Honor your style of learning


You need to find your style of meditating. You can't do someone else's meditation – it will feel like an imposition, and your inner nature will rebel. Style has to do with how your senses work and your personal preferences. You find your style by exploring and not forcing anything. It is somewhat like shoes; shoes that fit do not hurt your toes.

You discover your style by noticing what works for you. Do not take the attitude that whatever your preferences are, they are wrong. Meditation is not internal chiding – that your mind should be more silent, that you should be more spiritual and compassionate, that you should recycle more. These are all fine, religious-type thoughts, that have their place. But that is not meditation.

In meditation, you witness your thoughts. The particular way you witness or attend to your thoughts, sensations and emotions is as complex as a golf swing, or a pitch in baseball, or playing piano or violin. When walking, the body responds to the uniqueness of each footfall. In meditation, your nervous system and body are changing and responding that quickly.

Instinctive Meditation is concerned with the secret, invisible inward skills that help people to thrive in meditation. You can do any meditation technique you want, belong to any tradition. There are a lot of advantages to belonging to a tradition. Meditation is inner behavior, and very few people ever get any coaching on what they are actually doing in there, when they close their eyes. Instinctive Meditation has emerged from close observation of the interface of the individual with the technique. Where do techniques come from? People make them up. The better the technique, the more it feels like something natural, not a technique at all.

Find your style and go with it.

Old School


Whatever you do in the realm of meditation, do not pollute the ecology of your inner life. Do not degrade your inner integrity. Oddly enough, this happens a lot. Meditation is a "traditional" field, which means that people like to do things the old way. The old ways in meditation are really old – the way it was done a thousand, two thousand years ago. That far in the past, most of the teachings were about breaking your spirit, so that you would become a submissive, tame, obedient member of a group of males living an impoverished existence in some monastery.

The other day I noticed that with some of my favorite teachers, I do not read their books. As long as they are alive, I want to see them in person. Then when I am away from them, I meditate on their presence. Other teachers, I would rather read their books and am not as interested in seeing them in person. This is just some feature of my inner style. I don't fully understand it.

-There are teachers whose books I read. I am not as interested in meeting them in person.
-There are teachers who are good writers but I don't care – I want to be in their presence.
-There are teachers who I want to do exercises with.
-There are teachers who I want to listen to on my iPod and in the car. I have their books but don't want to get the info that way.