Meditation, Mediation and Maximization

We are living in a world where we are subject to our self-perceptions. They limit and allow us to be who we are. I had a dream last night where things had gone out of control. At some point, I realized that I was dreaming (not quite sure what tipped me off) but then decided to change things from its current wacked out state that was sending me into a panic into a situation where the circumstances were aligned with my intention.

One thing I noticed is that in many ways we live our lives operating from the same set of assumptions and expectations that guide us in our dream state. This often results in our acting in our waking lives like we do in our dream lives where we are functioning as though we are in a trance and watching, sometimes with interest and other times with anxiety, our dream self act out behavior. Mindful living is akin to lucid dreaming where we are exercising intentionality in our actions.

One way to exercise mindful living is to practice moving meditation. While there are many paths to mindfulness and their are different practices that fall under the label mediation it is the journey and not the destination that we must focus on. I am proposing walking meditation. By this I mean working at being aware of your body sensations at all times. Doing this keeps us in the now. However, the now happens on various levels.

Meditation - personal: It is a truth that we all live in our heads. Our experiences result in our being conditioned to expect and respond in fairly specific ways. Learning is a process of pattern recognition. Language is recognition of sound patterns. Dancing is recognition of movement patterns. Even walking is recognition of patterns required to balance our weight to continue upright. The creation of these memories or knowledge of patterns allow us to respond to our environment without rethinking and evaluating all of our experiences again and again. Based on this we sometimes jump to conclusions and even identify shortcuts in thinking that are triggered by the appearance of similar patterns in our environment. However, relying solely on our brain bank of patterns can result in our acting as in a trance. Meditation allows us to be reflective and intentional in our responses.

Mediation - interpersonal: The life that we live in our head interacts with our behavior in the life we live in our homes. Just as we have been conditioned by our experiences to see patterns in behavior, we also have memories or knowledge of our response patterns. When we interact with others we don't necessarily have access to their ideas or intention during the interaction. Therefore, by and large, we rely on the intent and motivations that underly our own behavior in interpreting the behavioral intent of others. We often think that the patterns that guide our behavior are applicable to the behavior of others. We can slip into that assumption as part of our trance behavior that results from evolutionary resource (time, energy, effort) conservation strategies. This is often useful and exists because it has proven utility as a life strategy. But it runs the risk of identifying our assumptions as reality and replacing the intent of others with our own imaginings. Again this tendency exists because it has utility as a resource conservation strategy. But while this is often helpful it can also be wrong. Walking mediation allows us to interrogate our assumptions regarding others behavior by either accepting it with an awareness of our assumptions or to identify congruence between our assumptions and our current experience.

Maximization - universal: Moving from self-awareness of our bodily sensations to general awareness of our mental activity an result of extended periods of mindfulness resulting from walking meditation allows for enhanced spiritual experiences. We live in a multidimensional world. We miss out on the wonder and beauty of life if we only focus on the one dimension of encoding our experiences and relying on the automatic assumptions connected with them. Waking meditation provides us with an awareness of what is happening now rather than only reflecting on what happened in the past or what our pattern recognition tells us what will be the future. It is ironic that focusing on bodily sensations can unlock spiritual revelations. It is not a function of reason but of revelation.