclusively in our subjectively created reality, the self gradually heals. Sometimes this means feeling deep sadness and listlessness for months. But the more the self is healed, the more it lets go. Letting go of the painful memories of the past and letting go of any expectations of the future. The self feels more and more comfortable in the here and now. And the more it can live well in the here and now, the less the self feels the need to be needed. The dissolution of the self is then only a matter of time. In Zen monasteries, and when the self of the respective person is ready for it, Zen masters surprise the person by shouting at them, throwing small stones at them, or sometimes hitting them with a bamboo stick. Everything that surprises and throws the self off track so much that it is completely confused and perplexed for a short moment is used. In this short moment of confusion, it can and should happen that the self dissolves and thus a moment of enlightenment.

»Die while you’re alive and be absolutely dead.
Then do whatever you want: it’s all good.«

Bunan

My moment of enlightenment lasted an entire weekend. An entire weekend full of moments of pure ecstasy, but just as full of moments of pure panic. Panic, because in one fell swoop the sense of self was completely gone. Nothing made sense anymore. How I feel, what I want or don't want, plans, wishes and preferences, memories – everything was and is irrelevant. The entire construct of my life, with family, friends, work, hobbies, all identification and everything that goes with it, was suddenly meaningless. The realization is that nothing has inherent meaning. Everything only has the meaning that your self attributes to it. And once it understands that, it becomes difficult to give anything meaning. This realization can initially trigger depressive moods, because it means that we have lived our entire lives based on goals and wishes that have no meaning. But, like everything, this phase will also pass. In the moments when I was not confused, an incomparable ecstasy overcame me: Without the constantly analyzing and judging self, reality can be perceived unfiltered and completely. Buddhists call it Nirvana and Christians heaven on earth. But I prefer not to describe this dogmatically and compare it to the theater: I have been watching a play of my senses, thoughts, and feelings my whole life and have the impression of perceiving everything fully. Enlightenment, however, makes me realize that I have been perceiving the play behind a curtain all along. This curtain is now removed, and I am still perceiving the same play, but now directly and with a clarity that is indescribably beautiful. And somehow I wonder how I didn't notice earlier that there was a curtain between the play and me.

This all sounds nice, but in reality, the realization that my self is an illusion is extremely challenging. It means that, for me, it currently makes no sense to follow any preferences of the self. For weeks I wavered between complete acceptance of the flow of life and complete disillusionment and confusion. The only thing I can still say with certainty is what and how I feel in a given moment. That is, the sensory impressions I perceive, but also what thoughts and feelings currently exist in my consciousness. Hand in hand with the rollercoaster of life also came an immediate experience of the transience of all things. Only the here and now exists, when all memories and expectations no longer make sense.

Although I now know that my self is an illusion, I still go to work, have friends, family, and a daily life to navigate. And for that, I definitely need a self, a personality, an ego, at least something that allows the supposed inner world to interact with the supposed outer world. So enlightenment is not a lasting state in my everyday life. There are always moments of enlightenment in which my own identification and self completely disappear, and I feel one with everything, but these are not permanent states. However, my self can now deal with everything in life much better. The knowledge that all preferences are just an illusion, and that even the worst moment, once it's over, has as little reality as the most beautiful moment ever experienced, has given me a lightness in dealing with life that I never expected. But I no longer know who I am. I know that I am neither my body, nor my thoughts or feelings, my self, my life story, or my expected future. But I like my self, maybe I even love it. At the moment, I describe "Me," and by that I don't mean my self, as the space in which my reality unfolds. What does that mean? I can't say exactly, except that it feels right.

»The self is an illusion.
But it feels so real, that you better like your self.«

Your Life. Your Journey.

All our lives are so unique that each person must find their own right path. Only you can know what is right for you and what is not. You don't need gurus, no teachers and no doctrines, you don't have to travel to distant countries or learn foreign languages, and you don't have to take up residence in three-month silent meditation retreats to find yourself. Trust your instincts, follow your inspirations and question everything, yes, truly everything. Find your own truth. Emancipate yourself from all beliefs. Trust your feelings more than your mind, and your mind more than the minds of others. Accept yourself. Find yourself. Be uncompromisingly you.

»Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise.
Seek what they sought.«

Basho

Our Meditation.

Although I am a strong advocate of free meditation without guidance, we at the Psychedelika Club have decided to regularly meditate with you and then engage in an exchange. Feel free to check our events to participate.

»There is no better time than now, no better place than here.
There is no other time than now, no other place than here.«

My Book Recommendations.

And finally, I want to share some books with you that have helped me a lot on my journey.

Addicted to Love – Jan Geurtz
How we manage to love others and ourselves unconditionally.

Wake Up Now – Stephan Bodian
Why there is nothing to achieve except living in the here and now.

After the Ecstasy, the Laundry – Jack Kornfield
How we integrate moments of enlightenment into our daily lives.

Spiritual Enlightenment – Jed McKenna
Why everything except enlightenment is irrelevant.

🙏🏻 Feedback: Did you like or find this article helpful? Do you have praise, criticism, or other feedback? Then we would be immensely happy to receive an email at mail@psychedelika.club or a message via Instagram.