The way I see it, when it comes to establishing a practice for meditation, the main obstacle is the personality.

Personification, is giving human traits (qualities, feelings, actions, or characteristics) to non-living objects (things, colors, qualities, or ideas)…

Human traits – what are these? Who decides what my traits are? Who dictates what it means to be human? As we have been consumed by our culture, our societies,  these things by and large tell us what we are.

Having accepted these definitions we form an individual personality – as much as that is even possible. It’s more like we’ve had our personalities formed for us. This societal shaping has left a vast portion of the world without the most vital piece of the, who am I, puzzle. Most people, groomed in western cultures, have not been taught the most essential aspect of being human.

Everything is energy. If we want more energy in our everyday lives what do we do? What comes to mind? Diet, exercise, having more fun? I don’t know what goes through every ones mind but I know that there is always certain ideas associated with gaining more energy. I can tell you exactly what to do if you want more energy – get more energy.

Where is the energy? How do we get it? What do we have to do? We could start by knowing that everything is energy. Most understand something about nutrition. I take that back. Most people I’ve talked with don’t even think about it. Most people know that if they don’t get food they’ll get weak and die. Food is energy.

As soon as we are willing to stop looking at stuff as stuff and start seeing everything as energy we’ll be on our way to a better life. We have a Sun. It provides the energy needed for this planet to make stuff. The planet takes the energy from the Sun and makes – Energy Things. These things have been given names and they’ve been defined – by us.

There are two ways for us to get the energy we need for our energy bodies to work. Directly from the Sun or from the energy stuff. While I was writing I went to the kitchen and got some energy, in the form of oatmeal. This isn’t all the energy I’ll need today. But the energy I got from it enables me to do this work. I took that form of energy and now I’m changing it into thinking, typing and so on.

Simply changing the mental language we use to talk to ourselves is helpful. “Hmmm, I feel like I’m low on energy, what form and flavor of energy should I have”. The essential part of meditation is paying attention. We can get better at paying attention and, as a result, meditation by playing these little games. Another benefit of this food game is we start to ask questions about what we eat. Like how much energy is in this? We can then put the high energy food first on the list of what we need to eat.

Meditation and Paying Attention

I was having a conversation with a guy the other day and he was talking about how he was thinking about hooking up with this teacher but the teacher was doing some business things that he didn’t like and…… This conversation went on for a while. The main gist was – I want to do something so I’ll feel better but it’s hard to find people I feel comfortable being around…. I want to find a place to fit in and start practicing something etc.

At some point I said, what you’re talking about is personality stuff. What you’re looking for has nothing to do with personalities. It’s all about energy…..

You can find all kinds of theory surrounding meditation. But looking for a personality fix is not the type of meditation I talk about. There are places on the internet where my site is listed in the self help/self improvement section. I really don’t want to be there. Self awareness, self identification, defining the self would be closer.

Dealing specifically with the personality is like wanting the lawn to only grow to a height of four inches. But because we don’t know how to do that we keep mowing it. Constantly working to improve the personality is sort of like that. It grows back. Because we didn’t change anything. The personality is a by product of mistaken identity. What does it mean to be human? What is human?

Humans as Energy

It’s inescapable. What’s at the root, the core, the source, of being? Energy. So why deal with anything else? You want to know what the best part of this whole energy idea is? It’s the easiest to practice. Everything else – the personality, the spiritual self, my essence – are all conceptual. You might discard a concept but working on ourselves as conceptual beings is just confusing. It’s hard. I guess that’s why so many people just give up….

What if we just watched, focused on, payed attention to our bodies? What if we looked for the energy? What if we adopted a daily practice that increased our awareness of ourselves as energy? What if we could actually, very quickly, say, “Oh, yeah, there it is. I feel it, I get it…”? This “realness” is the difference between looking at ourselves as human definitions and looking at ourselves as energy. One is relative, one is.

I’ve never been to a meditation group or class. I don’t follow any rules. I do pay attention to what the people who I feel have it right are saying and doing. What I want is a practice I can do in the living room, in the car, on the golf course – right now. Being aware of ourselves as energy is not a 15 minute exercise that we do once a day and get on with our lives – hoping that what we did will make our  lives better. To ourselves as energy we can pay attention constantly.

Once we start noticing our energy selves we’ll naturally be aware of it all the times. Once you’re aware of yourself as energy it’s impossible to forget, fail, get frustrated or decide it isn’t working. There’s nothing to – not work. It’s not a personality exercise. It’s seeing what is.