The Rhythm of Adventure

Meditative experience is rhythmic. This drives everyone crazy. It doesn't have to. The reason people get mad at the rhythm is because of the mass-hypnosis idea that meditation is about making your mind blank. Drop that idea and consider your love of rhythm. I love rhythm. Music is rhythm. Stories are rhythm.

During meditation, the brain is very busy! At the same time, however, you may experience a great deal of relaxation and repose. The paradox is: you can not relax without letting go of tension ... and in letting go of tension you remember all the things you were tense about. Relaxation, tension, relaxation, tension.

As you can see, meditation is NOT one single state, but rather a continually changing inner theater of quiet/explosive/erotic/placid/turbulent intensity, in which each breath brings drama, catharsis, rebirth and healing.

This continually alternating cycle of being called inward, touching your inner essence, and then being called outward toward the exterior world, mirrors the rhythm of dreams, myths and stories. In meditation, the cycle occurs every few seconds.

Learning to ride this rhythm is one of the primary skills of meditation.

Here the rhythm is charted as a quest. In everyday life, when we meditate we are on a quest for something, the same as when we pick up the phone to talk to a friend, turn on the TV to watch something, go to the refrigerator to look at what's there. We need something - contact, or stimulation, or relief, or entertainment, or nutrition. The urge to meditate is the same as these everyday urges.

This chart is from Whole Body Meditations. In the book I discuss my sense that the rhythm of the quest, on a second - by - second - basis, is what drives meditation. This is the motor, the power source. The fundamental rhythm of life is to satisfy its needs on all levels, from raw survival, to love, to spiritual fulfillment.