The Waking

I wrote the first of these blog posts, on 6th February this year, about a moment of awakening. Now, nearly seven months later, at the time of writing this post, I’ve had many such moments in which I was prompted to stop what I was doing, pause and sit or stand in silence for a few minutes. They are different from my usual morning meditations, which are intended. The former just happen. These moments feel more like I’m being meditated rather than meditating by intention.  They feel as though they just happen naturally rather than trying to make something happen. You may have a favourite theory about the origin of such things – an unconscious urge emerging from the Id into the conscious Ego, in Freud’s terms, or a pre-conscious habit receiving attentional resources in more general cognitive terms - but to me it feels as though the meditation wants to happen and so, pausing anything else that was going on, it does! I’ll try and make this relevant to some kind of awakening process in ...

  Before I start this post I should emphasise that I do not gain materially from this or any other blog I have written. If you have to get through Google adverts to read these blogs then I apologise – I would turn them off if I knew of a way to do that.  Anyway, this blog is devoted to a recommendation for a meditation practice that I really appreciate and that is taught by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, who was trained in both the Tibetan Buddhist and Bon traditions. The meditation itself goes under a variety of names, but is often called something like, ‘Awakening the luminous mind’ or ‘Awakening to inner stillness.’ As with all meditation practices of which I am aware, some will find this one profound, transformative and enlightening (me, for example), while others will find it less helpful. The reason I want to recommend this practice is related to the reason why I meditate at all and that is to explore inner life and understand human potential. If you meditate to de-stress, to ...