After 4th Grade I grew up in Fairfield, Iowa, a small farming community and college town. Fairfield garnered national attention in 1974 when Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the Beatles' guru and founder of Transcendental Meditation), bought the entire campus of defunct Parsons College. The Maharishi re-purposed the college campus into T.M. University to teach the finer points of his meditation method, and applications of that method to business and social issues.

I had left Fairfield by 1974, but the event did inspire me to look further into the TM movement and its tenents. The type of meditation used by TM'ers is a sound-based mantra (chanting) one. The intention being to create a sound to focus the mind on and then to perceive the true origin of the sound. By this method, one becomes sensitized to the causation of any thought or perception. This was intriguing to me, so I did TM for a while, and it led me to a conclusion.

I realized that what I was basically "doing" was becoming aware of being aware. Later in life as I explored various shamanic practices, there was always an emphasis on connecting with awareness. It is awareness, after all, that is perceiving the world and presenting the world to the intellect for evaluation, judgment, and decision-making.

In shamanism, though, the intellect per se is suspended, so the world is no longer evaluated or compared to past experience. Thus, any emotional or mental reactions to the world are seen for what they truly are: social and genetic programming of the ego (see "Memes or Values").

In the field of personal growth, a person is said to be unable to change until they become aware of themselves enough to want to change--the old horse-to-water analogy. A good example is the 12-Step Program used for recovery from alcohol and drug addictions. Most of the 12 Steps have to do with becoming aware of oneself and one's actions: "1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—-that our lives had become unmanageable; 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

These first two steps of the 12-Step program require self-awareness, and an awareness of a higher consciousness at work that brought them to that awareness. This is becoming aware of being aware. In fact, making it a practice to simply be aware of being aware is the essence of any spiritual endeavor, and is certainly at the crux of self-improvement decisions, or any other changes desired in life.

Now I hesitate to pigeon-hole this definition of meditation as a "spiritual practice," although it is, but it can be so much more than that. It is a way to be in the world. A social habit of humans is to categorize and define everything into a box, and this is a good thing when it comes to doing the actions of living a life in society. However, when it comes to spirituality, boxes just won't do.

The marketers of various types and styles of meditation make it seem that meditation is something we do in a particular way, in a specific setting, with a set of rules. And if you are not doing "that way," then you're not meditating. This is done in part for marketing and profiteering, but it has a invalidating effect on something we all have: the ability to be aware of being aware.

I hear people say, "I meditated for 15 minutes this morning," or "my meditation time went well for me today," as if it was an experience separate from the rest of their daily experience. And it probably was. My point being that it is possible to live life in constant meditation, being aware of being aware all the time.

Being in meditation in this way has all the advantages of the 15-minute meditation, plus provides a much richer world of experience that gathers more and more momentum as time goes on.

How to get there...

What exactly is meant by "being aware of being aware"? This is a particular perception that humans like to believe is exclusively human--self-awareness. I don't believe that, but that's another topic for later.

Self-awareness is part of the perception, the other part is noticing that there is a "watcher," or experiencer of what is perceived and felt. When you can spot that which is aware, then you are being aware of being aware.

An exercise I like to use that facilitates this type of awareness is the "drop down into the heart" technique. Most of us are chronically experiencing life from inside our heads. That's where all the mental stuff is that can very easily throw you out of meditation. So leave your head by "taking the elevator" down to your heart area. The very act of doing this requires that you become aware of where your awareness is, and then moving it. So you accomplish two valuable things here: 1. You become aware of your awareness, and 2. You move into a space away from the things that tend to prevent being aware of it.

Once you are in the "heartspace" (see "Working with the Heartspace"), the "job" is to realize when you are not in the state of being aware of being aware. And this can be tricky, so it takes some practice, especially if you lead a busy life full of tasks and responsibilities. However, it is certainly not impossible.

In fact, by living and moving in this sort of meditation, it gives you a "front row seat" to your mental and emotional processes, and can lead to some interesting and sometimes astonishing revelations about how you deal with the world.

One example was my key-losing problem. Once I had committed to maintaining this meditation, it dawned on me that everytime I would put my keys somewhere, I said to myself, "I'll forget where they are." And sure enough, when it came time to use the keys again, I could not for the life of me remember what I'd done with them. By spotting this mental "command" I was giving myself, I adopted a more aware modus operandi. When I put the keys down away from my body, I was aware of the surroundings and in essence said to myself, "I'll remember where these are." That solved the problem of losing keys for me.

The mechanism behind this is that memories can only be created when you are aware in the particular moment. If you are thinking about something else than the current NOW, you are not present, so will not remember anything about that moment, although you may remember that you were thinking of something else when you reference that moment from the future.

Another example of using this meditation is my relationship with Ralph, our big orange tabby tomcat (picture right). Most of his behaviors have been mysterious or illogical to me, and I was constantly harping on him about it. Until one day while in my meditation mode, I had just given Ralph some food after he'd been meowing for about 15 minutes. He then proceeded to walk off from the food. I was perplexed. I then let Wookie in from outside (our Llahsa Apso princess). I gave Wookie her food, and immediately Ralph began eating his. So I realized that Ralph was not wanting to be fed so much as for me to feed Wookie, too. So now it all made sense. After this, I became aware that the two animals had all sorts of little behaviors that would allow them to be fed at the same time. I just hadn't seen it before.

A final example, is in my musician life. I'm a freelance drummer and perform with several bands over the course of a month, as well as help host jam sessions. Normally, just playing drums faciliates getting into meditation anyway, but on this particular occasion, I caught myself thinking about how to help my sister out of a troubling situation. I was in the middle of a song, and it wasn't going too well. It was an improv jam with five other musicians on stage, all but one of whom were amateur beginning or intermediate-level players.

I spotted myself tripping off on this situation with my sister while the song we were playing was going into the toilet. When I realized what was going on in my head, I snapped to attention, became aware of being there and seeing and hearing everything, and suddenly it became crystal clear what I had to do to bring things back on track. I slammed down on the "1" with the snare to get everyone's attention, then overly emphasized the bass drum line, which immediately put everyone in order, and we got through the song without a train wreck--and it actually came out sounding pretty good. Had I not been in meditation, I'm quite sure it would have been a humiliating disaster for everyone (including the audience).

I can't help but wonder about all the accidents, misunderstandings, and other disasters that could be avoided if people generally adopted this meditation practice... and not just for 15 minutes a day...