It still surprises, after many years meditating, how doing nothing but simply quieting and emptying the mind in nature is the most fruitful and important thing one can do. Especially in these dark times.

Being active and productive is good, to a point; however, being busy is not. Busyness has become a global cultural disease. It’s a cover for barrenness, a socially sanctioned escape from internal individual and collective reality. It’s a vice posing as a virtue that even supposedly spiritual people use as an excuse for falling short.

At what point does the cost of not changing become more painful than the price of transformation? Barack Obama ran on “hope and change” in 2008, and after his two relatively halcyon terms, America entered an era of darkness in 2016. Now the Trumpian tunnel is getting darker by the day.

Even liberal voices, at least in the mainstream media, are afraid to touch the supposed third rail of what’s really needed, which is radical change.

For example, Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, rhetorically asked in a column, “What would life in an economy that made a clean energy transition be like? Almost indistinguishable from life in the economy we have now. People would still drive cars…and watch videos about superheroes and funny cats.”

Really?

The subtext is that life in this culture, which begins and ends with the job, the economy and entertainment, is basically good. Supposedly, the “American way of life” had nothing to do with the vacuous spiritual reality before Trump, which has been politically manifested, projected and amplified by this totalitarian administration.

Progressives largely deny the existence of evil and rail against “demonization from both sides.” But their see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil approach has allowed right-wing extremists to tar and feather the left with their projection of malevolence and malignancy.

To his credit, Krugman sometimes speaks the truth, even in the same column: “Pay any attention to modern right-wing discourse and you find deep hostility to any notion that some problems require collective action beyond shooting people and blowing things up.”

Of course, “collective action” has become a cliché. And even if “the resistance” was much more widespread than it is, it doesn’t address and so wouldn’t affect the core causes and drivers of the precipitous decline of the United States, which is dragging down the entire world.

Radical change has become imperative, not just in America but globally. It begins within the individual, since an inward life is the basis and wellspring of outward change in society.

Therefore one has to make the space, take the time, and be deeply but playfully serious about one’s inner life, for oneself and the future of humanity.

Experiment with observation, without focusing on the self. Concentrating on “my mind” is solipsism, aka navel staring, whereas attending to the movement of the mind is the path of self-knowing, and freedom.

Sit outdoors, even if it’s just on a patio. Turn off the cell, even for just 20 minutes, and ask not to be disturbed. Unless you’re living in Gaza, and hopefully even there soon, you can find 20 minutes to be quiet and observe the movement of self and thought during the day.

Question and play with observation. Awareness and attention are the most important capacities the human being has, which no artificial intelligence will ever have.

Meditative states emerge spontaneously from the application of all one’s energy to passive observation. Without effort or goal, awareness catches the observer/self in the act of judging, evaluating and choosing. (Choosing is not the mark of freedom; choosing is always conflicted and confusing because it’s inherently conditioned, a product of the fragmentary self.)

When the reaction of the observer/self ceases in attention that’s grown quicker than thought, the repetitive internal reactions of thought (such as the chattering mind) naturally and effortlessly cease.

The rational, non-rational and irrational functions of the mind-as-thought fall silent, and there is a tremendous sense of wholeness, peace and renewal. From that diligent daily space of insight and clarity, one sees what to do, alone and with others.

Sitting beside the creek that runs through town, a small, crested bird lands close, prompting wider and deeper attention. A bit later, a jay lands directly overhead, without squawking. It’s a friend, and waits patiently for the almond I leave for it in a notch of a root next to where I sit.

The mind and heart are again quieted and wiped clean in the passive observation and unwilled, intense attention. Standing, the familiar place has lost its familiarity.

The recognising faculty of thought, which can plug even stunningly new scenes into the oldness of experience and perception, is not operating.

Thought is a mechanism, and humans have built machines that replicate its functions. True perception and insight belong to the human being however, and can never be replicated.

Moreover, intensely observing the movement of the past from stillness in the present opens the door to the infinite.

Martin LeFevre

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