42: The Second Deepening of Awareness

Last week we focused on our habit of positional thinking.  We explored how our judging creates fixed positions. As a result, we label things constantly – “this is good and that is bad,” “this is right and that is wrong.”  It all seems so normal, doesn’t it?

Sadly, our positional thinking harms us in at least three ways.  First, this kind of thinking gives us the illusion that we have some sort of power over the object of our judgment.  For example, when I judge and say that a particular politician is acting badly, I place myself in a position over that person.  This gives me the illusion that I have some kind of power in the situation.  On reflection, it’s clear that this is just a fantasy.

Second, our positional thinking gives us a sense that we fully understand the situation that were judging.  Yet, how often have any of us ever fully understood even the simplest situation?  We rarely know all of the historical antecedents which give rise to a particular situation.  We almost never understand the full results or consequences of a situation.  Yet, we happily proceed in the fantasy that we understand things perfectly and that our judgment is the correct one.  What amazing delusions we inhabit!

From my perspective, the most important and damaging consequence of our dualistic perception and positional way of thinking that it entails, is that it cuts us off from our Creator.  It has the unintended consequence of creating an abyss between us and the Divine.  Our positional thinking has us believe that we are ` here, and God is somewhere else, often conceived of as someplace very far from where we are.

What a wretched situation!  What an intolerable price to pay!  

~~~

As followers of Jesus, we cannot in good conscience allow this state of affairs to continue unchallenged.  So, to remedy this, we focus in meditation on the non-dual bridge which connects us with the Divine.  We focus on that lively awareness that undergirds all of our experience.

Let me explain what I mean here.  Right now, you are reading these words on your screen.  Your focus is “out there,” and you perceive these words of mine as having some kind of reality.  In a word, they exist.

You exist also – also as a reality.  You experience your physical sensations, and you notice your thoughts change as you read these words.  So now we have two different kinds of reality – the words on the screen and your experience of yourself.

Going deeper, notice what experiences all of this.  It is your awareness – that lively part of you that notices and experiences the multiple streams of experience that flow through your consciousness.  This awareness is non-dual in nature.  It holds everything that you are aware of in a unitive kind of experience.

Now, go deeper still.  When we release our dualistic thinking, when we let go of our dualistic perceptions, we discover that we are connected with everything that is.  We are connected with all the parts of ourselves – the many constituent elements that make us who we are.  As we dive into this internal unity, we find that we are connected with all of the people around us – the ones we hate and the ones we love, and even the ones we don’t see because of our judgments and positional thinking.

If we continue in this deep dive, we find that we are connected with Jesus, our blessed teacher who enjoins us, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”  We find, finally, our home, that place where we truly belong.  We find ourselves connected with the Divine and all that is.

~~~

Even with this knowledge – that our true home is in the Infinite – our habitual way of judging, our habitual style of positional thinking creeps in and separates us from the love of God.  When, from time to time, we slip into this deep state of non-dual awareness, our old habits slide in right behind it.  We begin to think of our awareness as somehow apart from us.  That is, we see ourselves as here, but our awareness is somehow over there.

To address this, we need to remember that we inhabit our awareness; it is our home.  Our awareness is never something “out there.”  Our awareness is the fundamental substrate of our Being.  It is never differentiated into parts; it is always a unitive whole.

When I first began exploring this, I would often find myself, at the start of the meditation, feeling that sense of being a whole – that is, a single vibrant being.  Very quickly, though, I would slip out of this awareness and back into my habitual way of thinking.  I would, once again, go looking for my “awareness” out there someplace, forgetting that it is always something within me.  Forgetting that it constitutes the very basis of my being.

As you can imagine, I found this very distressing.  And then, in the oddest sort of way, and image came to me which allowed me to release this dualism.  (When I have unbidden, unlooked for experiences like this, I have learned to pay close attention to them.)  You’ll probably laugh when you hear this, because it is peculiar and perhaps only works for me.  I suddenly imagined, during the course of this perceived ‘separation’ from my awareness, that I was swimming underwater in a lake and I shot up from underwater into the very center of the large inner tube.  As I came down, I spread my arms out, grasping the inner tube on both sides and feeling whole again.  There was a sense of merging with that inner tube and floating freely, safe and secure.

The Second Deepening of Awareness

1. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed.  Turn off your cell phone and deal with other potential distractions.

2. Be seated in a chair, with your spine upright and your feet flat on the floor, cradling your right hand in your left.  Don’t cross your legs or ankles, and don’t interlace your fingers because they are likely to fall asleep, which will distract you from your practice.  

3. Close your eyes and focus your attention within your body.  Simply observe, and refrain from judging what you experience there.

4. Notice the flow of your thoughts and emotions.  No need to chase after them or elaborate on them.  Be receptive to them and just observe.   

5. In this space, your mind will start telling you stories.  These stories may focus on your physical sensations, they may focus on some unfinished business you had prior to sitting in meditation, or on any number of other subjects.  

6. Experience these sensations, thoughts, and emotions as they arise in your awareness.  Acknowledge them, but don't go chasing after them.  Rest your focus in your awareness.  Refuse to engage with the distractions.  Acknowledge them, and then let them go.  

7. As you release these thoughts and the stories they want to distract you with, notice the progressive deepening that occurs, very gentle and slow at first.  As you open to this deepening, as you relinquish your focus on the various ‘objects of awareness,’ you will begin to notice your awareness itself.  

8. As you become aware of your awareness, you may find it a bit slippery – now you have it and then, very quickly, it slips away.  You will be tempted to go searching for it or to chase after it.  

9. Instead, return to being aware of your awareness.  It is not something apart from you.  It is you.  Rest here, in your awareness… without running after others things.  Let yourself rest in your inner stillness, the stillness that exists underneath the silence.  No need for thoughts.  No need for words.  

10.  Rest in this Stillness without moving for the period of your meditation.

11. When you are ready, let the feeling come back into your feet, your hands, and your face.  Take a deep breath and open your eyes.

I hope you find this deepening a rewarding process.  It is designed to move us from our surface perceptions and into the depths of our being.  It is here where we realize that our Lord is with us, indeed, he has always been with us.  As St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans, “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus!”  And to that, I say “Amen!”

That’s all for now.  Please remember your meditation practice daily.  And, in the early part of 2026, we have a special surprise coming.  We are working now on a website where we will be able to engage with each other as frequently as you might wish.  More on this in the weeks to come.

In the unity of God’s love,

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me atken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

P.P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

41: Deepening Our Awareness

As I sit here to write this morning, it is Thanksgiving Day.  As I reflect on this, I can feel my heart opening, and from this opening a flood of gratitude gushes forth.  Gratitude for the opportunity to share the important things in this life with you.  Gratitude for each of you who are reading this – my fellow travelers on this great path into ever deepening Awareness.  Gratitude that we are each held and cherished in God’s holy Presence. 

Have you ever stopped to wonder about the strangeness of our life?  I’m not sure I’ll be able to put this into words very clearly, but our daily round – our typical daily experiences – are dualistic.  We use positional thinking constantly: this is good, that’s bad, this is right, that’s not, and so on.  We divide our actual experience – our felt, lived experience – into parts.  This dividing is so natural to us that we never think about it.  For us, it is the normal and natural thing to do.  On reflection, however, it seems terribly misguided. 

We never stop to look at the consequences of our positioning.  While we learned positional thinking as infants in order to get along in the world, we didn’t notice the negative consequences that are a necessary part of positioning.  We didn’t notice that our positional thinking estranges us from All That Is, from God.  That’s a pretty high price to pay, isn’t it!  And neither did we notice that our positional thinking is the underlying process that creates all the problems we have either.   

~

Let me give you an immediate example of this.  I notice sensations in my body on this Thanksgiving morning, sensations that I interpret as a little bit of hunger.  From a unitive perspective, this bit of hunger just is.  It doesn’t require immediate attention, nor does it require diminishment.  In fact, if I were to go get a snack right now, I would have less room for the Thanksgiving feast that will follow this afternoon.  But typically, when I feel sensations like these, I run to the kitchen to make them go away. 

To be as explicit as possible – I label these sensations as a problem.  If I simply accepted them, there would be no problem.  But I language these sensations, and in the process, I have created a problem for myself – to eat or not to eat.  The dualistic conundrum in a nutshell!  If the languaging stopped here, at the domain of thought, it would be bad enough.  But no, I have to go and make it worse.  I attach my emotions to this wretched algorithm, thereby creating urgency.  Now I am starving and I absolutely have to find a snack right NOW.  Not only that, but it has to be just the right kind of snack – the very best tasty morsel that I can find. 

Do you see the craziness of this?  There was no problem initially; there were just some sensations in my belly.  But thinking about the sensations made the sensations appear larger and more important than they really were.  Connecting my emotions to this thinking process made it appear that it had to be addressed immediately.  I started with some ordinary sensations and then blew them up into an urgent problem! 

This process happens on a continual basis, every day of our lives.  We overlook our actual experiences, which are unitive in nature, and in their place, we substitute dualism.  It is extremely hard to recognize this.  It is much harder to recognize it on an ongoing basis.  But once you start to recognize it, the question then becomes: “How can we overcome our dualism and acquire real spiritual knowledge?” 

I hope you recognized the inherent dualism in the question that I just posed above.  The assumption is that we are over here, somehow lacking this special thing called “spiritual knowledge,” and that special entity of “spiritual knowledge” is over there somewhere else.  To even frame this question, we have to use the dualism inherent in language!  So how can we ever get past this? 

We get past it when we open our eyes to see what has always been there – the underlying non-dual, unitive experiences that we constantly experience.

~

The most spiritually rewarding perspective is when we come to understand that what we seek is already within us.  There is that beautiful saying in the Gospel of Thomas where Jesus says, “The Kingdom is inside you and it is outside you.” That is, the kingdom of God is inside of us and all around us.  There is no place that is apart from this kingdom.  There is no one who is not cherished by the Divine. 

Typically, we overlook our actual unitive experience of the world.  As Thomas says, just a little further on in his gospel, “Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.  For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.” 

~

The most productive attitude for spiritual work is the attitude of receptivity, an attitude of just noticing without feeling compelled to go do something.  The typical attitude that people adopt is that they have to go do or get something.  This is dualism written large – we are somehow lacking and there is some special thing, some special knowledge, that we must obtain. 

Going deeper, the spiritual understandings we are seeking cannot be found.  The spiritual understandings we seek are actually self–revealing.  They are right in front of us.  The more we become aware of the ubiquity of our dualism and positional thinking, the more familiar we become with spiritual principles, the more conversant we are with spiritual disciplines, the more we open ourselves to self–realization. 

Why do I say self–realization?  Because the kingdom of heaven is not out there, apart from us.  The kingdom is within us and we ourselves are situated in the midst of the kingdom.  As a result, there is nothing to do.  There is no path that we must travel.  There is no result that we don’t already have.  And it is for this, on this beautiful Thanksgiving morning, that I am most grateful for! 

~

In keeping with these ideas, let me introduce you to a way of deepening your meditation from our last newsletter, deepening your awareness.  As you explore this, you will find that there is nothing to do.  We are moving, in this set of meditations, from doing towards Being.

It’s important to recognize how different this action is, compared to what most of us were taught in church.  In church, the message is we need to do things differently; that we are somehow lacking or deficient, and this deficiency needs to be remedied.  Briefly, we are sinners and we need to repent from our sinful ways. 

This perspective misses what may be the most important aspect of the Christian message.  It overlooks that Jesus came from God to us, to open the way of freedom and peace for each of us.  He didn’t make us come to him.  There were no preconditions put on us.  Jesus didn’t say that you had to become sinless in order to receive him.  In fact, our Lord spent his time with ordinary people – ordinary husbands and wives, ordinary fishermen, tax collectors, and farmers – in a word, with those who have come to be known by the Church as sinners.  He spent his precious time not with the powerful or wealthy.  He spent his time with anyone who was open to receive him. 

Hear these words because they are so very important.  We are not the ones doing the doing; it is our Lord Jesus Christ, who freely comes to us in the midst of our ignorance.  The only requirement, if you can even call it that, for those who wish to follow Jesus, is that we open our hearts, to the best of our ability, so that we can receive him. 

What this really means is that we cannot go beyond our self-imposed limits – the limits inherent in our judgment and our positional thinking.  If we try to rely on our own powers, we are stuck.  Trapped in our dualism.  Trapped in our reflexive pushing God away.   

Our deepening in the spiritual way that Jesus describes, occurs only by opening ourselves to the marvelous grace of God.  Our job, in this great endeavor, is to be receptive, because our doing only pushes God away. 

• Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed.  Turn off your cell phone and deal with other potential distractions. 

• Be seated in a chair, with your spine upright and your feet flat on the floor, cradling your right hand in your left.  Don’t cross your legs or ankles, and don’t interlace your fingers because they are likely to fall asleep, which will distract you from your practice.   

• Close your eyes and focus your attention within your body.  Simply observe, and refrain from judging what you experience there. 

• Notice the flow of your thoughts and emotions.  No need to chase after them or elaborate on them.  Be receptive to them and just observe.    

• In this space, your mind will start telling you stories.  These stories may focus on your physical sensations, they may focus on some unfinished business you had prior to sitting in meditation, or on any number of other subjects.   

• Experience these sensations, thoughts, and emotions as they arise in your awareness.  Acknowledge them, but don't go chasing after them.  Rest your focus in your awareness.  Refuse to engage with these distractions.  Acknowledge them, and then let them go.   

• As you release these thoughts, and the stories they want to distract you with, notice the progressive deepening that is occurring, very gentle and slow at first.  Instead of the noise that’s generated from all of your competing thoughts, you will begin to sense a deepening silence. 

• As you open to this deepening, as you relinquish your focus on the various ‘objects of awareness,’ you will begin to notice your awareness itself.   

• As the internal silence grows, you will gradually begin to notice a stillness – a holy Stillness – that exists within the silence.  When you sense this, give yourself over to this Stillness; surrender to it.  No need for thoughts.  No need for words.  Rest in this Stillness for the period of your meditation. 

• Especially at the beginning of this practice, you will find your mind churning through thought after thought, through sensation after sensation.  When this occurs, simply release the distraction and move your attention back to your awareness. 

• Rest here without moving for the period of your meditation. 

• When you are ready, let the feeling come back into your feet, your hands, and your face.  Take a deep breath and open your eyes. 

That’s enough for now, I think.  I expect that you will find the meditation practice outlined in this newsletter to be very valuable on your inward journey.  Please remember to practice daily, if your time permits.   

In addition to your daily meditation, I would like to suggest a spiritual discipline that will facilitate your inward journey.  Start noticing the many unitive experiences that pervade your daily life.  Notice, for example, that there is no such entity as ‘darkness.’  There is only light and its absence.  Notice that there is no such entity as cold.  There is only heat and its absence.  Let yourself become aware of the underlying unity which is both within you, and all around you. 

Also, please remember that you are free to contact me if you have any questions about the practices I present or the experiences they yield.  I will do my best to address your concerns as time permits. Just email me at ken123kaisch@google.com. 

With great thanksgiving for the joy of walking with you,Start writing your email content here...

With love,

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me atken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

P.P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

27: Deepening the Jesus Prayer

As wondrous and powerful as the Jesus Prayer is, there is a way to further enhance its efficacy.  To do this, you connect the power of your emotions to the intent of the prayer.  Instead of simply reciting the words over and over, you emotionally charge the words, imbuing them with your own genuine longing.  

There are two critical elements that need to be addressed here: your intention and your emotional focus and power.  Your intention, by using the Jesus Prayer, is not simply to repeat a jumble of words just to hear yourself talk.  Your intention is your determination to present yourself to your Creator, your Messiah.  Reflect on that for a moment.  If you go to your boss with a problem, you might feel a little anxiety.  If you go before your city Council, or before the governor of your state, you will probably experience some considerable anxiety. 

So what are you going to feel like when you present yourself to the Creator of all that is?  The Creator of all humanity and every bit of the planet Earth, with all of its marvelous complexity?  How are you going to feel in front of the Creator of the solar system, and not just our little solar system, but the entire Milky Way – 100 billion stars, many of them shining even brighter than our sun?  Pretty awesome, isn’t it? 

Perhaps more than anything, being clear about our intention to present ourselves to our Creator – to be present to that wonderful Presence that vibrates through and within everything that is – is the most critical element in the Jesus Prayer and in all prayer.  This is also something that is commonly overlooked.  We often just sit down and pray without really considering the meaning of our prayer.  Without considering that we are standing before the Most High.  Being clear and focused in our intention is critical to unlock the full power of our prayer. 

The second element here – the use of our emotional power – is also a critical factor for enhancing the efficacy of the Jesus Prayer.  Our emotions carry this amazing power that enables us to connect deeply with others.  Remember what it was like when you first fell in love with someone?  You thought about that person all the time and couldn’t wait to be with them again.  When you are finally together, it's blissful, and you feel completely seen and understood.  As a result, you did everything in your power to be with the person you loved. 

Our intention with the Jesus Prayer, and with all prayer, is to connect with the Divine in just this loving and all-consuming way.  Sadly, the emotional component of prayer is often overlooked or disregarded.  We don’t use our innate power for connection to further deepen our connection with God.  By tapping into this innate capacity in our prayer, we enhance its efficacy many times over. 

That being said, this enhanced practice is not for those who are just starting to learn the Jesus Prayer.  It is enough, for those who are just learning, to develop a focused attentiveness to the Lord.  After approximately six months or so of continuous practice with this prayer and the attainment of some interior stability, you may wish to enhance the power of the Prayer by being clear about your intention and connecting your emotions to the Prayer, enlivening it with your emotional energy. 

A brief note about the following instructions:  You will remember, from previous newsletters, that the Jesus Prayer is not about the words used, per se, but about using words as a vehicle to enter into the Being of God.  Despite the plethora of words used to describe this enhancement, please remember that the Prayer is not about the words.  The words used below are intended to guide you toward those interior movements that will help you deepen your prayer. 

Enhancing The Jesus Prayer

1.  Position your body comfortably, spine erect, on a chair or cushions. 

2.  Become aware of the physical sensations that flow through you.  Close your eyes and experience the streams of sensation that course through your physical body.  No need to change them.  No need to judge them.  Simply let yourself feel deeply the multitude of sensations cascading through you.  Gently focus on the sensations in your head...in your neck and shoulders...your elbows...your wrists and the palms of your hands...the sensations in your knees...your ankles and the soles of your feet. 

3.  Now open your awareness to feel God's Presence right here with you.  Feel that Presence all around you...within you.  Let yourself rest in this Presence. 

4.  Be aware of the sphere of energy around your head.  Let this sphere of energy begin to get heavy and drift downward toward your heart center, until your head rests in your heart. 

5.  In your heart and from your heart, say the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me...Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."  Let your heart repeat these words over and over again, feeling God's Presence right here with you. 

6.  After the words have stabilized, begin to feel the words.  Instead of just saying the words, feel their meaning.  Feel what it means to acknowledge Jesus as your Lord.  Historically, a lord has had the power of life or death over his subjects.  As you acknowledge Jesus as your lord, let yourself fully experience your absolute dependence on your Lord.  Feel your need for his favor, his generosity, his willingness to give.  Your life, your continued existence, all depend on his good will towards you.  

7.  Be aware of the difference between yourself and your God.  You are small and limited in power.  Your Lord is not just large but without limits.  As you experience the difference, use this as an opportunity to let go of your self-centeredness, your constant cry of “Me-me-me.”  Rest in the Immensity that is your Lord. 

8.  In your Jesus Prayer, you have named him as your Christ, your Messiah.  The Messiah is the one who saves us from our selfishness, from our ego-driven limits.  He is the one who invites us to open to our true nature as children of the Divine.  Acknowledge Jesus as your Christ.  Feel what it is, to be saved from your own drivenness, your own neediness.  As you acknowledge your Savior, feel yourself letting go of that which separates you from Him.   

9.  In this great Prayer, you are asking your Lord, "Have mercy on me."  Repeat these words with all of your emotional power.  Let yourself explore the depths of your need for God’s mercy.  This is not a time for blaming yourself, but a time for acknowledging your genuine neediness and your profound need for mercy and divine assistance.  

10. Rest here, in the Presence of your Lord. 

(To close your meditation)

11. When you are ready, let yourself come back to this place.  Let the feeling return to your feet, your hands, and your face.  Take a deep breath, and open your eyes. 

Connecting your emotions to your prayer is one of the great contributions that Christian contemplatives have made to the development of prayer.  Our Christian heritage is full of emotion:  from Christ, the Messiah, being born in a stable, to the bloody crucifixion, and then the sweetness of Jesus' resurrection.  It is natural for us to use the strong feelings that are aroused in us as we read the narratives of our Savior's work, and to apply these feelings to our prayer.   

To state the obvious, our emotions move us.  There is a powerful force within our emotions that can transport us to different places.  So too it is in prayer.  When we find ways to connect our emotions to our prayer, then that power to move us is unleashed and channeled into spiritual pursuits.  In this way, our emotions can become a great force for our interior development. 

--------------- 

The Jesus Prayer is one of the great spiritual tools that the Church has developed to aid us in our walk with the Lord.  It has been developed and refined over virtually the entire scope of Christian history, a period spanning approximately 2,000 years.  Over this period, those elements of the Prayer that were not efficacious in producing spiritual transformation have been pruned away.  What is left is the pure essence.   

The Prayer is like a powerful vehicle, waiting only for us to use it.  Because of its power, it should not be used lightly.  This is not a toy for children to play with.  It has the capacity to provoke the most profound kinds of spiritual change in our hearts.  So we should not use this prayer until we are quite ready, in our own minds, to move into the depths of God. 

The Prayer will lead us, as directly as possible, into a direct encounter with the Divine.  The benefits which accrue from this encounter are impossible to enumerate.  There is such a sweetness, such a joy that arises from this direct encounter, that language is simply too gross a vehicle to adequately describe the experience.  This, of course, has not stopped people from trying to describe what has happened to them.  Let us close this chapter with a description of the effects of this Prayer, as described by the anonymous Russian pilgrim of the nineteenth century. 

The Prayer of my heart gave me such consolation that I felt there was no happier person on earth than I, and I doubted if there could be greater and fuller happiness in the kingdom of Heaven.  Not only did I feel this in my own soul, but the whole outside world also seemed to me full of charm and delight.  Everything drew me to love and thank God: people, trees, plants, animals.  I saw them all as my kinsfolk; I found on all of them the magic of the Name of Jesus.  Sometimes I felt as light as though I had no body and was floating happily through the air instead of walking.  Sometimes when I withdrew into myself, I saw clearly all my internal organs and was filled with wonder at the wisdom with which the human body is made.  Sometimes I felt as joyful as if I had been made Tsar.  And at all such times of happiness, I wished that God would let death come to me quickly, and let me pour out my heart in thankfulness at His feet. 

Have a great week, and remember that if you have any questions about your practice, please don't hesitate to contact me at ken123kaisch@google.com. 

With love, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

21: The Spiritual Exercise of the Jesus Prayer

I am delighted to be here with you this week, because we get to explore and practice the Jesus Prayer, one of the oldest forms of meditation and contemplation in all of Christendom.  I have practiced this form of meditation for roughly the last 50 years.  During that time, it has taken me deeper and deeper, coming to a wordless contemplation of God.  It is suitable for almost everyone, from beginners to very experienced practitioners. 

Last week we explored a bit about monologistic prayer and the history and development of the Jesus Prayer.  This week we will actually start our practice with this very special form of meditation, which has the power to take us deeply into God’s holy presence. 

The Jesus Prayer

1.  Position your body comfortably, spine erect, on a chair or cushions. 

2.  Ground yourself in your physical sensations.  Close your eyes and slowly become aware of the sensations of your physical body.  Feel the sensations as they flow through you.  The sensations in your head...in your neck and shoulders...your elbows...your wrists and the palms of your hands...the sensations in your knees...your ankles and the soles of your feet. 

3.  Now open your awareness to feel God's Presence right here with you.  Feel that Presence all around you...within you.  Breathe in the Divine with every breath.  Breathe God out.  Let yourself rest in this Presence. 

4.  Be aware of the sensations in and around your head.  You probably are aware of a sphere of energy around your head.  This is where most of us 'live.'  Let this sphere of energy begin to get heavy and drift downward toward your heart center.  When you begin this, it may be a little difficult.  We are so accustomed to having this energy in our heads that we don't know what it would feel like somewhere else.  But let that sphere of energy gradually grow heavier and heavier.  Let it sink down into your heart.  If you have trouble with this, imagine that with each inhalation this sphere of energy is pushed down about an inch or so.  With every breath, your head energy is moved downward, until your head rests in your heart.  Anchor yourself here, so that you are able to perceive through your heart. 

5.  Now, in your heart and from your heart, say the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me...Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."  Let your heart repeat these words over and over again, feeling God's Presence right here with you. 

6.  When your attention wanders, be patient with yourself.  Gently bring your attention back to the three operations of this meditation: feel God's Presence; put your head in your heart; and say the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me." 

(To close your meditation)

7.  When you are ready, let yourself come back to this place.  Let the feeling return to your feet, your hands, and your face.  Take a deep breath, and open your eyes. 

The Interior Movement of the Jesus Prayer

The practice of the Jesus Prayer will take us on a predictable interior journey.  At first, we are likely to have difficulty engaging in the three operations of the prayer simultaneously.  While each of these operations is relatively simple, the first two are unusual for us in this culture.  We seldom try to experience the Presence of God in a deliberate way.  And we never strive to put our attention into our heart!  So there will be a period of some frustration, as we try to keep each of these three things going at once.  It can feel a bit like juggling, trying to keep three things in the air at the same time.  Once you get the hang of it, though, the experience seems quite natural and enjoyable.  

During the initial time of frustration, you will find yourself distracted, as with the previous practices.  Your attention, while strengthened, is still not a focused tool.  As you become aware of your distractions, the initial impulse will be to punish yourself: to engage in the punitive internal dialogue which emphasizes how inadequate you are to accomplish even the simple tasks of this prayer.  This sort of  inner dialogue is basically garbage!  It is your ego, fiercely defending itself and its control over you.  The best way to view this negative self-talk is to see it as just another distraction.  You obtain no benefit from it, so simply withdraw your attention from these distractions, and re-engage in the three operations of the prayer. 

The complexity of the Jesus Prayer, with its three specific and simultaneous operations, is actually a substantial aid toward the development of a stable attention.  These three operations place such a load on conscious awareness, that it rather quickly moves beyond distraction.  You notice I said 'rather quickly.'  I mean this in relationship to other meditations which do not have this loading effect.  Your progress may still seem slow to you.  After continual practice, two things begin to emerge.  First, you are more and more able to do all three operations of the prayer simultaneously.  Second, the number and intensity of distracting thoughts and feelings seem to diminish.  There is a gradual quieting of the mind, as if the intellect becomes content with the discursive activity of the prayer, while deeper changes are occurring in you beneath the words. 

The Arising of Spiritual Phenomena

As your practice continues, several phenomena may arise that are important to understand.  While there is no specific order to their occurrence, in my experience, they tend to follow the order described here.   

First, there is the arising of internal heat.  You will be sitting in meditation and you will become aware that your body is very warm, sometimes it even feels hot.  You may begin to perspire profusely.  This is one of the spiritual fruits of the deepening of your interior prayer.   It is the action of God within us, burning away the subtle interior obstacles which keep God veiled from our awareness.  You may find this warmth so intense that you become frightened of it, thinking that something is wrong.  Don’t worry.  You are simply tasting the first fruits of the interior life.  As this experience comes, you may need to loosen your clothing before you meditate, or even wear lighter clothing, so that you are not too distracted by the heat. 

The second phenomenon which frequently occurs is known as the gift of tears.  This is the experience of inner grief and compunction, which seems to arise spontaneously as you explore your interior depths.  This experience is cause for rejoicing, because it signifies a deepening of the interior cleansing which usually begins with the experience of interior heat.   

The gift of tears may begin with a feeling of grief or sadness, centered in the heart or the throat.  You may find tears beginning to trickle out of your eyes.  On occasion, there is full-blown weeping, but more often it is just a sweet-sad grief which causes these tears.  When this occurs, don’t be surprised if your tears continue, even beyond the period of your meditation.  You may find your eyes 'gently leaking,' producing very small amounts of moisture throughout the day.  Usually no one will notice this but you. 

A third phenomenon, which is more rare than the first two, and which typically follows after a long period of practice, is the experience of interior light.  There arises within your heart an interior light that carries with it such tender sweetness that you will marvel at its intensity.  This is your first clear sight of that great Light that is Christ the Lord.  Words do not suffice to describe it, nor the interior feelings which accompany it.  

These three phenomena cannot be sought after.  This is very important for you to understand.  These phenomena accompany the deepening of practice in a natural way.  So do not strive after the phenomena.  Your striving after these 'markers' of experience will only serve to keep you from them.  Instead, strive to be present to God at all times.  As our Lord says, "Do this, and all else shall be added to you."  As you continue your practice, you will find that your mind begins to quiet down.  There is a gradual dawning of interior stillness.  This occurs both within the practice of the Jesus Prayer and between the formal periods of practice.   

Within the practice, your recitation of the words will be broken, from time to time, by a vast stillness.  It is as if you have been traveling along a heavily wooded road in the mountains, where you cannot see anything because of the thick forest.  Then suddenly the road breaks out of the forest and a stunning vista opens before you.  You stand, dumbstruck with awe, held suspended in the vastness of all that you survey.   

This is what interior silence is like.  Your recitation of the words of the prayer will, at times, spontaneously cease, and you will stand in the Presence of God in awe.  There are simply no words, only stillness.  This deep experience cannot be achieved by 'wishing' it, by imagining it, by striving for it, or by promoting yourself beyond the reach of your own experience.  It lies within you, awaiting your discovery.  You can do nothing to hurry it.  You can only open your heart to God, and fix your attention there.  God will give you His grace in His own time, not in yours. 

With the arising of this deep inner stillness, you begin to approach contemplation.  The contemplative process is different in character than all the spiritual exercises that go before it.  We will explore the contemplative process at a later time. 

*  *  *

Let’s bring our meeting to a close for now.  You have received the basic instructions for one of the most powerful meditative prayers that has ever been developed.  It has the power to take you deeper and deeper into an intimate relationship with the Divine.   

I encourage you to set aside time to practice the Jesus Prayer on a daily basis.  I typically practice in the morning, on arising, and in the evening before I go to sleep.  This form of practice provides me with spiritual bookends for my day, and this practice seems to make my days go more smoothly.  I would encourage you to enter into this interior space throughout the day as well, even if it is just for a moment or two.  The ultimate aim of all spiritual practice is to dwell in the house of the Lord, so why not move in today?  LOL 

Have a great week, and remember, if you have any questions about your practice, please drop me a line at ken123kaisch@google.com.

With love, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

18: Letting Go of the Ego

Last week, we took a stab at letting go of our identification with our ego, our small sense of self.  Using the Dis-Identification Exercise, we explored letting go of our body, our emotions, and our intellect to see what happened.  Since I haven’t received any reports of people’s heads exploding or a sudden mass vanishing of readers of this newsletter, I have to suspect that everyone survived this. 

You see, we are like the ugly duckling in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale of the same name.  We think of ourselves as beings that are much smaller in stature and capability than we actually are.  In the fairytale, a swan’s egg was put in a duck’s nest.  When the baby swan hatched, the mother duck and her little babies all looked at this interloper as ugly, awkward, clumsy, and somehow defective.  Since all the baby swan heard were these horrible things about himself, he believed them.  He concluded that he was a defective duck.  He only realized the truth about himself when he saw a flock of beautiful swans soaring overhead.  At that point, he realized his true identity.  He was not a duck; he was, in fact, the most beautiful and graceful of birds. 

This story accurately depicts our human situation.  We think of ourselves as limited, and often defective or lacking.  This is a grotesque misunderstanding.  It completely overlooks the fact that the Divine dwells within us.  Within the Christian faith, it overlooks the astounding message found in John 14.  Here Jesus says, in effect, “I am in my father and my father is in me.  In just the same way, I am in you and you are in me.” 

Let me state this as clearly as possible:  God lives within you.  Whatever you have been told about yourself, if this is not central to your understanding, then your understanding is incomplete.  As a result of all of the misinformation we have received over our lifetime, we have identified with the limited, small self and have been unaware of the larger Self that is within us.  The purpose of our work here is to let go of that small self so that we can participate fully in the Self, which is our true nature as human beings. 

If this understanding were only found in Christianity, we might have to dismiss it as delusional.  Unicorns, after all, don’t really exist except in our imaginations.  But this Christian understanding is echoed in the scriptures of every major religion around the world.  I especially like the Hindu formulation of this truth, “Thou art That.”  In this formulation, ‘That’ refers to God, that Other that we all are searching for. 

Think about this with me for a moment.  We have searched over and over in so many different ways to find a valid path to God.  Feeling separated from the Divine, it seems like there is an abyss that surrounds us – an unbridgable chasm that keeps us from our goal.  But when we look carefully, this abyss is actually something we have created with our own thoughts. 

Jesus tells us there is no abyss.  Our minds tell us there is.  So, who are you going to believe? 

Most of the time, we believe ourselves.  We fashion the truth about ourselves with our thoughts and our emotions.  We decide we’re pretty or ugly, smart or stupid, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.  And then we put our trust in our own decisions, often with terrible results, and always with self-limiting results. 

Our egos have created a protective envelope around us.  The original purpose of these envelopes was to protect us from hurt.  Sadly, hurt is an arrow that pierces all of our defenses.  Our efforts in this regard, as you have no doubt noticed, are both ineffective and inadequate.  Even though we recognize these inadequacies, we have not suspected that there was anything else, so we continue to hang onto that small self that we have created. 

At this point, I need that crazy announcer for Ginsu knives to shout, “But wait, there’s more!” 

The “more” is God.  You are not the little self you have created and held onto all these years.  You are a child of God, and God himself lives within you.  When you  

let go of the little self you have created, when you explore what is beyond that little self, you will experience the Divine. 

So, how do we let go of this little self? 

We will probably be more successful at this letting go if we understand more about the ego, so let’s look at the components that make up our little selves.  What exactly is this ‘I’ composed of?  Certainly, it contains all of our thoughts and emotions.  As such, it contains all our value judgements, all our understandings about ourselves and the world around us.  Using the image of the protective envelope that we developed above, it is as if this envelope serves as a movie screen, and we are projecting all of these thoughts, emotions, and judgments onto the screen.  Then comes the sleight-of-hand!  We identify with our projections.  We think we are those projections.   

This description sounds abstract, even a bit otherworldly, like it can’t really be real.  Well, let me give you a real-life example.  Back in the 1970s, before ethical considerations were considered important, one of my psychology professors conducted a study at a nearby elementary school.  He gave an individual intelligence test to all of the fourth-graders towards the end of the school year.  He then told the teachers who would have them for fifth grade that certain students were bright and others were kind of slow.  Unbeknownst to the teachers, he was lying. 

In actual fact, he had randomly assigned students to the bright group or the slow group.  He returned to the school at the end of the students' fifth-grade year and interviewed the teachers.  The teachers, believing that he had given them accurate information, confirmed the information he had given them the previous year.  The ones he said were bright had, in fact, been generally perceived by the fifth-grade teachers as bright, and vice versa. 

On the basis of his authority as a psychologist and as an expert in testing students' intelligence, this professor created a false reality for the teachers.  Sadly, on the basis of the teachers' interactions with their students, I suspect the students also began to perceive themselves in this false manner.  This experiment shows how we create false realities for ourselves with the thoughts that others have about us and with our own thoughts. 

The message that most of us have received all of our lives is that ‘God is far away in the heavens,’ and we are down here on earth, and the only way that we will meet God is after our death.  Because we have been told of this by people we have trusted, we have come to believe it.  Once again, who are you going to believe?  Are you going to believe your parents and all of those who gave you this information, or are you going to believe Jesus and the great avatars of all the major religions who say that God is within you?  The choice is always ours, isn’t it? 

To counter this mistaken identification, this mistaken programming, I have come across a spiritual exercise, found in many religions, which invites us to let go of these identifications.  It is one of those exercises that can be a bit frightening because it is something that most of us have never done before.  That being said, it also offers us the great promise of freedom from our projections, and freedom from the tyranny of our small self.  As we let go of the small self, which effectively blocks our perception of the Self, we open ourselves more and more to that wonderful Presence that lies within us. 

Spiritual Exercise #4 

Letting Go 

1.  Position your body comfortably, spine erect, and ground yourself in your physical sensations.  Close your eyes and slowly become aware of the sensations of your physical body.  Feel the sensations as they flow through you.  The sensations in your head… In your neck and shoulders… Your elbows… Your wrists and the palms of your hands… The sensations in your knees… Your ankles and the soles of your feet. 

2.  Move your awareness to the region of your heart and establish your attention there. 

3.  Observe the flow of thoughts and feelings from the perspective of your heart center.  No need to chase after these experiences; just be aware of them. 

4.  As you become aware of each object-of-awareness, let it go.  Simply release it, and refocus your attention in your heart center. 

5.  Continue this process of letting go.  Let go of your thoughts over and over again.  Let go of everything that comes into your field of awareness.  When fear or other emotions come up, let go of them as well. 

6.  After doing this for some time, you may become aware of the “self” who has these contents of awareness.  It is as if you step back from the moment-to-moment flow of data and become aware of the larger context in which this data flows. 

This awareness will come to you naturally, in its own time.  When it occurs, view the “self” as just another content of your awareness.  Let go of this “self.”  And let go of what comes after the sense of self.  And let go of what comes after that as well.  Continue this process of letting go. 

(To close your meditation) 

7.  When you’re ready, let yourself come back to this place.  But the feeling return to your feet… Your hands… Your face.  Take a deep breath and open your eyes. 

I want to encourage you to practice this exercise on a regular, daily basis.  Like many new things, it takes a bit of getting used to and a bit of practice.  Let’s face it, most of our lives have been aimed in the opposite direction – towards acquiring things, not letting go of them!  So this will likely feel very strange and unfamiliar when you first try it.   

That being said, how else can we get to that expansive Self that lies hidden behind our ego, our small self?  We have to find ways of letting go, and that is exactly what this exercise facilitates.  Please remember to email me at ken123kaisch@google.com when questions arise about your practice.

With love, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

17: Cracking the Ego

Over the past several months, we have spent considerable time exploring our human nature.  We have looked at the nature of the mind and the nature and stages of spiritual growth.  This week, I would like to return to a more practical matter and share a spiritual exercise designed to break through the hard shell of our selfishness, the obdurate ego. 

You may think, at this point, that I have a rather negative view of the ego.  That would be a significant misunderstanding.  I believe that God created the conditions under which our sense of self is formed, and like all of his creations, when he looked on them, he found them good.  I also have come to believe that our sense of self – our ego – is an intermediate step in our spiritual development.  If we are to follow the Divine, we need to find ways of bursting through the ego’s constraints. 

Let me try to explain what I mean by this, and to do so, we need to look at our early developmental stages.  A newborn has no ego, no sense of self.  She is simply open to experiencing everything.  There are no filters to screen out certain events, and there are no thoughts because she does not have language yet.  There are simply streams of sensation that pour through her consciousness.  Adults who find themselves in the presence of a newborn soul are often struck by the innocence and the purity exhibited by these beautiful babies. 

As the child acquires experience in this new body, she finds certain things are uncomfortable and others give her joy.  As she learns language, she begins to incorporate into her growing sense of self those instructions which the adults give her.  She learns that it’s okay to smile and laugh, but not okay to cry and fuss.  She learns how to cooperate with the person who is feeding her.  On the other end, she learns that bowel movements can be repugnant to the people around her.  From these early beginnings, she learns the full repertoire of human behaviors. 

Each of the instructions that she takes in from outside sources ultimately becomes a part of a relatively enduring sense of self – that part of us that we call the ego.  Many of these instructions are helpful for her survival.  They help her avoid adult anger.  They teach her to avoid dangers and the fears that accompany threats to her person.  If you will, the ego becomes the basic toolkit necessary for survival in human society.  All of this is good and appropriate, but there is a darker side to this as well. 

Let me illustrate how this works.  The child is taught to be a good little boy or girl, and this establishes and reinforces certain patterns of adult–approved behavior.  It also defines bad behavior, which is all the stuff that isn’t considered ‘good.’  So what is the developing child supposed to do with all the behaviors that are not considered okay?  Behaviors that are ‘bad?’   

The great Swiss psychiatrist, C.G. Jung, stated that all of these rejected parts of the self, the parts that we call negative or bad, don’t just disappear.  Instead, they formulate a shadow self, embracing the so-called dark side of our human nature.  Our shadows are composed of all of the parts of ourselves that we reject – the ‘not-me’ parts of us.  You know, the angry, hateful, depressed, fearful parts that we have such a hard time accepting.  These are the parts that we would like to have magically disappear. 

So our ego is fundamentally a survival mechanism.  It is that part of us that helps us survive from birth through early adulthood.  As such, our egos are essential to human development.  We cannot do without them.  That being said, our egos come with significant limitations.  While they function to keep destructive events away from us, they also keep us from accurately understanding both the world around us and our own selves.  In addition, our egos tend to keep our negative thoughts and feelings inside of us, where they can wreak destruction.  How many times, for example, have you found your mind repeatedly going over a negative situation or conversation, until you’re just sick of it? 

You can think of your ego as constructing a wall.  While that wall keeps negative things outside of itself, when negative things do get in, it holds on to them.  We can see here that the ego is a two-edged sword: it confers benefits and at the same time burdens us with negative consequences. 

The most profoundly debilitating consequence of an adult ego is that it keeps us from realizing our essential nature.  We tend to identify with our bodies or with our minds when our actual identity is that we participate in the fullness of the Divine.  The Christian mystics and indeed, the mystics of all religions, clearly state that we are one with God.  They clearly state that God dwells within our hearts.  Yet, because we identify with our bodies or our minds, we are unable to perceive the great treasure within each of us.  Jesus himself says, “The kingdom of God is within you.”  (Luke 17.21).  Because of the ego's limiting effect, we fail to perceive this great truth.   

Our primary spiritual task is to let go of our ego’s constraints so that we can experience our true self.  Our true self is not limited to this body.  It is not limited to the ever-changing play of emotions we experience.  It is not limited to our ideas.  Our true self participates fully in the Divine and has no limits.  Indeed, one way of understanding the salvation that Christ brings to us is to understand that he is freeing us from the too-narrow constraints of our ego so that we can participate fully in the love of God. 

So this is the task that is before us – to let go of our self so that we can experience our true nature as full participants in the Divine.  To assist with this task, I have found the Dis-Identification Exercise developed by Roberto Assagioli to be extremely useful.  Assagioli was an Italian psychiatrist who was a pioneer in inner spiritual work.  He developed this exercise to help his clients let go of their false identifications so that they can experience the truth of their true nature. 

This exercise works best if you can have someone read it to you.  We have not yet found someone who can help us embed MP3 files in our text.  If you have these skills and are willing to help us with this, please contact me at ken123kaisch@gmail.com.  If you cannot find someone to read this for you, I suggest that you record it, since the exercise is much more effective if you can simply listen. 

To begin this exercise, sit comfortably in your meditative position.  Then slowly read the Dis-Identification Exercise adapted from Assagioli , or record the exercise and listen to the tape.  Let yourself quietly affirm the truth of these words. 

Spiritual Exercise 3 

The Dis-Identification Exercise. 

1. I have a body, but I am not my body. 

My body is a precious instrument of experience.  All that I can experience is mediated by my body, my senses.  Through my body, I come to know the world outside of me and the world within me.  Through my body, I act and do things in the world.  But I notice that my body may find itself in different conditions of health or sickness; it may be rested or tired, but that has nothing to do with myself, my “I.”  The changes my body goes through do not change my “I.”  From this, I realize that I have a body, but it is only an instrument.  Therefore, I affirm that I have a body, but I am not my body. 

2. I have emotions and feelings, but I am not my emotions. 

My emotions are a wonderful, many-colored palette that I use to value things and experiences.  When I say I love someone, I am describing how I value that person.  When I say that I’m angry at someone, I am describing another kind of value.  I use this rich variety of valuing to order and understand my experiences.  But I noticed that though my emotions change, sometimes swiftly and sometimes slowly, the “I” that has these emotions does not change.  I noticed that I remain myself – in times of hope and in times of despair, in moments of calm and moments of irritation, my “I” is the same.  From this, it is clear that my emotions are not myself.  Therefore, I affirm that I have emotions and feelings, but I am not my emotions. 

3.  I have an intellect, a mind, but I am not my intellect. 

My intellect is my instrument for wrestling with the world.  Through my intellect, I take big things and divide them into smaller parts so that I can understand them.  Then I recombine those small parts into a larger whole.  I use my intellect to grapple with the vast complexity of things, so that I can master them.  But I notice that though my thoughts change frequently, the “I” that has those thoughts does not change.  I can think of many things, but I don’t become those things.  As a result, I realize that I have an intellect, but it is only an instrument.  Therefore, I affirm that, while I have an intellect, I am not my intellect. 

4.  Instead, I affirm that I am the center of pure awareness.  When I go inside my self, my “identity,” I experience a vast space, open and without limit.  My awareness is free to move in any direction, as quickly or as slowly as I would like.  There is no limit to my movement.  There is only this wonderful, vast awareness that I am… 

5.  Let yourself continue to explore these depths within.  Take some time, perhaps five or ten minutes, and go wherever you please.  If you find yourself distracted, simply bring your attention back to the vast spaciousness within yourself, and continue your inner journey. 

(To close your meditation.) 

6.  Let yourself come back to this place.  Let the feeling return to your feet… your hands… and your face.  Take a deep breath, and when you are ready, open your eyes. 

I would strongly encourage you to record this exercise and play it back for yourself many times.  It is one of those great tools for opening our perception of what really is, as opposed to something that we think it might be.  Just reading this over will not give you the necessary result.  You have to open yourself to it’s deep truths for this spiritual exercise to be effective. 

Because of our deep identification with our bodies, emotions, and intellect, we are often afraid to let go of those parts that we believe to be the whole of us.  Mistaking these parts for the whole, we wonder what will become of us if we release them.  Will we simply disappear?  Will something terrible happen if we find ourselves without the partial self with which we identify? 

Most people experience a great sense of freedom when they practice this exercise.  It allows us to address our fears and our self-imposed limitations quite directly.  As a result of doing this exercise multiple times, you begin to see that we are much more than we have thought ourselves to be.  Here we begin to understand what participation in the Divine truly means.  It means that we are, at our deepest levels, identical with the Infinite. 

Once again, the Biblical story of Jacob and Essau comes to mind.  We, like Essau, have forsaken our birthright for a bowl of gruel.  This is not what God created us for!

With love, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

10: The Nature of The Mind: Part II The Function and Limits of the Ego

Let’s pause for a moment and look again at the nature of the mind.  We find ourselves in quite a pickle.  On the one hand, we need our sense of self, our ego, to function in the world.  On the other hand, that sense of self becomes an obstacle in our spiritual journey.  How could this possibly be? 

I hope you will indulge me as I spin out the story that I think explains our predicament.  While this story is a product of my imagination, I think it explains how we got to this place.  In addition, this story incorporates the notion of evolution, and thus might properly be considered as an hypothesis rather than a totally imaginative story.  So let me begin… 

Life appears to have originated through a variety of means on this planet.  The first form of life that was able to spread widely was based on photosynthesis.  The early one-celled organisms like algae developed photosynthesis to extract energy from the sun, which they used to power their microscopic lives.  This form of life spread widely over the planet and, as it proliferated, developed into the many forms of plant life we see today. 

The next significant development in this process was the development of critters that got their energy by eating those organisms that relied on photosynthesis.  These critters were unable to utilize the sun’s energy directly, so they used it indirectly by consuming those organisms that employed photosynthesis.  From here, there was a proliferation of lifeforms and we see their progeny today around the world. 

There was an essential and little-noticed change that occurred when those critters that ate other critters began to develop.  The animals that were successful developed rudimentary forms of an ego.  They developed a drive to succeed.  Actually, this may be an overstatement – they developed a drive to fill their little bellies.  After hundreds of thousands of years, this drive morphed into what we now identify as the ego – the sense of self. 

What this means is rather intriguing.  If these hypotheses are correct, it means that God was responsible for creating the ego.  That unitive consciousness we call God brought the components necessary for life together in one-celled organisms that used psychosynthesis for energy.  In a later development, the Divine brought into being other organisms that consumed the photosynthesis–dependent critters. Life continued to evolve into more and more complex forms, and human beings are the current result.  We have here an example of one form of life being superceded by another, more complex form.  That process continues to this day. 

We human critters have used our egos, first to feed our bellies, and now to drive ourselves to whatever we think constitutes ‘success.’  Our definitions of success have given us the modern world, with all of its wonderful complexity: with its extraordinary quantities of food, complex transportation systems, worldwide communications systems, medical miracles, and all the rest.  Our egos have also given us pollution, inequitable distribution of food and other resources, and complex political systems that are constantly at war.  What a bargain! 

We are at an interesting inflection point.  It appears that our egos, while giving us unimaginable successes, have also driven us to the brink of extinction.  We are at a point where we need to look beyond the satisfaction of our personal, ego-driven desires.  To do otherwise is to risk catastrophic breakdowns. 

I think it no coincidence that there is a resurgence of interest in spirituality around the globe at just this point.  Humanity as a whole seems to intuit that we cannot continue as we have in the past.  We need to do something radically different – something that does not take us into World War III or ecological collapse.  To do so, we need to find ways of functioning that are not ego-driven. 

This is a significant challenge for all of humanity.  Our egos appear to have taken us as far as they can.  To go forward from here, we need to find ways to progress that go beyond the Me-Me-Me selfishness that has driven our massive accomplishments.  You may think that I am in error on this point but imagine the alternative.  Imagine some eight billion ego-driven individuals, each trying to assert “My Way” and “Me First!”  It’s simply a recipe for disaster and enormous pain for all of us.  It is a classic “no-win” situation. 

Contemplative spirituality in all of the world’s religions presents a doable alternative.  In my understanding, contemplative spirituality offers the only possible alternative to our present ego-driven society.  While recognizing the importance of the ego, contemplative spirituality also recognizes the limitations of the ego.  It offers a clear alternative to our ego-driven cultures – an alternative that can actually be implemented.  It is not an easy alternative.  It is not easy to trust that there is anything beyond the ego when all we have known to date is our ego-driven structures.  I can’t think of any alternatives to this.  Can you? 

*  *  * 

This week, let’s begin to push one of our spiritual exercises and take it further.  This is exercise provides a way that we can take our spiritual practice into every part of our daily lives.  By extending our practice in this way, we intensify its effectiveness.  If you will, it provides a kind of turbocharging for your spiritual work.   

To date, we have introduced our spiritual exercises as if they were something to be done as a kind of formal sitting meditation.  Now we will extend our practice into our ordinary daily activities.  In Week 7, we introduced you to heart-centered meditation.  You learned to let your attention drift down from your head until it came to rest in the center of your chest.  There you opened yourself to the Presence of God.  You practiced here for a time, then left your meditation and went about your other activities.  Now I want you to explore carrying your heart-centered focus with you throughout your day. 

Extending Your Heart-Centered Meditation

• Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed.  Turn off your cell phone and deal with other potential distractions. 

• Be seated, close your eyes, and simply observe, while refraining from judging what you experience here. 

• Notice the flow of your thoughts and emotions.  No need to chase after them or elaborate.  Just observe.  

• Notice the flow of sensations through your body.  No need to get caught up in them.  Again, just observe what is. 

• Now, gently bring your attention to the region of your heart.  Most start with feeling their attention in their head, where we think the self or ego lives.  Gently feel your attention move slowly down through your neck, your shoulders, letting your attention come to rest in the region of your heart.  

• When you feel it resting here, open your heart to the Presence of the Divine.    

• Rest here without moving for the period of your meditation. 

• When you are distracted, bring your attention back to your heart and rest here with God.   

• When you are ready, let the feeling come back into your feet, your hands, and your face.  Take a deep breath and open your eyes. 

• As you leave your formal meditation, carry your heart-centered awareness into your usual activities.  Instead of operating from your head (your ego), let your heart guide you.  Listen for its guidance.  Remember that it is a still, small voice within you.   

• There is no need to strain yourself here; just be aware of what is happening in your chest and listen closely.  As a friend told me once, ‘Learn to listen with your third ear, the one in your chest.’ 

•  If you feel a prompting to do something, experiment with it and see what happens. 

•  Go through your day with your attention centered in your heart, listening for the Spirit’s promptings.  When you lose focus, if it seems appropriate, come back to your heart and open yourself to God’s holy Presence again.  

Remember, our goal here is not just to do these practices.  Our goal is to use these practices to let go of our self-centered behavior so that we can enter into the fullness of God’s love.  To overcome the constraints of our limiting egos so that we can realize the joy and bliss for which we were created. 

*  *  * 

Well, that’s all for now.  I had two goals today.  My first goal was to give you something to think about.  As you see from the narrative above, it turns out that you are not just following these newsletters for your own benefit; you are also pioneering new structures for human beings that go beyond the limitations of our egos.   

I also wanted to give you something concrete to do.  Hence this powerful extension of our heart-centered meditation.  Next week, we will deepen our discussion even further and examine what is necessary for each of us to move forward in our spiritual life.  As you are no doubt noticing by now, this is not an easy journey.  It is, however, a journey where the future of humanity and our planet are at stake.  So, practice your meditation diligently, because you’re doing it for more than just yourself.  You’re doing it for your children and your neighbors, and for people on the other side of the globe that you will never meet in this life. 

With love, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

8: The Nature of Mind: Part I

By now, if you are practicing the spiritual exercises of the past weeks, you are coming to see the nature of your own mind.  I find it fascinating to watch these mental processes – talk about ‘streaming!’  The internet and Netflix are pikers compared to my restless, ever-moving, mind.  There is a ceaseless stream of chatter about everything and nothing, and for years it seemed impossible to get it to stop.

Recently, I read a fascinating book by a Harvard neuroscientist, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.  She had a massive stroke in her 30s that destroyed her ability to use words.  As a result, she could neither speak nor think.  She remarked, much later, on the marvelous interior stillness that she experienced during those years.  Can you imagine – to live a life where you are not beset by the constant chattering in your head?

In effect, we have been captured by our chatter.  It owns us, not the other way around. We have come to believe that our “I,” our self, is reality.  Our sense of self is maintained by our constant internal chatter.  We talk about everything; it is a never-ending stream of words, often full of ‘sound and thunder, but signifying nothing.’ When I began trying to control this inner blather, it seemed like an impossible task.  No matter what I did to try to contain it, the chattering monkey in my head eventually seduced me, and I began to listen to it even though I knew it would lead me nowhere.  I felt helpless.

I tried suppressing this mentation.  That sometimes worked for a few minutes, but I always felt this oppressive weight when I did so.  After a time, I realized that this was a dead end.  I was replacing my inner stream of chatter with this oppressive weight.  I tried meditating for long periods, but all that did was make me the hapless victim of my thinking for longer periods.  I finally decided to stop resisting this chatter and simply look at what was going on.

Here is what I found.  My mind – and by that I mean my ability to reason and think – appears to have two primary functions:  analysis and synthesis.  When we analyze something, we focus our attention and break down what we observe into its component parts.  Synthesis, on the other hand, is the process of combining those parts together, often in new and unusual ways.  That’s it.  That’s all my mind does.  Everything else is just entertainment.  

Entertainment?  Yes, when you look at it dispassionately, it is just one of my ways of entertaining myself.  I comment about everything around me.  I gossip to myself.  I make snide comments, and nasty ones, too.  I make value judgments and criticize constantly.  And on and on – you know this because you do it too.

To what end?  What is the purpose of all this chatter?  Very little actually escapes my head with a verbal comment, so why am I doing this?  What is actually going on?  Basically, I am talking to hear myself talk.  And with every comment, I am reasserting my place as the center of the known universe.  Ahh… our common fantasy, this.  I am the center of all I survey.  In effect, I am assuming God’s place as ruler of the universe.  As Bill Cosby used to say, to great effect, “Righttttttt…”

Our ego steps in and starts proclaiming, “Me-me-me!”  All of our interior self-talk has the function of reinforcing this ego position of superiority.  It reminds me of The Wizard of Oz.  The wizard speaks with a thunderous voice and proclaims himself to be the All-Powerful Oz, the great and wonderful Oz.  The magnificent bull-shitter, Oz.  That’s me, and I suspect it may be you as well.

Most of the time, we don’t notice the amazing self-centeredness of our self-talk.  We simply accept it as normal and natural, since it has been with us for all of our conscious existence.  And then, something different happens.  We are silenced by the beauty of a sunset.  We are awed by the courage of someone rushing into a burning building to save a little girl.  Our inner chatter is stilled, and in the sudden silence, we find ourselves open in a startling new way.  

It is in this inner stillness, in this silence, that our hearts open to the Divine.

Which brings me to our third spiritual exercise.  This practice will help you quiet your mind and the ceaseless production of (often useless) thoughts.  In this exercise, you will use your imagination, a faculty of the mind, to still the mind.

This is a process that you can employ frequently and to great advantage.  In effect, you are giving yourself a specific target to aim at.  This practice allows us to focus our attention, and to pull it away from the trivial chatter that is too often our most frequent companion. 

So, use this stilling exercise multiple times a day.  It prepares you for a much deeper meditation experience.  Underneath all of our chatter is a perfect Stillness, and in this place, our hearts will find their rest.  In that Stillness, we find our deepest Self, and our true home. 

That’s it for this week, folks.  Next week, we will use a deep poem by a 13th- century spiritual master to explore what being still looks like, and what we can expect from this practice.  So, keep up with your daily practice.  If you are new to this, try meditating multiple times a day for just five minutes or so.  See you next week… 

With deep affection, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

7: Heart-centered Meditation

Perhaps the most significant difficulty with our first spiritual exercise is the lack of a clear target.  If there was a clear ‘X-marks-the-spot’ target for your meditation, you could focus your attention there, and you probably would have felt more successful.  At the very least, you could tell when you stayed on the target and when it eluded you.  But what kind of target does the Presence of God present to you?  Is it some image of the Divine?  Is it a particular kind of inner feeling?  Or something else entirely?

There was actually a good reason behind this lack of specificity.  If you had some kind of clear target, instead of pursuing the actual real Presence, you would likely imagine something.  Something that you thought fulfilled the parameters of your search.  The only thing that could be said of such an imagining is that it is a fantasy – something that does not exist in reality.  What a terrible way to start your journey toward that which Is, the ultimate Reality behind all our apparent observable reality.  

The truth is, we humans have this marvelous ability to perceive patterns – to fill in the blanks, so to speak, with what we believe completes the pattern.  Let me give you a simple numerical example:  1,  2,  3,  __.  Now, fill in the blank.  

Most probably inserted a ‘4’, but how did you come to that number?   You guessed, right?  You assumed it was an ascending numerical sequence, and the single space indicated a single digit, so you assumed ‘4’.  But maybe I was giving the last four digits of my phone number, or my social security number, or something else.  There was no way of knowing without more information, so you hallucinated a number to fit.

While this ability to make and perceive patterns is helpful in many situations, it becomes a liability in our search for the Divine.   It is, I believe, the primary reason why there are so many radically different ideas about God.  Sadly, almost all of these ideas tend to lead us astray.  If nothing else, none of our thoughts begin to encompass the vastness and majesty of God.

That being said, we humans have trouble with vagueness.  I remember working with a woman who had wrestled with an unidentified chronic illness for years.  She was terribly depressed because her doctors could not find a diagnosis.  One day she 

came into my office all smiles, just glowing with happiness.  “They finally figured it out,” she said with a grin.  “I have stage four pancreatic cancer!”  

This was a virtual death sentence, yet it made her very happy.  Finally, she had something concrete and real.  Never mind that it meant her death; the certainty made her happy.

So how can we use our need for certainty in our quest?  How can we create a target that is easier to work with, but one that doesn’t compromise our search right at the get-go?

To answer this, we need to look at our spiritual forebears.   All of the great religions talk about a spiritual center in our bodies in the region of our heart.  They say that the place where the Divine is most accessible to us is in this spiritual heart center.  Several Christian mystics have stated that the veils which separate us from God are most transparent in the spiritual center of our heart.  

St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), an Eastern Orthodox saint, taught that we can experience the Divine directly, in the region of the heart.  He was working from a very ancient practice, the Jesus Prayer, which originated with the Desert Fathers in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.  (More on the Jesus Prayer in later editions of this newsletter.) In Western Christendom, the anonymous English author of The Cloud of Unknowing also describes the heart as the primary focal point of contemplative prayer.  

Of specific interest to us, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing invites his reader to put “a cloud of forgetting” beneath him – letting go of everything that might distract him from the love of God.  Then, he invites us to put a “cloud of unknowing” between ourselves and God.  He rightly says that we can never ‘know’ God like we can know the objects around us.  Better to not speculate, then, and to place one’s self in the presence of God and rest there, without fabricating ideas or emotions about the experience.  And that, of course, was the point of our first spiritual exercise.

Moving forward, we can make our spiritual journey easier, quicker, and more productive by centering our attention in our hearts.  So, let me introduce you to the practice of heart-centered meditation.

If you have difficulty moving your attention out of your head, first feel the sphere of energy around your head.  Then imagine that sphere descending about an inch or so with every breath you take.  When that sphere reaches the center of your chest, imagine reaching out from your heart to someone you love.  Then reach out to another and another.  This tends to anchor your attention in your spiritual heart center. 

I have had people say they can’t move their attention out of their head because that is where it is supposed to be.  That’s a common misperception.  If you have ever stubbed your toe, barked your shin on something, or hit your fingers while hammering a nail, you know this is just not true.  When you stub your toe, ALL of your attention is suddenly focused on the hurt toe.  There isn’t even a particle of attention left to think about anything else.  It’s just that we don’t pay much attention to what is actually going on inside of us.  When you start noticing what is happening inside of yourself, you start to see some amazing things. 

With practice, you will come to know your inner world.  As you get more and more familiar with your heart center, your ability to focus without interruption will gradually increase.  As you let go of your thoughts and emotions, you will experience a certain stillness in your inner world, a stillness that is free from your ego driving this thought and that one.  This is not something you can force.  You can’t say to yourself, ‘Stop chasing that thought,’ and expect to be successful.  Why not?  Well, stop and observe what part of you is doing the talking.  It’s your ego that is attempting to exert power and direct your mental traffic here.  And guess what – your ego is not likely to participate in its own demise. 

This is the paradox of spiritual work.  You have to find a way to go deeper inside to find the Divine dwelling within, but the tool you have always used to get things done – your ego – is not effective here.  Remember what happens with seeds that are planted?  The seed has to die in order for the new growth to occur.  The same happens in the spiritual realm as well. 

That’s all for this week, folks.  Next week, we will start looking more deeply into the nature of the mind because the more you know about your inner world, the easier it is to negotiate your way home.  Keep up with your daily practice.  If you are new to this, try meditating multiple times a day for just five minutes or so.  See you next week… 

With deep affection, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

6: The Importance of Intention

The goal of the spiritual life is union with the Divine.  The early church had a term for this process – they called it theosis.  This goal is summarized in the words of St. Athanasius, “God became man that man might become God.”  Pretty wild, isn’t it?  I will bet you never heard that in Sunday School! 

As seekers of this spiritual union, we are involved in the process of changing our perceptions: our perceptions of ourselves, each other, and God.  If you will, we are engaged in opening our eyes so that we can see all of Reality, not just a narrow slice of it.  Instead of being satisfied with the partial loaf we have grown up with, we now want the whole enchilada.  We will not achieve this by spiritual exercises alone.   

This brings us to the importance of intention.  At least half of the value of our first spiritual exercise lies in our intention to draw closer to the Divine.  For the few minutes of your practice, your intention was fully concentrated on God.  You didn’t know what to expect.  You had no idea what would happen.  Perhaps the skies would split open, trumpets would sound, and angels would appear.  Who knows?   

These expectations, however they manifest for you, are important.  They are the result of your past conditioning.  For example, if you are Christian, you may have expected Jesus; if you were of another faith, you expected something else.  More than just old conditioning, your expectations are evidence of your desires, which are always driven by your ego.   

Imagine your ego for a moment.  Every ego has boundaries:  you are okay with this, you are not okay with that, and those over there you don’t even see.  These boundaries are invisible until you bump into them, and then they make themselves known.  While boundaries are useful in negotiating our way through the world around us, they are the primary obstacle to our spiritual growth.  These boundaries keep us from experiencing the living God. 

Look what happened during your work with your spiritual exercise this past week.  You sat down, closed your eyes, went inside, and then opened yourself to the Divine.  This was driven by your intention to sit with your Lord.   

You didn’t know what to expect, so you were wide open to receive whatever might happen.  For a moment, you managed to step outside your ego boundaries.  Then what happened?  Your mind was still – at least for a moment or two – and you experienced some quiet.  That quiet felt good, so you probably said something like, “I think I’m getting the hang of this,” which pulled you back inside your ego boundaries.  Then it was off to the races, with your mind thinking this and that and everything under the sun.  

When you noticed this, it was your intention that brought you back.  You realized you had set out to open yourself to God, got sidetracked into your usual jumble of thoughts, and then did your best to pull out of that jumble.  Your intention had been violated by you, yourself.  That may have been a bit upsetting, so you came back to your practice. 

Your intention to know and experience the Divine is what started you on this journey, and it constantly helps you keep on course.  It is a precious gift from God, for without our intention, we would never start, and if by chance we started, we would immediately derail and fail. 

So, cultivate your intention to realize God.  Spend some time within focused on your intention.  Nourish it.  Cherish it, for without it, we are lost. 

Questions and Answers

I received a bunch of questions this week that all asked the same thing:  ‘Hey, Doc!  What am I supposed to feel?’ so I am going to attempt to answer them all together.  Here goes… 

There is no ‘supposed to’ here.  As you clear away your internal obstacles, you willexperience the Presence of your Lord.  In fact, the Divine is within you right now – you just have not perceived that holy Presence.  Now you get the joy of experiencing the obstacles that are in the way.  These obstacles are revealed in your thoughts and emotions, and even in the itchy sensations you experienced. 

Maybe your mind went to some pressing problem, and you began to think about that.  Maybe you realized that you need to pick up some milk and bread from the store.  Maybe you notice a kind of strange sensation on your skin somewhere.  You tried to ignore it, but it grew and grew until you just had to scratch it to make it go away.   

All of these results are simply ploys by the ego to get us to STOP.  At a deep level, your ego understands your spiritual practice is a threat.  As a result, it will throw at you whatever it needs to trip up your practice.  In short, we all get suckered.  We stop what we are doing – our spiritual practice – and follow the direction of our ego, the same old round of ceaseless thoughts that have always been there. 

What is worse, this ego-driven process is insidious.  As you develop your practice, you will find it happening again and again, to the point that many give up their spiritual work as a result.  There is, of course, a remedy.  It's kind of a clever remedy, actually, since it uses the force of the ego to thwart its drives.  In that way, it is like ju-jitsu – using the opponent's own force to defeat him. 

This remedy is most explicitly developed in the Buddhist practice of vipassana.  When you have a thought, simply label it.  Say “thought” and let it go.  If you try to fight it, you have already lost the battle, and your ego has succeeded in derailing your intention.  Likewise, if you feel an emotion, don’t pursue it, just say “emotion” and let it go.  For physical sensations, say “sensation.”  You can think of this as a ‘catch and release’ program.  

The critical point here is not to wrestle with your ego because you will lose.  Your ego is always in survival mode, and it is ferocious!  Instead, step aside and let it pass through you.   

That’s all for this week, folks.  Next week we will refine your spiritual practice by showing you how to increase both the focus and the power of your meditation.  So keep up with your daily practice.  If you are new to this, try meditating multiple times a day for just five minutes or so, and we will meet again next week. 

With deep affection, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC

5: The Foundational Spiritual Exercise

Consider with me the difficulty of pursuing spiritual goals with our selfish egos, always chanting ‘me-me-me.’  We want God’s embrace while holding on to the very thing that precludes that embrace – our tiny egos.  There is such a clear irony here.  Jesus says, in multiple places, that he is already here, with us.  He has always been, and will always be here.   

Let me give you some examples.  In John’s gospel, Jesus says, “I am in my Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 14.20).  A chapter later, he says, “Abide in me as I abide in you” (John 15:4).  How about in Matthew, when he says, just before ascending into heaven, “Know that I will be with you always, even to the end of time” (Matt 28.20).  One of his names, Emanuel, actually means “God with us.” We just don’t notice.  Worse, we don’t know how to notice. 

So how do we open ourselves to that holy Presence?  We conceptualize the issue as needing to do something different.  That’s our ego talking.  Often, our religious institutions echo our ego and exhort us to do all kinds of things:  we need to behave better, to do this and not that, we need-need-need.  Starts to sound like the ego talking, doesn’t it?  Me-me-me all over again. 

But let’s face it.  We have followed the dictates of our ego in our pursuit of the Divine, and we have come up mostly empty.  The ego gets us started, but it can’t take us very far down the path.  Following the wonderful work of David Hawkins, it is not our doing that will bring us into God’s embrace; it is our letting go that is the ticket.

What!?!  The ego starts screaming right about now.  “Letting go diminishes us.  Letting go makes us less.  Letting go is scary!”   

I am reminded of an old cartoon, in which a man falls off a cliff during the night but manages to grab hold of a bush growing out of the hillside on his way down.  He calls out, ‘God, help me!’  A Voice answers, ‘Let go.’  ‘I can’t let go, I’ll fall to my death.’  ‘Let go,’ comes the reply.  Finally, in desperate agony, because he can’t hold on anymore, the man lets go.  And drops six inches to the ground.  Pretty scary fall, isn’t it? 

We are afraid to trust, because we have lived in a world with so much untruth.  We have learned from repeated experiences not to trust.  So, we hold on to what we think we know.  Sadly, our holding on keeps us from opening to God’s embrace. 

To find the Divine, we need to shift from relying on ourselves and our egos.  The central core of spiritual work “is aligned with undoing and the unloading of the mind rather than its enrichment.”  We need to change our programming from ‘getting’ to ‘allowing.’  In a word, we need to let go. 

And this brings us to our first spiritual exercise.  You can practice this anywhere, at any time, and it is always beneficial.  You don’t need to adopt a particular posture, although I have found it helpful at the start to close your eyes and sit quietly in a quiet place.  Then, simply open your awareness.  This is not so much an action of getting as it is a letting go.It involves going inside of yourself:  letting go so that you can move into your deepest being.  There, Jesus promises us, we will find that we are already in union with Him. 

This spiritual practice can be found under various names in all of the major religions.  In Zen Buddhism, it is known as “just sitting.”  In Daoism, it is known as “sitting in oblivion.”  In Hinduism, it is embodied in the phrase, ‘Thou art That,’ meaning that you are that for which you seek.  In Christianity, it is known as the Practice of the Presence of God, and Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century monk of the Carmelite order, is one of its foremost exponents.  Regardless of the name, the practice involves abandoning the getting activity of the ego so that you can see what is actually there, inside of you, at your deepest levels. 

Like all forms of meditation, you will probably find this practice a bit difficult.  It is extremely simple – there is literally nothing to do.   But your ego is not likely to enjoy the experience, so it will throw up all kinds of barriers.  These will likely take the form of distractions and ‘forgetting’ to do the practice.  It helps, therefore, to give yourself a minimum time for practice and specific times to engage in it. 

I would suggest practicing this several times during your day.  I like to open myself this way after my morning coffee.  I often practice for thirty minutes or more, but in the beginning, I had a hard time even stretching it to five minutes.  So, I would suggest you start with five-minute practices.  In addition to morning practice, I typically take short breaks with this throughout my day, and then again as I lay in bed before sleep comes.   

Because it is difficult to read this material and do what it suggests, I have included an audio clip of this exercise.  Use it a time or two, if you find it helpful, to facilitate your initial practice.  After a while, you will probably find it more of a hinderance, so then just discard it. 

Opening to the Divine:  The Foundational Spiritual Practice

• Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed.  Turn off your cell phone and deal with other potential distractions that might interrupt your spiritual practice. 

• Be seated in a chair, with your spine upright and your feet flat on the floor, cradling your right hand in your left.  Don’t cross your legs or ankles, and don’t interlace your fingers because they are likely to fall asleep, which will distract you from your practice.   

• We entertain ourselves with cascades of thoughts, one after another.  For the time of your practice, let go of chasing after them.  Just sit, let go, and be open to that Presence which the scriptures of all faiths say is always with us at all times. 

• Sit without moving, so that the distraction of movement doesn’t take you away from your intention, which is to sit in the Presence and experience what is Real and True. 

• Close your eyes and turn your attention inward.   

• Open yourself to the presence of God right here with you, around you, and within you.  Don’t push yourself to imagine something – that is just more doing and your ego-driven thinking. 

• Simply let go of everything.  Let go of your thoughts, and observe your interior world.   

• Rest here for a time.   

• When you are distracted, bring your attention back and observe the play of your thoughts and emotions without chasing after them. 

• When you are ready, let the feeling come back into your feet, your hands, and your face.  Take a deep breath and open your eyes. 

With practice, you come to know your inner world.  You will get more and more comfortable there, and the distractions will gradually cease.  You will find yourself letting go more freely, thinking less, and going deeper and deeper.  You will actually be able to feel the changes in yourself as you get more experienced here.   

As you practice, you will find a deepening of peacefulness within yourself.  This peacefulness arises because you are feeling more and more secure.  Remember that security is the ego’s primary job, so as you relax into this practice, the ego has less and less to do.  Your constant thinking will diminish, and your peace and joy will increase.  What a bargain!  LOL 

If you have questions about your practice, please email them to me (Ken123Kaisch@Google.com) so that we can start a Q & A column.   

Next week we will focus on the importance of intention to your spiritual practice.  At first glance, your intention may not seem terribly important, but you will find that it is a crucial element in achieving the success you are looking for.  Until then… 

With deep affection, 

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at ken123Kaisch@gmail.com. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

Inside the Invisible: The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence by Dr. Ken Kaisch. Are you looking for clarity in these difficult times? Longing for a deeper sense of purpose and meaning?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSV9XQSC