Clearhat

A year of mindful^[1] meditation

Here it is early the morning of Thanksgiving 2023 and I just discovered a rather deep heartful meditation which took about a year to learn. The essential idea is quite simple and took only a few minutes to comprehend, but it took a year of preparation so that I could understand just the right approach.

For anyone new to meditation, a good way to understand it is that it is a way to listen to God instead of the usual talking to God commonly known as prayer.

For about a year now, I've been learning a new approach for mindful meditation, not heartful. They are two very different flavors of listening.

As a matter of background context, I've been learning to meditate for a couple decades, with no teachers, no books, nor school.

Prayer that slowly became meditation

Unlike most people who meditate, instead of teachers or any other externally-developed techniques, I started without realizing I was even headed in the direction of meditation. The long journey began as a new form of prayer. I started seeking to listen to God instead of only talk to him. That simple desire changed everything.

Over the years I've developed relationships with sensitive inner awarenesses, inner dimensions of the soul, so to speak, which are like teachers I encounter within my own thoughts and feelings during meditation^[2].

In the language of a non-meditating person, learning from such an inner teacher feels similar to how intuition operates. The practice of years of quiet listening makes the experience feel more like a conversation, a dialogue instead of a monologue. Given room to breathe, intuition develops into a more distinct personality within the soul, and speaks with deep wisdom.

If that doesn't make sense, perhaps the best way to frame the idea of "distinct personality within the soul" is to think of the common concept of angels. In other words, if you begin with the sole intention to Listen instead of simply Talk to heaven, and you keep at it for years, eventually you begin to Hear. If you are inclined to believe in angels, this hearing naturally arrives in the form of angels -- which is simply the Greek word for 'messengers' -- who will guide you into increasingly more pure ways of listening. Remember the experience is more like a conversation with well-developed intuition than any kind of glowing person with a message from heaven. Perhaps there are such experiences in the future for me, but til now, such conversations tend to operate within my own intuitive awareness.

Mindful and heartful meditations are different from each other

In the "outer" world, we learn to listen in order to speak. Our whole education system is oriented around teaching this kind of listening. However, this is a mixed motive that we must unlearn by simplifying our listening. This is a process which takes years. I've been at it for two decades and still have much to unlearn.

There are many ways to meditate. From time to time I experiment with different variations, but generally tend to keep things simple as a matter of principle. About a year ago intuition taught me a new way to meditate by focusing ahead, with the eyes, instead of the usual focus down, into the heart. How that happened is hard to put into words. Rather than tell the story of how I learned that step, I'll simply say the process was similar to what I'm going to write about below: a combination of small occurrences in normal daily life along with some well-placed intuitive promptings in my inner life which led me to a new way of meditating.

This change from heart to mind happened over the course of a few weeks and was a notable difference for me, for I had long learned and preferred to focus more on the heart. What I did not know then was that, a year ago, I was focusing on the mind's version of the heart. Today I discovered my actual heart, which is much deeper within than I realized.

A particular kind of mathematical infinity

So for the past year, that's where I've been, slowly learning the art of mindful meditation.

A few days ago something new came up while I was studying math, which I do often because I love the beautiful concepts found there. In a video on Projective Geometry by professor Wildberger I learned about the "infinite horizon" and "line at infinity" or "point at infinity" concepts. I'm studying this because physicist Paul Dirac once said he was able to use this kind of geometry to inform his intuition about quantum physics. He had the best intuition about quantum physics -- no one has matched his insights yet -- so it's useful to consider his method, if you want to learn about the quantum realm.

Projective Geometry is a form of geometry developed by artists during the Renaissance to help guide drawing perspective in artwork and architecture. Leonardo da Vinci was an influential proponent of this method. It changed the world of visual art, which became much more realistic. Since then, projective geometry has slowly become more mathematically sophisticated because it turns out to have serious mathematical uses as well.

To get right to the point -- literally -- here is an example of the main concept, drawn by artist and mathematician Leon Battista Alberti in the 1400s:

See that point on the horizon, straight ahead? Remember that. But also note the similar point off to the left, which artists know about, but which most people don't. These two points, and many others, form a "line at infinity" which is directly in front of us every day, if only we turn our attention to it. Here is another image of railroad tracks, to make it even more clear what I mean about "right in front of us every day":

Although I'm only just learning about it, I've actually written before about Projective Geometry without realizing it, because it overlaps with other concepts I've studied. For example here is something I wrote about Wheel Theory a year and a half ago.

In simplest form, Wheel Theory looks at what happens when the horizon line in Alberti's image above is placed upon a circle, where it becomes a single point (see the image to the right). So I've heard about Projective Geometry for years but never looked into it. I finally took some time to watch a video, and was pleasantly surprised to find it easy to understand.

Applying math insights to meditation

During meditation, I playfully turned my focus toward the projective geometry idea of infinity. It is kind of like finding a spot on a distant horizon and focusing on it as a way of quieting the inner landscape.

I've actually done this before while walking down an old country road. Because it was a remote gravel road with no traffic, it was safe to "tune out" of the immediate awareness and focus instead on a tree about a mile up the road. What happened after about a minute of walking like this became similar to meditation, but it happened while my eyes were open. I found myself in a very pleasant but somewhat strange, altered state of awareness. I later learned it was because my left brain let my right brain take over for awhile^[3]. I really ought to do that again some time, because the experience was quite enjoyable, and it's the only way I know for how to politely disengage the left brain for a little while.

Simple does not always mean easy

But continuing with my experiment in applying projective geometry inward, this ended up being a gentle yet powerful meditation technique, only slightly different from what I'd been learning every day for the preceding year. Note that I really mean "every day," since I've been encouraged by inner guidance every day to keep my focus forward whenever it wanders. It's hard work to keep the focus in a single direction. You might think because it's simple, it's easy. It's not.

Only today I finally understand how such a simple thing required so much learning because it is not easy but must be learned repeatedly until it is easy. And, because of the delicate nature of meditation, it is not something that can be forced, or it would become something else. Learning through repetition instead of through force of will (as some teachers teach), thus it took a year for me to get to the point where this next step could happen.

The main difference between the year-long training technique and the new, more playful technique is to move the focus of attention from about 1-2 foot ahead of the eyes to infinity, while remaining oriented straight ahead. Although this happens in darkness with eyes closed, it's comparable to turning one's attention from a page number at the top of a book held at arm's length to a tree on a distant horizon behind the book. The direction of the gaze doesn't change but the point of focus is projected much further. But note that seeking too deeply would be forceful. This is a mistake easy to make in darkness, but whenever I push too hard, the inner teacher guides me to relax a little. So this is not a distant infinity, but more like a relaxed, gentle focus, as though beholding the details of a beautiful sunset, far away but easy to view.

There is a delicate balance point between seeking and relaxing which is the essence of a good meditative state.

Cool experiment. What I did not know was, in doing this yesterday, I received the final lesson of the year-long "mindful" meditation.

Light within the heart

This morning as I began meditating a thought occurred to me: "What happens if you go inward now, like you've been learning to go outward?" If you know me, you know this is a meaningful, maybe even provocative question, as it is something I've approached from many angles over many years, so much so that to hear the question surprised me. It's like asking a bowling pro if he ever tried using a heavy bowling ball. I knew the question deserved more than a brief dismissal, though.

So I thought of the heartful meditation which I learned long ago, back when I first began journeying "into the heart." I also thought of the fascinating mathematical object known as the Hopf fibration, which contains another mathematical form of infinity. (See the image to the left. It's like a Mobius strip grew up into a sphere. Animations of this mathematical concept are beautiful, and reveal an intriguing sense of inward which is also outward.) I've also been studying this recently, again because it is related to Paul Dirac's intuition for quantum physics.

Going into the heart was familiar, but with the new mathematically-inspired intuitions about how to see infinity I was thinking of going deeper within. In other words, in the same way that "seeing the tree on the distant horizon" is deeper than "reading a book at arm's length." So I tried it. And sure enough, after a little while of reorienting downward toward the heart instead of ahead, before my eyes, meditative focus went much deeper into my heart than it ever did before.

I eventually arrived at the wordless region, which is of course hard to describe with words, although I try in another recent post. The best way to summarize the experience is with these three words:

"I found light."

The beginning of a whole new world

I found light within my heart. And it was so beautiful, this light within the darkness. It was not a transitory flash like the afterimage of some memory in mind's eye -- a common experience during meditation. It was not that tiny pinpoint of light which sometimes appears and then fades when you try to follow it. It was not even the light which interpenetrates the darkness of a meditation, which I've experienced a few times^[4].

This was a whole new realm of light, which I could see on the other side of the darkness. It looked kind of like... um... whales of light moving deep in the dark ocean, if that makes any sense. I tried to capture a sense of it by inverting an underwater picture (see the first image for this article, above), but like trying to describe the wordless region, it's a little hard to portray accurately, though the image above comes close.

While it happened, it seemed rather ordinary because I was in a meditative state which is non-judgmental, but after the meditation concluded I was deeply moved. I realized what had just happened was the beginning of a whole new world. This time, I could see the light in the distance, but this is the kind of light I can go into, as I continue developing the focal point which I've been learning for the past year.

The method of the inner teacher thus proved

Once I discovered this new world, knowing that I had just found a way to get to that light at will in the future, I immediately realized something wonderful, confirming the value and method of the way I learn about meditation; from within.

The inner teacher of intuition was teaching me daily for a solid year in order to find a very specific kind of... outward infinity. It's a kind of infinity which is hidden in plain sight until you realize how it works. Then as soon as I found it, it was time to go inward to the heart.

Only then I found the inward infinity, which I never would have found without this outward guidance. This is unlike any previous heartful meditation. Indeed, I've experienced hundreds of heart meditations, but I never saw light before today, light coming from the center of my heart, in a way that I can now go toward at will.

[Update, a few days later: I've been seeking this experience during meditation for a few days now. Although I now know what to do, it looks like it could be weeks or months before I experience the inner light again. But I know it will happen, and then eventually it will happen again, and again until I've fully opened a door into this inner world of light.]

I am in awe at how intuition revealed this to me so carefully, for so long, in order to reveal a point that took only minutes to comprehend. But could not have been comprehended if I hadn't taken that year.

Thankful, you might say.