Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

be useful and beneficial, but the deeper meaning of meditation also implies a state of seeing and being and not merely a controlled
doing
—not another formal discipline. Our lives today have enough psychological difficulty and internal struggle and we certainly do not need to add more. How can we escape mental pressure through yet another form of effort and control?
    Fortunately, meditation can also involve spontaneous awakenings of perception, artistry, and insight that inspire a very natural flow and state of being that pervades our entire life. It does not necessarily require years of practice, effort, and mind control. This second broad approach of meditation is more mysterious and indefinable; it sees the essence of meditation to lie beyond form and mechanical practice. This approach to meditation involves a living, evolving energy of perception that has a beginning, but no end, and no specific formal practice.
    This “formless form” is without limitation and can take place any time, any place, and encompasses meditation as a quality of insight andawareness that, when awakened, can move through and integrate all parts of life. It is not desirable to give detailed description of formless meditation because to do so makes it into another technique. It is better to point toward this possibility and not give it too much definition. We begin to see all things in life as part of meditation. But this does not imply living in a controlled, stiff, self-conscious, nonspontaneous manner—it is quite the contrary. The formless can work through the form, but the structured can never become the formless. Understanding this broad dimension beyond form and technique is the most important foundation of vital and dynamic meditation—the meditation that is your life.

Can Meditation Be Practiced?
    If we were to ask ourselves why we wish to meditate, part of our answer would probably include gaining greater self-knowledge and understanding, growing as a person, growing in love and connection, moving toward wisdom and insight, discovering the mystical, moving into spiritual energy and awareness, and finding greater peace and harmony. I suggest that any and every activity in life holds the possibility of moving us in these directions and therefore all activities of daily life can be meditation. Everything in life has the potential of moving us to greater understanding and wisdom—and we cannot predict where the greatest lessons will lie. We may think of meditation primarily as sitting silently, but often our greatest growth and awakenings happen in the turbulence of daily life, in a moving experience, or in the magical colors of a sunset—and even in painful experiences. This realization is another way of pointing out that meditation can take place any time and is not limited to specific practices.
    An old story may help illustrate this point. There was once a group of monks living in a remote monastery. Every few months they observed a very intensive sitting meditation practice wherein they would sit forsixteen hours a day for a week. One monk could not bear doing this yet again, so he placed himself at the end of the line as it filed into the dark meditation hall, and then slipped away as his brethren entered the hall. Going to the kitchen, he grabbed enough rice and apples for a week, then took his sleeping sack and hiked into the mountains until he found a beautiful meadow in a clearing. There he watched the flowers, birds, and animals, and each night he gazed into the cosmos. He contemplated his regimented life and practices and became absorbed in the beauty of the earth and stars. After the week, he felt completely reborn and renewed, and had a refreshing glow about him. He returned to the monastery just in time to rejoin the line of monks leaving the hall. As they all went to share a meal, the bretheren noticed the change and glow that had come over their fellow monk. They asked him to share how his meditation had been so evidently effective. What did he do? What technique did he use? He confessed leaving the hall and missing the intensive. After he described his experience in the meadow, the other monks leapt from the table, desperately asked him exactly how much rice and how many apples he took, and then they rushed off to find that meadow of enlightenment. Of course, they could not repeat his awakening.
    When we look beyond static prescriptions and define meditation as anything that gives us self-knowledge,