The Deeper Meaning of Meditation | MOL Show Ep 1 | iRise |

Hello, and a warm, warm welcome to our Facebook Live event, also going live out on Instagram as well with myself, Ashok Gupta, on the deeper meaning of meditation. The reason we're putting this event together is because I've had so many people talk to me about how great meditation is and how they've benefited so much from it in terms of relaxing their nervous system. And yet meditation has been developed over millennia for far deeper reasons than just relaxing ourselves, just feeling calmer. That's a wonderful benefit. But would it be interesting to really understand the deeper meaning behind meditation and what it does for us up and beyond simply relaxation or feeling calm? And that's what we're going to be covering in today's Facebook Live and Instagram Live. So we're going to be covering this subject for the next half an hour so, next 25 minutes, and then we have a very exclusive private discussion group which is free to all, where we're going to discuss the contents of today's session and give you the opportunity to share your perspectives. And a lot of other interesting things will be going on in our brand new Meaning of Life discussion groups and they are hosted on our new platform called iRise. So if you want to join our discussion group straight after today's session, then Simply go to iriseapp.com and on iriseapp.com you'll be able to click on live events and you'll see the zoom link for us to have the live discussion just in 25 minutes or so. Or you can download the app and within the app as well, you'll be able to access our live discussion. So this is our first formal Meaning of Life live discussion. I've been meaning to do it for years and it's fantastic. The irise platform has come along to enable us to do that. And just to give you a bit of background to irise. So irise is a movement to uplift humanity, to empower humanity and uplift a billion lives. We're here to democratize access to personal transformation tools. We've got over 600 courses and classes across three and a half thousand videos to help you mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually expand and become the best version of you. That's all@iriseapp.com so let's dive straight into what we're going to be covering today in terms of the deeper meaning behind meditation. And I want to use an analogy that we use in the Meaning of Life experiment to help us understand what exactly meditation is. What is the mind? Why do we meditate? Or perhaps you're new to meditation, perhaps you haven't meditated before, and you want to understand what all the fuss is about. Well, today we're going to go quite deep. And as I present these ideas, I want you to realize that this is a sharing. This is not me telling you what I believe is the absolute truth or your truth, but I'm just sharing my truth and how I see meditation in the mind. And you take for it whatever you choose. So the starting point for this is the idea that once upon a time, in the beginning, however you want to start the story, all that existed was sunlight. There was just space and light. The light was everywhere, the space was everywhere. Just imagining that, and that space and that light was what we call blue. And for those of you who watch the Meaning of Life experiment, you've heard of that. If not, it doesn't matter. Blue B L U E B stands for bliss. So this light that existed everywhere is blissful, loving, unified and eternally existent blue. But don't worry too much about that right now. We'll come on to that a little later. So that's all that existed. And then a bowl came into the light. And when we look at this glass bowl, the space inside the glass bowl is the same as the space outside the glass bowl. And the light can fill the glass bowl. So you can imagine rays of the sun coming into the glass bowl and being just as powerful inside the bowl as they are outside the bowl. For those in the uk, you'll just have to imagine the rays of sunlight. Okay, it might be a little tricky for you to really visualize, but imagine this whole bowl is full of light. And this bowl, this separateness now, this sense of individuality is given a mind. So we represent the mind with water. So we pour some water into the bowl like this, and we see now that the water is in the bowl and the water takes up quite a bit of space. Imagine there's more water in this. In fact, to make this analogy better, I'm just going to fill it up with all the water that I've got and hopefully don't spill it all over myself. Okay, good. So there we have the water in the bowl, and now the water in the bowl is taking up space. And the water represents our thoughts and emotions. And we can see that the water now distorts the light. Whereas before the bowl was full of light, this separate ego was full of light. Now it's got some water in it. And the more stressed this person becomes, the more the water swirls around and around, around, creating that turbulence in the mind. And whereas once we would identify with the space and the light, now there is distortion. Can we see that? And there's busyness in the mind, the gushing tides of thoughts and emotions keeping us from our true self. And then on top of that, there is dirt which goes inside this bowl. And the dirt represents our conditionings. You might say, Ashok, what do you mean by conditionings? What on earth does conditionings mean? So now can you see? There is the dirt inside the bowl making the water dirty, the swirling water, the thoughts and emotions. The dirt represents our habits of responding to the world around us. And that clouds the light within us even more. So now there's less sunlight coming in and more space taken up by the thoughts and emotions in the mind. And the dirt represents four things. The first is our desires and resistances. So what we really want in life, that causes stress, or what we don't want, what we push against, what we don't accept and resist, that is the dirt in the bowl that fuels all of this swirling water. The second is our beliefs, our negative, limiting beliefs which keep the water swirling in the bowl. The third is our unresolved emotions. So if we have perhaps a lot of trauma or past experiences in our life, this also muddies the water, keeping the thoughts and emotions very active, which is why people who've had adverse childhood experiences or stresses and strains in their lives are more likely to go on to having emotional challenges later in life or physical challenges, even physical illness. So that's the third type of dirt that goes in the bowl. So, number one, our desires and resistances. Number two is limiting beliefs. Number three is emotions that we haven't resolved from past experiences. And number four is our habits of reacting to people or responding to people. Don't we find that there's someone in our lives that we just keep reacting to and responding to in exactly the same way over and over and over again, like we're going around in circles. We just find it difficult to break that reaction. So the four types of dirt, the four types of habits of the mind now distort the light coming in. And as we stay in this type of existence, what happens is this contributes to our anxiety, our fear, our sadness, our depression, and has mental, physical and emotional effects, causing us stress and draining energy. What do you think drains our energy? Do you think it's physical effort? How is it that we could be sitting in front of a computer screen all day, having not done any physical activity, and yet feel exhausted afterwards because the stress and the strain in the mind, the things we want or don't want, all of these things create this gushing water and keep us stressed, keep us busy. And most of us live life like this, with this swirling bowl, not even aware that we've identified now with the swirling water and the dirt instead of all this beautiful sunlight above it, all the light and the space. And let me describe now how meditation can impact on the bowl, on the light and the water within the bowl that's stopping us from experiencing blue, the bliss, love, unity, and eternal existence that we truly are. So let's take the example of criticism. This is something we can all relate to. So somebody criticizes us and what happens? Immediately our backs are up and there's more swirling water inside the bowl, right? And we're reacting to criticism, perhaps how we've always reacted. Perhaps it reminds us of childhood experiences when we were over criticized or even abused. And that creates these swirling water as we react highly emotionally to someone criticizing us. And the path of meditation in this scenario is the path of the rainbow, and the first letter of rainbow is R. So the first stage of meditation is to relax and calm the nervous system, calm the thoughts and emotions in the mind. So when we first start meditating, what happens is this swirling water begins to slow down and we begin to just have a bit of relief. And many of us are at that stage of meditation where we're meditating. We feel the positive effects, we feel calmer, and that's a great benefit. And by feeling calmer, the meditation is able to reduce the leakage of energy from all these thoughts and emotions, and we start getting more energy. And there have been so many scientific papers, studies on meditation and the health benefits that come. So mentally you have better concentration, better memory. Physically, you have more energy, a better immune system, and a stronger, more alert immune system. That's been proven. Emotionally, your amygdala, your brain becomes less reactive to the world around you. And we strengthen our prefrontal cortex, our conscious, rational mind, to make decisions, better decisions rather than emotional decisions. And so, so many benefits come through meditation. That's the first stage of meditation, and most people stop there. And that's what they use meditation for. And for those of you, you know, who perhaps have certain illnesses, you may get better from your illness and think right, meditation has served its purpose. That's it. But what I want to do today is share some of the other benefits that come and how we can nurture those benefits within us to feel happier and healthier. So the second stage of Meditation. The second letter of rainbow is A. A stands for awareness. As we start meditating, we start becoming more aware of the water in the bowl. So instead of the water just being calm and calm down, we start associating more with the light above the water instead of identifying with the water itself and the dirt in the bowl. And we start becoming aware, wow, look at how my mind is reacting. How interesting that I'm emotionally responding to that person in that way. So we start opening up a gap between the thoughts and emotions instead of just reacting normally. And this is what we need, right? Because you see, most of us identify with the thoughts. So imagine this is what you identify with. This little blue bowl. We put the ball inside the bowl, and we are trying to get out of our thoughts and emotions and trying to create some space. We're constantly being buffeted by our mind, almost a victim of our minds. But it is only when we are able to come out of the water and stay in the space to observe what's going on, the thoughts and emotions below it, And we become more conscious. We're becoming more conscious of our thoughts and emotions and the busyness of our mind. The water begins to still even more as we become more aware, because we're no longer fueling the cycle of thoughts and emotions. We get a thought which triggers an emotion, which triggers a thought which triggers an emotion. And that normally calls the swirling. But now we begin to slow down and become aware. What was unconscious within us has now become more conscious. The third stage of meditation, the I and the N of rainbow. I stands for the insights. We start gaining insights, and not only are we more aware of the thoughts, but we can go deeper into them and understand why we are reacting that way. We disidentify with our emotions and thoughts and conditionings and reactions, and we start taking responsibility for our thoughts and emotions. See, normally when we're criticized instantly, the mind wants to blame and throw it back on the other person and shout back. But we suddenly start realizing, oh, how interesting I'm responding in this way. And we allow the thoughts and emotions to burn out automatically. And many people ask me the question, how do I get rid of the thoughts and emotions? The water, how do I get rid of the dirt? It is by being in that same situation again, but this time observing your reaction instead of being the reaction and eventually no longer reacting at all. And what that does is it reduces the water in the bowl and it starts calming down the conditionings, the habits, and the water becomes cleaner and cleaner and cleaner. This is the Cleansing of our mind. We stop blaming the outside world of people and situations, but take responsibility. We become more centered. And this is why we talked about those four conditionings, didn't we? So as we meditate more, as we become more aware of the mind and realize our peace of mind is nothing to do with the outside world, it is to do with our inner world and our inner responsibility. Now, of course, there are situations that we might be in, such as if we're in an abusive situation or relationship, of course we don't just take on the full responsibility and deny the actions of others. Of course we remove ourselves from the situation and get support. But in most cases, we can take that responsibility and say, this is my response, my reaction, and let me observe it and stay calm and centered. And as we do that, this volume of water disappears or reduces and the dirt reduces. And N of rainbow stands for the New Groove Technique. For those of you who know about that, if you don't, that's fine. New Groove technique is all about how we can shift our responses to the world around us. And the New Groove technique is on the Irise app. So if you go to iriseapp.com, download the app or look at the website, type in New Groove Technique. And that's a powerful technique which mimics human change. And when you use that technique, you're able to once again release your stubborn responses to the outside world. And then you no longer have to cycle back to that situation. So stage one R of rainbow is relax. Stage two is becoming more aware of our reactions and bringing it to conscious awareness. Step three is insights. We start getting insights into why we react the way we do, what our mind does. And N is for New Groove Technique in stage three, which is all about shifting our perspectives. Calming the mind down reduces the water in the bowl. Stage four is identifying with being the witness Blue, the bee of rainbow. So blue means we start associating, although the water in this is blue, that's just a reflection of the light. We start associating with our blue consciousness, the witnessing Awareness. B stands for bliss. So we find that as we go deeper into meditation, we can start nurturing this feeling of natural joy coming up within us, natural enthusiasm for life. As we meditate, we think of meditators as these, you know, morose, you know, people sitting in monasteries meditating with sad faces. No, the point of meditation is to let go of all this conditioning that's hiding the light and to connect that natural joy. And many people who meditate comment on that, that suddenly one day they'll just wake up and feel that sense of joy, that sense of enthusiasm for life. Because we no longer are held back by the heaviness and the gushing tides of these thoughts and emotions. Love starts coming up Alpha in blue. We find ourselves becoming more compassionate to those around us and to ourselves. We want to give back to others just becomes a natural occurrence. U for unity. There is this idea that all the knowledge that ever existed or ever will exist already exists. Even a scientific aspect of that around the idea that time is an illusion. We are moving through space time, but all the information already exists and all the matter already exists. The information exists. How to coordinate that matter. So all the knowledge and wisdom exists in the world. We've simply got to tap into it. So you for unity means that we start connecting to that inner wisdom. We start finding creativity blossoms within us. And of course, intuition. That intuition, that sense of knowingness of what is right or wrong for us, we can begin to nurture that intuition. I give the example of when I published the medical paper many, many years ago on the reasons for me and chronic fatigue syndrome and other new conditions like long Covid fibromyalgia. When I came up with that hypothesis, I didn't feel like I knew the answer, but it really felt like I just had to write this down. Something was coming through me, some knowledge or wisdom about what was causing these types of neurological conditions. And that was the creativity, the intuition that spontaneously came through me. An E for eternal existence. That's where it really gets deep. The deeper meaning of meditation is as we identify more with the space and the light. When we meditate, we may sit there thinking, right, I am myself meditating on an object that might be a word or a mantra. So there is the act of observing or listening to that sound or mantra and the scenery seer. So I'm the watcher, the act of seeing and the scenery. But as we meditate more and more, as we go deeper, we find that the bowl becomes still and we start being able to see our reflection in the water and see who we really are. That existence and the act of seeing and the seer and the scenery merge into one, into a singularity where we actually feel connected to those around us and the entirety of existence. And in stage four, as we identify more with the blue, witnessing awareness or consciousness, there's less water, less dirt, and so more space for the light. We start realizing and having insights on the true nature of reality. So so far, R is for relaxation. That's what meditation does. Next stage A is for awareness. We become more aware of what's going on in our minds. I is for insights into our reactions and what's going on in the mind. And then N is for the new groove technique where we're able to retrain our mind more effectively. B is for blue. Stage four, we start identifying with being the light, the blue consciousness. And stage five, the O and the W of rainbow is oh, wow.