meditation

On Intent

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“Intent” is a word that comes up a lot in meditation, mysticism, magic, and psychology. In my recent meditative work, I’ve come to understand the importance of intent in our works and in psychological health. Thus it’s my intent to discuss it.

In my breath meditation, the goal is to refine a slow and even breath, mind ever on breath. If you’ve ever tried to meditate, or maintain other spiritual or magical practices, you know how the mind can wander. When your mind wanders it doesn’t respond to force very well because it’s trying to force itself, putting you in the psycho-spiritual version of “stop hitting yourself.”

An important breakthrough for me in meditation was the idea of “firm” intent and “gentle” intent, thanks to Taoist Immortal Sun Bu-Er and translator Chen Yingning. These two intents worked together as one, providing tuned breath (firm intent) and attention (gentle intent). The mind set the goal of tuning breath, and as it tuned, it simply stayed with it – it set the goal and stayed there loyalty with the breath.

This helped me appreciate the value of intent, as well as its value in our various metaphysical practices.

To set the intent for something is not forcing it so much as setting a goal and sticking with the actions that surround that goal. It’s not force, it’s almost a kind of loyalty to the very action aroused by setting the goal. It’s partnership.

This made meditation easier for me. I want to tune breath so I just stay with breath as I tune it, the loyal partnership is gentle intent, the activity firm intent. I do not turn my intent against myself or force it, but more navigate a path forward towards my goal. Intent is not “forcing it until it happens” but more “eyes on the road as you go forward.”

I found this also made forms of walking meditation easier and have tried short bursts of “being present” – set a goal to walk to an area during a hike or to just work on preparing a meal, etc. Each small bit of wholehearted attention, setting intent and doing with the intent as beacon was a small meditation.

There were of course the usual benefits of meditation, but I was also glad to just understand how my mind worked a bit better and of course a better understanding of intent.

When I see intent mentioned in psychological and spiritual practices I “get it” much better now. Intent in prayer, in ritual, etc. is all about setting that goal and just doing whatever gets to the goal. It’s also unifying as your intent and action are in partnership, which doubtlessly has psychological and perhaps even metaphysical benefits.

I look forward to hearing from my readers on their own experiences.

–Xenofact

Sexual Metaphors Across The Centuries

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As a person interested in Taoism, it doesn’t take much to run into some practices and statements of a rather sexual nature. Sometimes it’s tame metaphors. Sometimes it’s hanging weights from your genitals to straighten your spine. Sometimes it’s someone writing a passive-aggressive dis about another Taoist being a huge pervert. Taoism’s diverse history has everything, including a lot of sex stuff.

One thing that I had noticed in my readings over the years was talk about “intimate union” in meditative practices – and ones that are clearly not sexual. Often it’s about joining forces, the various elements of one’s being together, sense and essence, spirit and energy, etc. Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it’s elaborate.

(And yes, these sexual-but-not-sexual metaphors have clearly been taken as sexual in history. Taoism has also used mercury as a metaphor and it didn’t stop people from poisoning themselves.)

These sexual metaphors had often passed me by. Yes, perhaps I am “joining sense and essence” in an intimate embrace like a couple or something, but that’s just a metaphor, right? Perhaps the Metal Man takes his rightful place with his spouse. Sexual metaphors I just kind of passed by, probably because our own culture uses them.

But in time, I began to see how useful such metaphors were.

In my meditations, the “unity” of forces is a large part of the practice Breath meditation has mind resting on an ever-refining breath in partnership. My energy work is about mind resting on energy as it flows through the body. But such unities can easily be broken as any meditator knows – sometimes the mind doesn’t rest on breath (or energy) but rests on itself resting on breath (or energy). You know how it is when you’re doing the thing but also sort of knowing you’re doing the thing and it just falls apart.

I came to realize that meditating, the mind rests on something – for example, a slow and even breath. The mind sets its intent to be there with the breath, the breath ever slow and evening, and that’s its only priority. In many ways it surrenders itself completely to the breath by being there with it while the breath is there just being itself.

Then I got all those sexual metaphors because that’s perfect.

Intimate metaphors are a great metaphor for meditation practices. They capture the closeness, the surrender, the passion of connection. I’d written them off as trite and simplistic, but they were the opposite – the use of sexual or romantic metaphor fit meditation very well. I got it.

Meditation is an intimacy – as are other such practices. Sometimes you need to go to something visceral – like sex and romance – to communicate such things. Perhaps it has to be carefully phrased or used, perhaps people will get it wrong, but it fits.

I also think this is a good reminder that when reading metaphors and symbolism to remember they are oft written by people who are not you in times that are not your own. Our reactions to them are not the ones that the writers of the past expected or even considered. You have to learn to listen across the centuries.

–Xenofact

Head Full of Ghosts

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If you’ve done any form of meditation or therapy you know about those complexes in your mind. The fears, the obsessions, the habits that take over so much of our life, probably more than we want to admit.

It’s like having a head full of ghosts.

These aren’t the cool ghosts either. There’s no dramatic revelations of the past or lineage. They aren’t some vital spirits directing us to a better life after three disparate visions. None of these ghosts is delivering useful advice. Not a single one resembles Patrick Swayze.

Honestly, these ghosts in our head, these habits and neuroses, are boring and pathetic.

They’re mechanical and repetitive. They run on tracks burrowed into our mind, clockwork-clicking along whatever path set out by our past experiences. They are powerful, they are annoying, but they’re also not that interesting or unique. The reruns of the soul.

They’re often quite pathetic. A bad experience here, a grudge there, something we didn’t acknowledge in the past. Even the horrible ones are sad, the results of our bad choices or the cruelty of others. There’s something invalid about them, and we fear, about ourselves.

They’re damaging. They hurt us, obsess us, misdirect us, but not in any cool way. They’re often stupidly self-destructive – of ourselves and even themselves. They negate themselves yet always resurrect.

But worse of all these Ghosts, these complexes and obsessions of the past are so empty.

There’s nothing to them. No acknowledgement of reality, even when reality triggers them. They don’t grow. They aren’t relevant even if perhaps they once had reason to exist. When we acknowledge them, their shallowness is stunning. Here we are, people, and we have to share our head with these phantoms.

It’s humiliating. These mechanical, harmful, phantasms drive so much of our life and don’t deserve to. I once read someone discussing the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, and decided to translate what is usually interpreted as craving as humiliation, and I get that.

I find looking at this emptiness, this voidness of our complexes helps me deal with them. When you see their shallowness and pointlessness, you can overcome them. Not necessarily by great exertion or cultivation (though it may help) but by just seeing through them and deciding to move on.

They seem to shrink when you do that. Probably because your attention and ignorance was the only thing keeping them going.

–Xenofact