I started about 30 years ago with a simple meditation technique that my teacher at the time showed me. He suggested that I had too many thoughts in my head and that a little more distance from thinking would do me good. His diagnosis was correct: my “skull” was often buzzing, I was constantly worrying and my stomach was too empty. I learned from him how I could move the energy in my body with my breath. With the help of this technique, I brought the too much in my head into my belly. This worked wonderfully in the beginning. My head became emptier and inner peace quickly set in. The noticeable changes in my body and a slowly developing calmness convinced me to invest at least 10 minutes twice a day for this exercise. One of the side effects of this daily ritual was that I sometimes became aware – even during the day – that I had already lost myself in my – often worrying – thoughts again. I realised that my inner dialogue had a tremendous power that I had not been aware of at all until then. My next goal was therefore to anchor myself more and more in the inner observer, or to develop distance from my thoughts.
There were times in meditation when it was just a fight against my thinking, which brought me to my knees again and again. Endlessly I lost myself in the inner dialogue of worries, plans, fears or future scenarios. Moreover, my body didn’t want to sit still. It was incredibly difficult to just sit still for 10-20 minutes and do nothing. Often it was an inner struggle and trying to control my thoughts to find inner peace. After years of practice, I realised that I needed to completely change the way I meditated. I wasn’t getting anywhere like that, it was far too exhausting for me.
So I asked myself what would happen if I gave up the war against my thoughts. What helped me was a spontaneously arising question in a meditation, which was, “Who is actually meditating?” I started by letting go of the idea of what meditation is and how to meditate correctly. Because I had a lot of ideas about how I should feel if I could meditate successfully: calm, deeply relaxed, ecstatic; I would have extraordinary experiences, go deep into my essence, into my Buddha nature, into the highest level of consciousness, etc. All these ideas generated a subtle but constant pressure of expectation in meditation. The only reason I could think of for not reaching these states seemed to be that I had not really penetrated the technique and was unfortunately practising it lousily and incompletely. So apparently I wasn’t trying hard enough and always felt bad after meditation because, after all, I hadn’t managed to meet my inner demands. I had simply transferred the same demand for performance on the outside to the inner world.
I now began to approach meditation with a completely different attitude. For once I didn’t care at all what would happen. I began to forget all pretensions and just sit. I stopped looking for any experience other than the one that was happening, or letting go of any form of effort or control. No more expectations, no more demands to fully accept everything that was just happening inside me and around me. It no longer mattered what was going to happen in the meditation. I just sat still, with no resistance to what was happening and no effort. I no longer tried to direct or control my experience in any way. This attitude became the basis of my meditation. Today I call it “natural meditation”. It is simple, can be done at any time, is free of any beliefs and leads directly into the peace of one’s being.
Natural meditation is our primary nature. Therefore, we do not find it when we seek it, but only when we give up all seeking. Now, dear reader, make a small attempt with me:
Step 1: We focus on an object in front of us, such as the text you are reading or the sounds in the room. Here we are in the realm of external objects. Shapes have material form, move or are static.
Step 2: Shift your attention more inwards, into the world of your thoughts, feelings or sensations. When we perceive a thought, we can ask ourselves: In what does this thought appear? Where does it arise and where does it disappear to? When we perceive a physical sensation, like the feeling in our hands or feet, we direct our attention inwards. The objects here are “more fluid, less solid. But we are still in the world of objects, even if they are the inner objects of our perception.
Step 3: Now we take another step inside and ask ourselves: How does it feel to be the one who perceives all this? What is it like to be aware of myself? When I am simply the perceiver, with no attention attached to inner or outer objects, self-awareness simply takes place. Attention rests, naturally falling back on itself.
The more we anchor ourselves in the awareness of the perceiver, the easier it will be for us to create distance from the inner world of thoughts, feelings and sensations and from the outer world of forms and events. This is the essence of natural meditation, a path without effort, the direct path into the peace of being.
One of the most beautiful gifts I have received in recent years is the feedback from Franziska, a participant in the last training course to become a transpersonal coach. She describes what is possible when one gets involved in this direct, meditative path into being: “I just know I have arrived, with me, in this wonderful new consciousness. And yes, the how is difficult to describe. Everything suddenly comes so easily, things fall into place without any effort on my part. Life shows me my way – in the truest sense of the word. Everything I need comes to me – very often or almost always free of charge. Everything my heart desires opens up to me. By doing nothing, just by being in this consciousness – all I have to do is read the signs that are “sent” to me. Be it through nature, people, words, what I see, what I feel, what I touch. It is beautiful. We can be what we want to be. And I can pass on this “light” as a coach – beautiful things happen with the people around me.”