By Master Charles Cannon
It takes something to impress a tech genius.
That was my challenge when LinkedIn invited me to present my High-Tech Meditation® program in Silicon Valley. What made the hour easy and successful was to not bother trying to impress them.
Instead, I assured them that they already had the key to living an awakened life in the 21st century: engage fully with life.
I learned that previous presenters kept telling them to unplug. I’ve heard the same thing from new meditation students, but I always urge people to go in the other direction. Instead of hiding from the world, embrace it. Why? Because that’s what you do when you’re awake!
True, our lives are busier than ever, and we can easily get overwhelmed by distractions. There is more activity and background “noise” than ever before in the history of our species. We can’t know even a fraction of what’s competing for our attention. Besides all that we hear and see, smell, feel, and touch, there’s now a broad range of frequencies beyond the perception of our five senses, like microwaves, EMF radiation, and odorless toxins. Then there are all the thoughts and feelings of seven billion people.
We live in a thrashing sea of environmental influences, many of them toxic. This can overwhelm our experience of self, marginalize our awareness of anything but consumer fever, and convince us that there is only one alternative: to unplug. After all, that noise can reduce the “still, small voice” of our own inner knowing to an inaudible whisper.
But rather than unplugging to escape, why not remain plugged in and choose the constructive input to overpower the noise? There are always choices to make with our attention and the menu of possibilities now includes some truly nurturing choices. Sometimes it’s as simple as using our remote to change channels from a high-speed chase to touring a Japanese garden. Meditators make movies and they write books. Awake individuals blog and tweet. They work in our companies and they attend parties we go to. In other words, these days anyone who wants to live an awakened life has company. We can help each other to be, as the Bible said, “in the world but not of it.” That’s profoundly different than retreating on our own. The unique pressures of modern life call for us to help each other now.
This busy world is not our enemy. Time was when the idea of waking up and being more spiritual was a more solitary journey; it meant meditating for hours and/or traveling to be with a guru in some remote part of the world. “Getting away from it all” is no longer practical, possible, or even advisable. The “noise” is inescapable because it transcends geography. So, I recommend a fundamentally different strategy: engage with the world in the identity of a universal lover.
Love everything you perceive.
Love everyone you are in contact with, appropriately. That means giving them your attention and learning how to relate, moment-by-moment, in the most productive, enjoyable ways. In the final analysis, living
an awakened life means expanding awareness. Awareness of what? Not just theories about life but your actual perception of what’s going on.
A friend told me a story about three men driving to work one morning. They stopped at a light and saw a woman walking across the street in her nightgown.
One man was offended and judged her for going out in public dressed like that. Another just stared in fascination. The third man noticed that her eyes were closed. She was sleepwalking! He helped her get home safely.
Three men all saw the same facts but they each perceived something different. That’s because their perception was through a lens of their own unique prejudices. This story proves the reworking of that old statement: “You believe it when you see it.” As they demonstrated, it’s more likely, “You see it when you believe it.”
Living an awakened life involves surrendering our biases, the prejudices that filter our perception and determine our thinking and consequent behavior. This is central to living an awakened life. We don’t need a cave. We don’t need a placid life with no challenges. That belief guarantees remaining asleep. Discomfort is inevitable; we can’t have comfort without it. It’s how we deal with challenges that matters and we do better when we’re awake!
We can also give up tunnel-vision – obsession with achieving one thing and seeing everything as assets or liabilities to accomplishing “success.” We can soften our perception … spread out our focus to include everything that is happening, appreciating that if it’s happening there’s a reason for it. We can become detectives of life and discover hidden value right here, right now.
We can learn how to appreciate and include everything in every moment as a valid part of our experience, rather than distractions from what we want to get done. Yes, we need to focus but there’s a different way, from a perspective that enables us to perceive more of what is really going on. Like, noticing that a woman on the street in the early morning is sleepwalking!
You might have a friend who is sleepwalking through his life. You can help him in the same way; take him home. Home is awakening to the miracle of this life, moment by moment, but we can’t just tell people about it, we have to live it so they have an example to inspire and awaken them.
When we study the reasons we limit our perception, it doesn’t take long to discover what we are really hiding from. Of the many topics we dance around and neglect, deny and try to avoid in our modern culture, there’s one that tops the taboo list — the one we really don’t want to face.
Death.
Most of us walk backward towards death, focused on regrets and ambition, memories and fantasy, afraid to face what’s coming. But death comes for us all. When we turn to face it we can come to understand what native Americans meant when they said, “This is a good day to die.”
When we live an awakened life, every day is a good day to die. Why? Because we are engaging fully with life, with no regrets. Also, because we have come to understand that death is not the end. Yes, every flower withers and dies. Every human life completes. But we are more than our bodies. We are an in-dwelling spirit, an eternal spark of light in this star-filled universe. How could our light separate itself from the light? In a body, in soil, in the wind, in a dimension beyond imagination, we live as all life does, forever. In the end, we must settle for immortality. Experiencing that in each moment is what characterizes living an awakened life. That is the real genius.
Master Charles Cannon is the Spiritual Director of Synchronicity Foundation for Modern Spirituality. His other books include: Living an Awakened Life: The Lessons of Love, Forgiving the Unforgivable, Awakening from the American Dream, The Bliss of Freedom, Modern Spirituality and The Meditation Toolbox. For more information, contact Synchronicity Foundation.at www.Synchronicity.org
