In general, creative meditation is learning to break your own rules of thought in a conscious, self directed way, and the easiest way to do this may be in active mindfulness, active meditation.

What’s something routine you do without thinking? I will use an example. Myself, I dislike cooking. I want to do it, both because I want to eat and because I want to be helpful to my wife, share in the daily upkeep, but the task itself I do not like. So what would happen if I didn’t try to cook?

Instead, perhaps I can just be aware of the food I am holding, let myself transition to an awareness of what will happen with that food, experience what is involved in the process of the food moving from the fridge to a prepared state without bothering to put myself in that picture. Just watch the whole process happen, feel my body move, smell the food cooking, no trying to cook, just awareness of the cooking happening. No thinking about cooking or trying to do the cooking, just experiencing the cooking.

Is this what is called “being mindful”? Indeed, being mindful of the cooking. Would my cooking suffer? Would I make any more mistakes because I behaved in that way? The cooking happened, and happened as well as my awareness would have allowed, would it be better if I tried to do the cooking?

Probably fewer mistakes since you are focused on what you are doing and your mind can freely associate and therefore think of related things that would help the process.

I have for decades been grateful for those who “pray” — (not being so HOT at it myself…) but they pray in their monasteries, and I work outside of them. Is this a viable dynamic, do you think? Indeed, it is a viable dynamic. This is why it occurred. In the east, monks have their path because their communities want it. They want them to do that. The people of traditional India wanted their holy men. It was enriching of their daily life.

My mind wanders when I am worried about what I want, or what I was doing before I started to cook, or what I will do after, but will my mind wander as I experience or watch the cooking happen through me?

No, it will be like watching TV. Yes. I can even begin to experience a sense of emotional engagement in the cooking, begin to look forward to future cooking. In time, my cooking could become effortless. Would this occur if I continued to try to cook?

No. “Try” doesn’t get it.

I think this is about getting past the boredom and becoming engrossed in it.

Conventional thought is boring, ruling thought, rule making thought is boring and impractical as well. It’s non-functional.

I think this will help me a lot in my daily activities.

Now there is an exception to this rule, as there is to every rule. As being the type of person I am, my brain is described as being prone to hyper-systematize. This isn’t just a strange sort of mental masturbation, something to do to distract myself from whatever my problem is, it’s actually a form of genuine self management. It’s just something that most people don’t have to do consciously. I systematize things, and especially find ways to express them in words like you might regain your balance if a wind tipped you off your feet a little bit.

I wonder why masturbation seems always to get bad press. It’s the masturbating attitude that deserves the bad press, not the instinct itself that drives the behaviour. That’s just as wholesome as any other innate human instinct.

Yes, but doesn’t that assume there is an “even keel” to be found? (referring to the ‘regain your balance’ — not the masturbation). There is indeed an even keel to be found. It’s written in every cell of your body. Every tissue in your flesh and blood seeks to do this, to attain and retain this state.

People are fascinated with the brain, but really the brain is just a big sense organ, a big picture making faculty and nothing more. It all thinks, your whole being thinks, and feels, and remembers. Your heart thinks, your stomach remembers. It’s a whole being process and all for one reason, the signal. It’s all about the signal. Like quorum sensing in bacteria, or herd instinct, hive intellect, ecological adaptation, diplomacy, it is all the signal. One intelligence. Intelligence being a resource, separate from consciousness, separate from minds. Minds transcend intelligence in the same way that we as human beings with our limited physical bodies have come to transcend the limits of our physical bodies. My body cannot fly, but I can fly somewhere time and means permitting. My brain cannot make pictures of what isn’t patterned in it, but I can pattern new things in it just by deciding to do so. I am aware of the resource of the unknown though my brain has no ability to do that for me. I see the implicate in the present. We cannot conceive of that which we don’t have feelings for.

This “brain-patterning” reminds me of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: that we cannot conceive of that which we do not have words for. I honestly have some anger toward scientists for endorsing that notion of word dependency. Until the age of three, I was non verbal. I assure you with every fiber of my being, I was indeed thinking.

Very valuable insight. We are more than our words.

You are blind to the degree that you have rejected sensation. You can even induce cognitively driven blindness. You are heartless to the degree that you deny sensation. Sensation and emotion and motion are all the same experience. The higher brain functions do have their purpose; to discern patterns of meaning, broad combinatory association, projective learning, imagination. These are the proper uses of the higher brain functions, not this artificial nonsense.

Prejudice is a form of cognitively driven blindness, isn’t it? As is preference? Preference is cognitively driven blindness, yes. It is defensive.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~