Healing happens in the place in the middle. In Sanskrit, the Madhya (place in the middle, the heart) is an auspicious place where stillness abounds, silence is like a warm blanket, and spaciousness resonates. There, the expression, “You can hear yourself think” is an understatement. Because what really happens when you go into the Madhya is you meet up with the all-powerful presence of grace (or your higher self).
When you return to the heart you touch the deepest abode of the self. The middle is the place of balance, where life slows down, thinking slows down and sometimes stops, where you dwell in the space between your thoughts – the gap.
In the gap, the vastness of the universe greets you. It’s like being face-to-face with grace herself.
For me, it’s the experience of being seen in my soul for who I am, not what I do. To enter into the gap and to stay there for some time requires us to release our conditioning, judgments, and attachments. It requires the act of surrender, which is an active, willful choice to let go, which also paradoxically requires effortlessness. You can’t really try to surrender. In trying, you’ll just get more stressed.
So many of us are in constant motion from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment our head hits the pillow at night. Some people continue incessant mental movement in their dreams. I heard a podcast recently that described this state of constant motion as an addiction to stress, an addiction to activity. The speaker defined addiction as anything that assists in the avoidance of pain.
This really hit home for me because although I have a deep meditation practice where I dwell for long periods of time in the gap of non-doing, I also have constant motion when I’m not meditating. Hopefully the stillness I cultivate in meditation is the backdrop behind my motion. But I’m aware sometimes that I’m keeping myself busy, so I don’t have to feel difficult emotions like loneliness, sadness, or fear of the future. Do you do that?
It seems that many of us have taken on the mantra “When I feel stress, get busy.” The habit of being busy is not that helpful, especially when it’s an unconscious habit. It can become chronic which usually leads to burnout or sickness. You can stop only when your body breaks down and you’re forced to stay in bed.
I had an experience recently where all I could do was stay in bed for the entire day! I’ve been avoiding getting the Shingles vaccine. I heard that some people have a strong reaction to it while others don’t feel a thing. I did get the shot, but the next day, I couldn’t get out of bed. I had body aches, exhaustion, and an intense headache that was so bad I couldn’t eat or do anything except be horizontal. I didn’t get out of bed until 2 p.m. and that was only to get some water and then went right back to bed. The only thing that seemed to help was putting a heating pad on my belly.
The lesson I got from that (by the way, the symptoms went away the following day) was that I needed to slow down and consider doing less. Just off the busiest Fall season of my career, I needed a good long rest.
The habit of getting busy is sometimes generated by avoidance of pain. As human beings, we are all hard-wired to move toward pleasure and away from pain. Our nervous system doesn’t distinguish the experience of different kinds of pain. Both physical and emotional pain are registered in the same way.
Thus, if you’re having emotional pain, the nervous system picks up on that and will instantly move you away from it. If we’re not courageous or informed enough to be with our emotional pain, we tend to distract ourselves by getting busy. This takes our mind off of our emotional pain, but it doesn’t heal the pain.
Only when we’re willing to be with our discomfort with an open and loving heart, can we heal from emotional pain and receive the lesson the pain is trying to tell us. For this, we must stop running.
We need moments where we can just be, breathe, feel, and reflect within a loving and supportive space. We need time to just be and do nothing. Doing nothing can be accomplished in many ways. Nature offers a great way to enter into the gap. Just be outside and look around. Notice the sights, colors, sounds, smells, and feeling of the air on your skin. Allow these sensations to be all that’s needed in this moment.
During the practice of mantra meditation, there’s a point where the thought of the mantra becomes very faint like a distant star. The mantra is there but it’s not there. It’s during these moments that we enter into the gap. In Tantra, the gap is called Turiya, or the Fourth State of Consciousness. In Turiya, you enter into the transcendental state that both embraces and is beyond all that is. It’s the Madhya. Any amount of trying to get into the gap is like tapping the brakes. Trying prevents you from entering the gap. Entering the gap can only happen through surrender and allowing.
So, my wish for you this new year is to create time to do nothing, time to just simply be, and see what happens. Mantra meditation is the perfect set up for simply being because you start with a thought of the mantra. The mantra then becomes the focus of all of your attention. Extraneous thoughts begin to dissolve and once you’re left with just the mantra, the mantra will dissolve too.
HAM SA MANTRA MEDITATION:
You can try this for yourself using the mantra HAM SA (I am that). Just sit quietly and close your eyes. Offer the thought of the mantra HAM SA into the field of your awareness, then let it go. Repeat the mantra in a slow but steady way for about 5 minutes. Observe what begins to happen in your body and mind.
Here’s to a year of more being and less doing. Or if you do do, because you have to, do whatever you do within the backdrop of being! Ultimately, as a householder yogi, you need both doing and being, working together in harmony to bring about the deepest desires of your heart!
May all of your dreams come true beyond your wildest imagination! You are worthy! You are free! This is your birthright! Go for it!
Happy New Year!
Namaste and Love,
Todd
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