Ben Ralston

MEDITATION

What is meditation?



I want to demystify meditation, and make it accessible to everyone. So I’m going to tell you in very simple terms what meditation is, and I’m going to share some of my experiences with you – partly to inspire, and partly to show you what is possible.


Meditation is really very simple:
It is the combination of deep relaxation, and focused concentration.


It is not a doing. It is a being. You don’t do relaxation – you are relaxed (or you are not). And you don’t do concentration – again, you either are concentrated, or you are not.


Many people are put off because they assume that meditation means ‘stopping’ the mind. So they try to stop the mind (doing). They might try it a few times, and they usually see that it’s really not very easy to make the ‘monkey mind’ shut up! So they give up…
Of course, one of the long term goals of meditation is to be able to achieve a degree of mental control. But for a beginner to try to silence the mind at once, is a bit like someone who has never used a computer trying to design and program a website in one go!


relaxation + concentration = MEDITATION


When you relax deeply, and focus your concentration, something magical happens. I use the word magical rhetorically: it is not magical in the sense of inexplicable – on the contrary, I will explain scientifically exactly what this ‘magical’ effect is – but it is wonderful, enriching, and enlightening! With practice, a whole new world, a new life opens up before you. You become more grounded, more balanced emotionally, physically rejuvenated, and… I’ll write in much more detail about the specific benefits of meditation later.

So it’s very very simple. There is no goal in meditation. There is only the practice of relaxing and concentrating.

The more deeply you relax, the more you are able to concentrate.
And the more you are able to concentrate, the more deeply you relax.
So what happens is a kind of spiraling effect – relaxation leads to concentration, which leads to deeper relaxation, and so on. The body/mind relaxes and becomes more and more focused, and the awareness goes inwards. As the awareness goes inwards, gradually it comes into contact with itself. It is like a meeting of oneself with oneself. And in that meeting there is the ultimate rest; the ultimate peace; the ulimate joy; and the ultimate celebration.

Each morning I meditate, and it feels like I bathed myself – body, mind, and soul – in golden nectar. With this practice I am able to see more clearly; communicate more deeply, and love more fully, the world around me – starting with myself! It is the most empowering thing I can do for myself.

This will be a series of articles on meditation: 
  • I will tell you about my experiences;
  • I’ll teach you some techniques to help you to meditate – including some tricks that not many people know.
  • I’ll also describe the benefits of meditation in detail.
For now, I’ll just encourage you to focus on relaxation. Read the articles – relaxation 1 and relaxation 2.
Practice yoga nidra (the deep relaxation exercise described in the first article). The more you release accumulated stress and are able to access deeper states of relaxation, the more quickly and easily you will take to meditation. This is the best preparation.
With love,
Ben

AN OPPORTUNITY

I have no idea why, but a friend of mine here in Slovenia asked me to write an article about Autism. So I will! I like a good challenge…


The reason it’s a challenge is because I don’t feel myself to be any kind of authority on the subject. My experience is limited:
I spent a year of my life working with young people for a charity in England called the Prince’s Trust. My job was to recruit 15 young people (aged 15 – 25), and then lead them through a 12 week course, which included many different things, for example a two week community project, a week of team building exercises in Wales (canoeing, rock climbing, bridge-building), and a week with the fire brigade. I ran three such courses, and on one of them I recruited Rosie, a 16 year old girl with Asperger’s syndrome – a form of autism…




I have seen two clients with autism. Both of them came to me because their parents wanted me to see them. On both occasions, I warned the parents that I was not prepared to see their children with a view to ‘healing’ them, but they insisted on coming, so I agreed. Both times, I felt strongly that there was nothing ‘wrong’ with the kids: I wanted to work on the parents instead!


That’s my experience of autism. But I suppose that I do have a strong opinion about it, so here goes…


There is nothing wrong with someone who has autism. Yes, they are different from what most people call ‘normal’, but since when was that a bad thing?
Somehow, our society treats people who are different with the view that we must ‘fix’ them. It is so, so sad.
There was a time when people who were different were treated with respect. Now all too often they are treated like ‘freaks’.
Let me tell you something: no-one is normal. You are not normal, I am not normal. There is no such thing as normal. Variety is something to celebrate, not something to be afraid of! Variety is reality: not two things in this universe are the same. Diversity is universal.


Rosie, the girl with Asperger’s syndrome, was to me quite beautiful. She was confused, angry, paranoid… many different variations of insecurity. But underneath all of those things, she was so amazing. She had the courage to speak the truth in every situation. That’s actually not normal at all – it’s completely extraordinary!
One of the ‘symptoms’ of asperger’s is that they don’t know how to lie. They don’t understand deceit. If you ask someone with Asperger’s if they are lying, they just get very very confused. They cannot comprehend the meaning of it.
I found that quite admirable, and I think that it’s something our society could learn a lot from…


And you know what – did her insecurity come from her condition, or did it come from the way she had been treated all her life – as someone that needed to be changed? Can you imagine, if all your life people had been trying to ‘fix’ you, constantly, day in and day out. Never being accepted for who you are?


A wise man once said:

“what we need, is for someone to come to our ear and say: ‘you are you, and I love you’. To be accepted as we are – that is the beginning and the end of life”



Imagine if our society welcomed and encouraged people to be different. Imagine if you could do whatever you felt like doing, just because you felt like doing it! Imagine being able to wear whatever clothes you wanted… or to dance naked through the streets. Imagine being able to express whatever you wanted, however you wanted, whenever and wherever you wanted. Imagine being able to live in whatever way you wanted… and to be accepted for it.


But we are conditioned all our lives to ‘fit in’, to stay within certain limits, not to upset the ‘order’ of society.


Rosie didn’t make it past the second week of my course. It’s actually a fairly amusing story so I’ll tell you: the second week of the course we all went to Wales for the ‘outward bound’ team-building week…

It’s a 6 hour drive, and by the time we get there, I am exhausted already. (The other kids on the course are not an easy bunch, to say the least – drug problems, ex convicts, a pregnant 16 year old, and so on, so the 6 hour bus drive seems like a lifetime – I have to constantly ‘remind’ them that it’s not ok to: smoke on the bus / fight / throw each others belongings out the window). And when we arrive, Rosie refuses to get off the bus. She announces that she is

“ready to go home now”.

So I sit with her and explain that we’ve just arrived, and that driving back to London for 6 hours is really out of the question. But – and know this about autists: it’s very hard to get them to change their minds! In the end, she tries to walk back to London! I walk with her for an hour, through fields and woods, until she gets too tired to go on, and then we walk back together to the bus. In the morning, I take her to the train station, and she goes home.
That course was simply too much for Rosie. I was actually surprised that she made it as far as she did. But I do wonder…


What would Rosie and other autists be like if our society really accepted them as they are? And it’s not just society at large: it starts at home. I’m sorry if you are a parent of an autistic child reading this, because what I’m about to say may not be easy for you to hear, but I’ll say it anyway:
In my (admittedly very limited) experience, parents are often extremely afraid, stressed, and un-accepting of their children. Look, it must be the hardest thing – every moment of every day is an almost unbearable challenge – to be the parent of an autistic child is INCREDIBLY difficult. I’m not making a judgement, because I have no idea how I would handle it, day in and day out…
But I do really wonder how it would be if the parents, and society at large, would be totally accepting of their autistic children.


There is a truly wonderful book called “And there was Light”, written by Jacques Lusseyran. It’s biographical: he was blinded at the age of 6; became a leader of the French Resistance in world war II, was captured and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, which he survived.
He describes at the start of the book how his parents not only accepted his blindness, but encouraged him to live a completely normal life – and as a result, he was able to ‘see’. He did not see in the same way that a sighted person sees, but he ‘saw’ light. This was how he was able to survive 15 months in a Nazi camp. He explains that as a child, he was able to climb trees, run through fields, and do all the other things that his friends were doing, because he wasn’t afraid: his parents encouraged him to be fearless. They didn’t treat him any differently after he became blind.
He also writes about how sorry he felt for other blind children who were always being told to ‘be careful’, and being overprotected by their parents. They became imprisoned by their blindness; victims of other people’s fear.


So I do wonder whether it’s similar with autism. Perhaps if we were able to really accept autism; but not only to accept it; to actively support and encourage autistic children to express their own unique abilities and gifts. To truly LOVE them as they are. More: if we were to treat autistic children the way we should treat ALL children: as our teachers. I am sure that if we were able to do that, our society would benefit even more than those children would.


Kahlil Gibran said:

“Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.”

We must bow before ALL children. When we look at a child and see something ‘wrong’, we create a tragedy. How can any child be wrong?


Jacques Lusseyran said:

“Light is in us even if we have no eyes.”

Well, light (and intelligence, and beauty) is in the autist too. WE must have the eyes to see it, and to learn from it, because autism, like everything else in this world, IS THERE FOR A REASON.


*Another great book is “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”, by Mark Haddock. It’s an award winning novel written from the perspective of a 15 year old boy who has Aspergers Syndrome.

EGO 1 – What is ego?

I want to talk about ego, and whether or not it is real. This will be a series of articles. First, we’ll discuss ‘What Is Ego?’
In the next article we’ll talk about the implications – namely, that much of the spiritual ‘work’ that many people do and have done (including myself) for many years, is almost a waste of time.
It’s a complex subject, so I will try to keep it as simple as I possibly can. I also want to keep it interesting, so that you stay with me to the end!


The reason I want to write about this now is that I see so many people struggling with what they think is ego – so many people get caught up in the idea that we have an ego, and that we have to ‘conquer’ it, and that it’s difficult. This is simply giving power to the thing which they think are fighting with!
My belief is that the ego is nothing. It doesn’t exist. It’s not real. It’s just a mistaken belief that we get caught up in, and because we get caught up in it, we fight it, and the more we fight it, the more real it seems… like being caught in a net – the more you struggle, the more you get caught up…

I was prompted to write this by a discussion on Simon Rose’s blog. ( Simon is the creator of Reference Point Therapy – the alternative healing method )
First I want to define ego. What exactly IS ego?
Ego is that which we identify with – what we think of as ‘I’.
So when I say:
“I am Ben”, or “I am an Englishman”, or “I am a man”, it’s my ego speaking.
Let me explain…
Of course my name is Ben. It’s what people call me, it’s what I call myself. But AM I BEN? Is that really what I am? Or am I much more than the label?


Of course my body was born in England – my Mother gave birth to me there. But am I right in labelling myself as English? Of course legally, my passport, my background etc… all makes me English to an extent. But surely my true nationality, if I look at the ‘BIG PICTURE’, is not so easy to define.
For example, I have lived in many countries. At the moment, I live in Slovenia. Why should I not say I am Slovene.
Or why should I not simply say, “I am an Earthling”… 
Because by stating that I am English, I cut myself off, I make myself different from all people who are not English. And this has been a big problem in the past – this issue of nationality has caused wars!


And if I say “I am a man” – even this statement is not wholly accurate. Biologically, I am of course a man. But biology is only one aspect of me. Body is nothing without emotions, thoughts, instincts, deeper feelings, intuition, reasoning, senses… and so on. Every man has feminine aspects – and every woman has a masculine side to her. So it would be more accurate to state:
“I have a male body”, or better still – “in this lifetime, I have a male body”.


So the ego is what we think we are when we stop simply being. When we allow our attention to be distracted from our full being, we start thinking, and then the ego arises.


In reality, there is no ego. The ego is just what we THINK we are. What we THINK we are is not real – not really what we ARE. Because when we think, we stop being fully present – and reality; being; is only in the present.


Let me clarify this:
Thinking happens in the neocortex – the part of our brain that analyses. The part of the brain that compares. So when I think of myself as male, I am by implication also thinking of myself as ‘not woman’. That is what the neocortex does: it compares and analyses. It views the world in terms of opposites. It cannot do anything else. That is it’s nature, what it does.
Animals and small children (look at the picture!) don’t have much ego – why? Because their neocortex isn’t fully formed yet.


The present moment has no opposite. What is the opposite of NOW?…
Got it? THERE IS NO OPPOSITE OF NOW! Therefore the neocortex, the part of us that compares opposites, cannot grasp the present moment. The best it can come up with is past and future. So the neocortex is constantly analyzing our experience in terms of time.


What we truly are is timeless awareness. Consciousness. PURE BEING.
We experience this BEINGNESS ( a wonderful word I learnt from Simon Rose, who learnt it from Soleira Green ) fully only when we are living in balance. Only when we are completely ‘real’: centered in our body; emotionally present; and not caught up in the analytical processes of the ‘head’, but simply allowing it to do what it does… process information, like a computer.
This is what all the great masters describe: living in the present moment, feeling in balance with the environment, being spontaneously joyful. It’s what is known as an enlightened state.


I believe that enlightenment is the natural state of no-ego. When we are completely at one with ourselves, we lose that sense of ‘I’-ness. We become fully present, and we stop thinking of ourselves as this or that… we just experience, and that experience is what we are. That experience is what we really, truly are. Not what we think we are, but what we truly are. So we are all already enlightened – we just lose sight of it sometimes, because we think about what we are, and identify with that – ego!!


The great spiritual teacher Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (whose incredible talks in the book ‘I Am That’), said:
“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing.
Love is knowing I am everything.
In between the two my life moves.”
Wisdom is knowing I am nothing.
Love is knowing I am everything.
How beautiful.


Ego is thinking I am something.


When we let go of the idea of what we are (which is really based on our past experiences – ie – what we were), we are free to really BE. We are also free to become more than that past idea.
That ‘beingness’; that state of awareness at the heart of our existence, is REAL.
The ego is not: the ego is just an illusion.


Part 2: http://benralston.blogspot.com/2010/06/ego-2-dont-fight-it.html