To Those Who Visit Retreats, Coaches, And Meditation Instructors

This public discourse is for One Particular Human.

The one who it is for, will understand.

 

Those of you, whom after reading this public discourse, remain confused, outraged, or feel that you are trying to be led away from retreats, coaches, and meditation instructors . . .

This discourse is not for you.

 

I will now speak to that One Particular Human.

 

You have been searching all your life.

You do not know exactly what it is that you have been searching for.

You have ascribed many words to it: meaning, purpose, happiness, peace, freedom, contentment, satisfaction . . .

But none of these truly describes it.

 

For decades you have grasped at various modalities.

You have practiced austerities.

You have read self-help and spiritual books.

You were turned on to meditation by those who spout words from the East.

And you thought to yourself: “Perhaps this is the way.”

 

You have gone on retreats, in order to be silent.

You have pursued meditation, half-lotus or full.

You have done breath work, careful to fill the lower lungs and protrude the abdomen with the incoming breath.

You have tried exquisitely slow exhales, rapid exhales, and alternate-nostril breathing in order to activate the ida and the pingala.

You have done asanas in order to increase the venous return to the right atrium of your heart.

You have recited mantras in order to bring the mind into silence.

If you are not spiritually inclined, you have hired a coach to help you in your life and your business.

You have practiced numerous activities, prescriptions, methods, and techniques.

Positive thinking, reframing, stoicism, vulnerability, chunking, gratitude journals, loving yourself, being yourself.

You’ve read most or all of the books recommended by the movers and shakers.

You’ve practiced the austerities recommended by the Buddhists.

You’ve done everything under the sun.

And yet you haven’t reached your goal.

And when you say that to yourself, your mind has a pre-packaged answer even for that. An answer that society gave to it as a disclaimer, knowing that all that it preaches will prove to be fruitless.

It says to you: “It’s about the journey, not the destination.”

That is well and good. So long as the journey is providing what you seek along the way.

But it has not.

It has not for any man.

It did not, even for Siddhartha. For after seven years of prescriptions and austerities prescribed by the ascetics, he said to himself, “I am no closer to my goal than when I started.”

 

The first thing I will say is that it is important to continue all the prescriptions, austerities, meditation, and coaching.

It would be foolish to forcibly tear yourself away from something.

 

The only human beings who benefit from the Truth are those who have the receptors for it.

Those who have the DNA for it.

Those who have the ears for it.

 

Such a human, when presented with Truth, finds himself moving in the direction of examination.

Examining why he is doing what he is doing.

Without the slightest attempt to force himself this way or that.

 

A wise human being does not follow instructions or prescriptions.

He explores what he has been doing, and examines the results he has received.

If he is truly wise, he will not allow his mind to grasp at straws in order to find the slightest iota of benefit so that it may justify a continuation along the same path.

He honestly examines.

If the results are overwhelming, he remains.

If they are not, he examines why he has allowed himself to waste all of these years.

Without the slightest bit of sorrow or self-condemnation.

 

Such a man realizes that time is short.

He realizes that a man’s life is borrowed time.

And if his longing is sincere,

He cannot afford to waste another day.

 

The ways of the world are for worldly men.

They are for the unserious.

Those who live their lives following rules, tenets, philosophies, religions, austerities, and prescriptions,

No matter how ostensibly lauded or holy,

Are not serious.

For them, it is acceptable to have left this earth not having found what their heart desired most.

 

Every man throughout history, who found the Truth,

Did not find it through prescriptions.

Not one.

 

There is a reason for this.

The reason is that this is not how anything is found.

If nature created a thing to work in a particular way,

That is the way it must be.

No matter how deeply one believes it should be otherwise.

 

I seek not to help you.

Or to compel you in one direction or another.

The words write themselves.

 

He who prescribes to you is your enemy.

For he will set you on a course which leads not to an arrival,

And from which there is no return.

 

Namaste.