Meditation Essentials: Understand A Problem

n today’s meditation practice we had the instruction to relax first and then to evoke into our imagination a problem, particularly a problem that causes pain and suffering, whether for us or someone else. Did anyone solve their problem in meditation today? I did not give you that practice expecting that anyone would solve their problem. Did anyone find that when they began to imagine that problem that their mind was filled with thoughts? How about filled with emotions? How about tension in the body or discomfort and agitation? Did you want to run screaming out of here?

The reason we did that practice today is to discover why we cannot solve our problems. It is because of our mind. We see the problem. It is very easy to identify and recognize where we have problems, because they are accompanied by pain. This is inevitable. This is how nature works. Where we have a problem there is suffering, whether our own suffering or someone elses. The reason we cannot solve those problems is because we do not know how to use the faculties of consciousness.

Because of our conditioning, when we look at a problem, we react to it. Our mind justifies ourselves. We repeat our point of view, our perspective, our rights, we go over our traumas or how we were wronged and justified in what we did etc. etc.

The Three Traitors
In Christianity that tendency is symbolized by a figure named Pontius Pilate, who was very intelligent, very clever, and very smart. He always washes his hands of the crimes that he facilitates. Our intellect does that. This way that we think and the way that we utilize reasoning is our traitor. It betrays our consciousness, which in the gospel is represented by Christ who is sent to the slaughter by Pilate.

This happens because the Christ is delivered to the Romans by Caiaphas, the high priest. Caiaphas is the believer, the noble priest who seems to radiate so much goodness, so much gentleness, so much love, and so much humility, but is actually the executioner of the soul. Caiaphas is the one that sends the soul to Pilate to be judged and crucified. That symbolizes our the traitor in our heart, which is emotions, attachments and desires that process through us emotionally.

In meditation today, when we visualized a problem, many thoughts appeared; did you notice that they are the same thoughts that we always have about the problem? And then emotions are there, pain, resentment, pride, anger, and the envy that we feel. All of those emotions attached to that problem are Caiaphas. The believer, the “noble” and “holy one” is a liar!

These emotions are lies because they are rooted in desire, fear, anger, pride, envy, gluttony, and greed, and all of those qualities that none of us want to admit that we have.

In all of our problems, we only want to see ourselves as the virtuous one, the holy one, the priest or the priestess (Caiaphas). We only want to see ourselves as the smart one, the intelligent one (Pilate). We do not realize that in fact that these images of ourselves are flawed. These figures are traitors. They are not virtuous. Instead, they are the cause of our suffering.

How did all that happen in the gospel? Does anyone know? Who let all of that happen? Judas.

Judas is the one who betrays Jesus, and starts that process. Who is Judas symbolically speaking? It is all the energy that we have in us. It is our life force. It is the vitality that we get from divinity to be alive. Divinity gives us that energy, but we utilize all of our vitality and all of our energy for our desires. We convert it into a traitor.

Contemplate as a scientist the context of our lives. Observe yourself the way a scientist would. For example: here is an organism, and it was born at this time, and lives in this period of time, eating and consuming and acting, all these little things that this organism does, but let us put all that in a chart and analyze how it spent all of its time and energy. Where did it get spent? On what? If you put it in a chart, 99% or more of all that time and energy was spent on desires. How much was spent on spirituality, on developing the consciousness and awakening, on meditation? In the context of your entire lifetime, if you look at it in hard facts, the factual, honest results are not beautiful. We all think we are spiritual people, but the truth is even if you look at the context of a single day, how much of that time did you really seriously invest into your soul? It is that you will keep when you die. Nothing else will be with you. All the other things that you are putting time and energy into you will lose.

How much of our time goes to TV, internet, chit chat, gossip, Facebook, eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, chasing girls, chasing boys — whatever it is we do — compared to how much time was spent developing the consciousness, your inherent nature? The consciousness survives death.

I think you will find the facts very distressing. That is why we did that exercise in meditation today. It is not an easy exercise. It is not easy to be honest with oneself.