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"Leading in the Moment"
A lunchtime seminar with Martin Boroson
recorded live at the Yale Club of San Francisco
includes basic training in One-Moment Meditation®
The You-Already-Know-How-to-Meditate Meditation
The Background
I stumbled on this meditation while teaching a journalist my one-moment techniques. We were sitting in a crowded urban train station (one of my favorite places to meditate). But it wasn’t going so well. Maybe it was silly of me to try to teach meditation in a busy train station, but that was the point of our meeting—to demonstrate that you can meditate, momentarily, anywhere.
It was now clear to both of us that she did not need to go to the actual sea in order to feel peaceful or to experience this awareness: it was available to her wherever she was. The sea was simply what triggered this state of awareness in her, and it was the place where she could gain access to it most easily, but that awareness is not located at the sea: it is everywhere and always. Indeed, by believing that these feelings could only be experienced at the sea, she was probably making herself more stressed each time that she felt stressed but couldn’t possibly get to the sea.
She had arrived late for our appointment, quite stressed, having struggled through massive traffic jams to get there, and she was pretty convinced that she couldn’t meditate anyway. Her difficulty in grasping my approach was making her more frustrated and also a bit forlorn. She was doing the exercise, but not experiencing any state of mind that she considered meditative.
So I changed tack. I asked her if she had ever had an experience of deep peace. She immediately got excited and told me how much she loved being by the sea, and that she tries to get to the seaside, if just for a stroll, whenever she feels stressed, because this is where she is truly at peace. While telling me about this, right there in the noisy train station, her whole demeanor changed. She became both more energized and relaxed. She seemed uplifted. As if she were at the sea. In other words, just by remembering and describing her feelings of being by the sea, she had effected a profound change in her body and mind.
Inspired by this, I suggested that she might learn to meditate simply by imagining herself at the sea, by connecting to that "seaside state-of-mind." Because she had already experienced it, and experienced it powerfully, this wouldn’t be so hard.
So right there in the train station, I suggested that she close her eyes and experience this memory fully, reminding her whole body of how she feels when she is at the sea. I then asked her to “look around” in this memory and to articulate some of the qualities of the peacefulness she experiences there.
She began to describe qualities that I would definitely call spiritual. She spoke about feeling more expanded and connected. The peacefulness she experiences at the sea, it turns out, is not mere relaxation, but deep contentment with the ups and downs of life. Sitting in the train station, she was startled to realize just how profound this “seaside state-of-mind” really was.
I believe that each of us has had some experience, sometime, in which a deeper level of awareness was opened to us. These are often called peak experiences. They can be triggered by many different kinds of things: seeing a beautiful sunset, having sex, during a time of stress, seeing your newborn child for the first time, running a race.
It doesn’t matter if that experience seemed particularly “spiritual” at the time, because “spiritual” can mean so many different things, and is often not what we expect it to be. The more important question is whether, in that moment, you felt deeper, truer, or just more open—whether you felt more truly you.
Once you have had such a peak experience, you can re-open that awareness and continue to experience it, right now, wherever you are. After all, although that awareness was triggered by a seemingly external event or situation, you must have been ripe for it. The event just triggered an aspect of consciousness—a level or kind of awareness—that it always present, and always here, except that most of the time you don’t notice it. The peak experience simply showed you where the door was, and opened it a little for you. Now it’s up to you to find that door again and open it, consciously, and then get good at going through it. All you have to do is go back to that experience in your imagination, and bring that memory into your body.
For people who have trouble learning to meditate, this is probably a much more effective way to start than learning someone else’s way, for with this approach you are using, as your gateway, an experience that you already know, an experience that was perfectly – perhaps divinely – tailored to your predilections.
This may explain why so many guided visualizations and meditations don’t work, and why they can seem so clichéd, for they are always inspired by someone else’s needs and tastes—not yours. After all, some people might find their way to deeper awareness through the sea; for others it’s the desert. For some people it’s an emotion; others through a communal experience, such as a festival or dance; others through a sport. For some people it’s music, for others, silence.
That's why it can be so off-putting when spiritual teachers start talking about states of consciousness in language that is abstract, technical, or very specific to their tradition. You might sit there thinking “I’ve never experienced that” when in fact, you may have already experienced that, at least a little, but in your own way.
So the You-Already-Know-How-to-Meditate Meditation begins with a peak moment you’ve already had. It begins with something you already know. This peak moment is the perfect doorway for you to experience deeper awareness, so you might as well start there.
In other words, you already know how to experience a more meditative state of mind. You just didn't know that you knew it.
The technique
Put yourself in a relaxed and balanced position – sitting up straight or lying down flat – and try to avoid fidgeting. Breathe deeply. Then begin to remember an actual experience in which you felt remarkably peaceful, inspired, open-hearted, or aware. This might be a dramatic “life-changing moment” or simply a powerful feeling or realization. It might be linked to a specific place, or a specific time, or not.
With each breath, try to bring that memory closer to you, as if your breath itself were reaching out to embrace it. Remember the original experience in as much detail as you can. Start with whatever details are most clear, and then expand on these, trying to include all the feelings, smells, tastes, colors, sounds, thoughts. Experience the memory as vividly as you can. Go through each part of your body and see if you can feel now, in your body, exactly as you felt then.
You can do this for any length of time, but the more deeply and more frequently you practice it, the easier it will be to return to this state of mind whenever you need to. You will be able to drop into--or call upon--that experience for just a moment, in just a moment, wherever you are.
Level 2
Once you are comfortable with this technique, and can summon the memory easily and fully, begin to “look around” in it a bit more, as if you were exploring it. This is when you realize how present and alive it still is for you. You can walk around in it, so to speak, in your imagination. Let it teach you, now. You can even bring a question or problem to this state of mind, and see what answers arise when you’re there. You are experiencing what could be called the ‘higher self’ – and you can certainly see more from that vantage point.
Level 3
As this practice deepens, you may find that you are ready, and more able, to practice other kinds of meditation. Or you may find that you don’t need to. Do you see this feeling popping up momentarily throughout your day? Where else do you know this feeling? Notice what effect it is having on your life. Notice how that awareness, which once seemed so linked to a particular experience or place, now seems to be just who you are. It is the state-of-mind from which you live your life.
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