In my last rousing post, I made the case for what meditation is broadly. I even brought some hippies to the party to get you in the mood. This time around, we are gonna get more specific. I’m going to throw some metaphysical assumptions around. Shit is gonna get all kinds of crazy.

I did say CRAZY, Right?

So the last time around, I gave you a description of how meditation works. I didn’t bother to tell you how or why. The reason I didn’t bother to tell you how or why is that it involves metaphysical assumptions that most people find to be pretty far out there unless they are either a) enlightened b) psychotic or c) very, very high.

For the record, I didn’t come to my conclusions from any of those above routes. I took the more ambitious path of almost dying. Those experiences, if there is enough interest, I’ll provide some day.

The world, and you, are energy. I don’t mean that so much in the atomic sense, although you can think of it that way if you want. I mean that in the “soul stuff” sense of the word. That doesn’t mean I think that a rock has a soul. However, it does mean that I think a rock and a person ultimately share a common point of reference. You might think of them as individual drops in an ocean with the person drop having the added characteristic of self reflection. I somewhat suspect a rock does not have that ability, but if one does, and it reads this, sorry, dude. You, uh, ROCK!

As a corollary to the above, we are MOST human when we are in a state of self-reflection because that is what makes us unique from say, a rock. Perhaps other animals have more or less ability to self-reflect. To the extent they can, we might say they more or less have a soul, but that the ability for man to self reflect seems to be the greatest.

So how do we self-reflect? We meditate.

The best place, in my opinion, to wade into hardcore meditation, is to understand the chakra system. (Achievement unlocked, hardcore meditation mode completed on Act 3) Before venturing into these waters, it is probably advisable to become aware of your body and to get decent at relaxing it. Sometimes what you find in the chakra system is not so pleasant. You, of course, did it, but you probably won’t much like what you did. If you hold on to it, then you aren’t meditating, and instead, you will be “holding on to it”. Simple so far, right?

I hate to break it to you, but at your most basic level you are comprised of energy yourself. The Chakras are different centers of your being–different levels of consciousness that one might say constitutes what one might term a soul. I don’t know how many total there are, but there are seven main recognized ones. Each one will tend to hold a certain kind of memory. Each one will tend to serve a certain function, and you are virtually guaranteed that one of them is intensely screwed up if not more. Where they are screwed up is where something is being held that shouldn’t be. You want ideally to fix that.

Very, very carefully. Actually, you might ask yourself how you know it is messed up? The chakras tend to hold certain colors naturally. They don’t always follow this rule, as some are often rainbow colored. Basically, if you sense something is messed up with one, you are going to want to go with its normal color first. The colors they follow is a rainbow from the bottom up. I am going to guarantee you you are not Rainbow Brite.

Just DO IT. Sit down. Breathe. Put your attention at the very, very bottom of your spine, near your ass. What do you sense here? If there were a color, what would it be? What do you see color wise? Don’t try to cheat it, it is pointless to anyway. You can’t force a chakra to do something it doesn’t want to. Do you see memories here? Acknowledge them, let them go. Keep going until you feel “done”. What color do you have now? Work your way up.

Hey, you are the one meditating, you tell me. I’m not going to offer an explanation for it in this post, but I might in a future post. The thing is, all explanations work to some extent, and you rather have to go with your own gut feeling on what it is you are doing.

Do you meditate this way? Did you try it this way? Did you notice any difference? Comment and give a man some feedback.