I don’t think I need to make the case that the world is in a rough place right now. Things are heating up, be they tempers or the climate. You can feel the urgency in the air. When you’re young, you’re told you can do anything, you can change the world. Then you get older and routines happen, stress happens, and changing your hair is a big deal, much less changing the world. But still, the news reports keep coming and coming, one more devastating than the next. So much so, it can be numbing. What can one person do? What can I do? The answer is, you can do nothing. By nothing, I mean sitting and meditating. I realize coming from a meditation teacher, this can seem like a sales pitch of some kind, but it is not. I am writing this to make a case that meditation is not just about becoming more productive, or getting better sleep. In today’s world, meditation is a social imperative. We as a collective are suffering from massive overloads of stress. The more stress in the system, the more easily it is to ignore things. The more there is division. The more people are seen as “other.” Whole populations are desperately suffering, but our polarized society is leaving these people behind, or worse, treating them inhumanely. Our environment is suffering as well, and the closer it gets to a point of no return, the more people go back into their hole, it’s just too much. Or worse, they pollute the earth even more. But still, how can one person meditating change the world? There’s so much to be done and so many people, what can a drop do for the ocean? True, one person loaded down by stress, exhausted to the point of collapse every night, grasping at anything for a distraction, mind bouncing uncontrollably about with needy thoughts, that person can’t do much. But the person who meditates and therefore identifies as Oneness, whose senses deliver the experience of Oneness, that person who is guided by nature’s intelligence (i.e. intuition) so is always in exactly the right place at the right time, whose sense of Self incorporates everyone so who acts for everyone, who uplifts everyone they meet, who has boundless energy and limitless potential. That person can move the ocean because she identifies with her ocean of Self. She can change the world. The macro always reflects the micro. The desperate situation of the collective is reflective of the state of most peoples’ individual lives. There is division, anger and anxiety in people’s homes, even in the most affluent. But it doesn’t take everyone meditating to make a shift. The influence of someone who meditates is so powerful, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to say that when as few as 1% of the world’s population meditated, global peace would be the result. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes sense to me that one person can inspire others to pull themselves out of the routines of daily life and awaken. You can feel it in the air, the urgency, the need. It’s like a call to arms, but the opposite. It’s a call to love.
My sweet Scarlett, on her way to changing the world.