My Alternative to Meditation
Don’t get me wrong. I am no expert. But insofar as I have tried to follow the advice of those who make a living explaining wellbeing to others, I have concluded two premises are, for me, wrong:
First:
Meditation is about obliterating what’s coming up in your mind. Getting it clear. Moving into some sort of somnambulistic state.
Well, I would call that somnambulism.
Second::
Meditation is about suppressing or bypassing or otherwise shelving your ego. There are all sorts of methods for achieving this wondrous condition. The only problem is that if you fancy normality, you need that old ego to be functioning. You need things like self-confidence, pride in achievement and so forth.
So scratch that.
I could go on and suggest that New Age and related nostrums seem to me notably devoid of the two things required for salient existence.
The first is a sense of ethics or values — including
tolerance,
helpfulness,
democracy and
a substantial dose of iconoclasm.
Or, if you prefer, skepticism,
or if that is too negative, critical thinking.
Or, possibly, a comedic sense.
The second is a philosophy that has some inkling of the end or purpose of life — where we ought to be heading. It seems to me that this implies continuity, a capacity to think consciously and possibly some attention to something the poet John Keats told us: That truth and beauty are identical and constitute the core of knowledge.
I have little patience with meditation which is meant to relieve stress. It seems to me that we ought to welcome stress as a sign that we need to think seriously about fundamental changes.
My recipe for what ails us is finally condensed into a simple Kindle book called Triadic Philosophy.
It contains some ideas found in the piece to which this is a response. I associate myself with such thinking. The intuitions of the author are are salient and on the mark.
Triadic Philosophy 100 Aphorisms — Kindle http://buff.ly/1Nmq3Xs
