Finding your lost soul – a new kind of meditation
The real you is not reading these words
The real you is not reading these words – these words are being read by a false self, one of your many false selves. Your true self – your soul – is buried but still alive underneath a heap of false selves.
These
false selves have been built-up inside you by the manipulations of other
people, institutions, the mass media – and by the well-meaning mistakes of your
own soul.
Listen!
– You can hear the distant cries of your lost soul, you can just about feel its
struggles… It is trapped but alive and seeking to escape. It just needs help to
escape the false selves and take-over your life, again - as is its right and
duty - like it did when you were a child and before the world got at you.
Find
your lost soul, set it free, restore it to its proper place!
Why should you seek your soul?
But
why? Why do it? Why make the effort to find your soul?
The
answer is freedom: true freedom: your freedom, and not the freedom of fakes,
frauds, falsehoods.
You
are a slave, and you have only one question that you need to answer: do you
want to be free?
This
mini-book, this meditation, may help set-free your lost soul – if you make the
effort.
The
effort is not much – but it is real.
This is a short book, and a brief meditation
This
is a short book, for busy people. Busy people who realize that they are not
being true to themselves.
It
describes a brief but intensive form of mediation for people who need results –
fast.
This
new kind of meditation is focused on finding your lost but real self which we
can call your soul. It is the deepest reality of your mind: the bottom line.
This
new kind of meditation is not like the other types of meditation you may have
heard of. It is not about ‘letting go’, it is not about trances or spirits or
weird experiences, it is not even about relaxing!
It
is about spending five minutes a day (you will want to do more, but five
minutes is enough to start-with) in getting past the false selves and seeking
your lost soul.
Where do false selves comes from?
We
start-out life as a real self in contact with the real world. That accounts for
the immediacy of childhood experience: raw, powerful, genuine.
But
false selves get added on top of our soul, in-between our real-self and the
world, from childhood onwards.
False
selves are a protection, and the product of habits – they are origin of those
automatic responses that we often find so useful - at least in the short term
and for particular purposes.
It
is a false self which reacts politely and without thinking when we are placed
in an unfamiliar social situation; and another false self that responds to
challenges or aggression by preparing to fight (or run away).
When
we learn to drive a car, or play a guitar, we are training a false self to
manage all the fiddly mechanical details so that we can take an overview.
Other
false selves are there to impress others – a false self that is ‘cool’ for
instance, or dominant, or cute, or one that is ‘sexy’. One that is serious and
hardworking to impress the boss; one that is superficially stylish and
sophisticated to impress strangers…
(Women
are, perhaps, especially prone to self-inflict such false selves – accepting
the lie that the false self is really-real – the idea that the true woman is a
false woman.)
But
when we are in a one-to-one, loving relationship – and we want to be real,
sincere, spontaneous – these false selves will not get out of the way; but
carry on with their automatic, mindless, general purpose responses…
You
know the feeling: with somebody but not really with them. Striving to be
genuine but what comes out is a fake.
Struggling
for authenticity – you miss the moment. It is gone, It can never return…
False selves imposed
In
the modern world, we not only have to contend with the false selves that we
ourselves have constructed for our own convenience but which have got out of
hand – we must also deal with false selves imposed on us by others, in order to
manipulate us for the benefit of those others.
All
through life we encounter more and more pressure to adopt more and more false
selves suggested by others: some are well meaning, and intended for our own
benefit.
Self-styled
fake ‘friends’, ambitious parents, educational establishments, employers,
various fandoms we may ally-with, the peer group, sports fans, fashion, the
mass media...
The
list goes on and on, each generating its own false self which responds to a
different set of stimuli; until at the end of it we hardly know who we really
are.
And
– thus confused and filled with contradictions – we cannot become free. Instead
we are slaves to one after another of the false selves – pushed first this way,
then that way, and then another – never at rest, never satisfied, never going
anywhere.
Your soul is a puppet King
The
trouble is that false selves are very useful at coping with the modern world,
which would otherwise be overwhelming: the problem is that false selves are
like selfish mercenaries employed by a weak King.
At
first the false selves defend the King, but sooner or later they will overthrow
him.
Your
false selves have secretly taken-over, shoved your King (your soul) into a
dungeon where he is kept - terrified, cold, starved and barely-alive - to serve
as a fake front, a façade for your own exploitation and oppression.
The state of mind
Set
a frame for your meditation: briefly remind yourself, mentally, what you want
to do and how you want to do it.
Find
my soul.
How to do the meditation
Get
somewhere reasonably quiet, without distractions.
Sit,
stand or walk – whatever helps you best.
Stay
fully awake and alert – and focus.
Focus
within – and seek your lost soul.
What happens in the meditation?
In
fact, what is going-on is that your lost soul is, in effect, seeking-itself –
because when your will encounters your soul, and makes an identification, then
will joins with desire, and the energies make a self-reinforcing loop.
One
part of that residue of the true self, which always remains behind everything,
curves around and… recognizes itself!
The
result is ‘positive feedback’ – positive change begets positive change.
State of consciousness
This
kind of meditation is: Aware, Awake, Focused
Aware
– Check first that you are aware of your situation, your location in reality.
Think:
Me. Here. Now
Awake
– Check that you are fully alert, not sleepy, not muddled.
Choose
the best time of day to make sure you are most alert – ‘early birds’ should try
to meditate in the morning, ‘night owls’ at night.
Focused
– then direct your thinking... inward.
Inner focus
You
are seeking your lost soul – therefore your focus needs to be inward.
Turn
your focus inward.
How
far inward? As far inward as you are capable of imagining – nothing is deeper
than your soul, your true self.
How
do you know where to ‘look’?
Listen
and feel – Your soul is alive, it is crying-out, it is thumping for attention.
The
problem is that the noises and vibrations of your lost soul are at first
drowned-out by the noise of the false selves – they will do everything possible
to distract you, to make you give up.
How
to get past them? The answer is to know them for what they are. Identify them
as false and you can push them aside – they cannot resist you; they will yield
one after another.
If
you sense anything deeper than where you have reached, then you have not yet gone
deep enough: keep going...
And when I have found my soul?
When
you find your soul – what then?
Listen
to it – it will tell you the truth about things.
Ask
it questions – present it with problems. Your soul will evaluate anything set
before it.
Ask
your soul about itself: Ask - who are you? It will let you know.
If
you don’t understand the answers given by your soul, then ask again. Ask the
question in different ways. Ask a set of converging questions.
And
keep asking.
Because
once you have established a line of communication with your soul, it will tell
you everything you need to know.
Everything.
You need. To know.
Including
where to look next, and how to regard whatever you find there.
What will happen?
You
will get answers – but more than this: the answers will come to you, and you
can check that they are real.
When
you are living from your true self, and begin to trust your soul - you will
walk with a surer step and events will arrange themselves around you. You will
know whether to turn right or left, which seat to take, who to speak with…
And
if you misread your soul, and make a mistake – then your soul will tell you
about it (if you ask, and listen to the answer).
This
isn’t magic! It is simply that when you are a slave of multiple false selves,
fighting each other, then you are your own worst enemy: you cannot choose
wisely, you cannot detect your errors, you are self-blinded, insensitive and
mis-guided.
And
when you working with and from your soul, you are a free agent: that is to say
free, and with agency – self-motivated.
Conclusion
You
seek true freedom. And true freedom comes only when you have found your lost
soul: your real self.
Only
if you know and identify with your real self can you truly be free; because
otherwise it is not really you that is free – but somebody else, some fake,
manipulated self.
Finding
your soul is only a first step; but it is the essential first step towards
anything worth having.
