Inspiration is an Inside Job by Sunny Massad, Ph.D.

Everyone has hopes and ideas about how things will be in the future and how long it will take for each desire to be satisfied. And then life presents unexpected detours. Health degenerates, loved ones need assistance, natural disasters occur, egos clash and relationships sever…any number of mishaps can occur along the way. As John Lennon once said, “life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”

Buddhism claims that desire is the cause of all human suffering; that the very nature of wanting causes people to miss feeling fulfilled and at peace in the present. Once a person realizes the futility of chasing after the objects of desire, freedom reigns. This is not to say that you should not have objects of desire or that you should not aspire to attain them. Young people want to be older, poor people want to be richer, single people want to have partners, and on and on it goes. However, you need not sacrifice the quality of your present moment while you are preparing for the future. Planning is a useful and motivating activity as long as you can also remain flexible and maintain a sense of humor when plans are delayed, cancelled, or diverted. True inspiration results in being conscious and aware that your will is only as effective as circumstances allow it to be. If your financial security is threatened, your desire to buy or build a house may be squelched. If your body breaks down or you have a child, you may have to abandon old desires and replace them with new ones that can be generated from your present condition.

Western civilization focuses on chasing after the objects of desire, rather than settling into the feeling of desire itself. Living your life from burning desire, but not for anything in particular, is the key to living an inspired life. Desire is the very source of your inspiration and passion. All creativity arises out of this. Take a moment to think of something that you truly desire. Now, without focusing on the object of your desire, simply feel the pure emotion of desire itself. It might be experienced as a thirst or a longing. When you focus not on the satisfaction you will get in the future once you have attained the object of your desire, but on enjoying the creative process of aspiring, you will embody the classic paradox: the journey itself is the goal.

It is an endless juggling act to keep from becoming too rigid and disciplined or overly self-indulgent and comfortable. Most self-help and “power of positive thinking” books teach that you can design and manifest the shape of your life; whereas both Eastern and Western religions advocate a “not my will but Thine” approach. UnTherapy, a system of counseling I originated back in the 1990's, embraces both approaches. The focus of UnTherapy is to give you access to the feelings that you believe your desires will give you regardless of time and space, and then to strategize what needs to happen in your heart, mind, and circumstances to manifest those desires.

Meditations for Busy People by Roshani Shay, Ph.D.

My teacher, Osho, used to say that all of the dozens of methods or techniques of meditation, in order to be effective, need to be grounded in the same three indispensable qualities: relaxation, awareness, non-judgment.

First, when you sit down to meditate, make sure that the body is relaxed. There is no need to contort into positions that are uncomfortable. If you do, the body will simply scream for attention through an aching knee or a foot that goes to sleep. Such aches and pains will distract you from a meditative state. It will give the mind things to think about, complain about and this is not meditation. However, relaxation also means making your peace with the activity of the mind, even if it is complaining. Meditation is not about controlling the mind, not about concentration, not about trying to make the mind quiet. It is rather about realizing that while the mind’s job may be to generate thoughts and emotions, you can step back from all of that activity. You can allow it, but not be totally identified with it, or even distracted by it. Therein lies true inner relaxation.

Now, this is where the second quality, awareness, comes in handy. You can take one step back and just watch whatever is happening in your body, in your mind, even in the outside world, as you hear it or feel it when the eyes are closed. In this watching, an interesting insight quite naturally arises. If you can observe your body, your thoughts, your emotions, you are not those things; you are the observer. This gives you a whole new point of view.

Along with the perspective of the watcher, the observer, non-judgment is a critical quality of meditation. Judgments often arise in the mind during meditation. “I am a bad meditator. The person who is making noise outside is so rude. I don’t like just sitting here.” Lots of conversation about what is good and what is bad, what is liked and disliked, may flit across your consciousness. Such thoughts can be a distraction from dropping into a state of meditation, from allowing that state of being where silence and emptiness arise naturally. Or thoughts may simply fade away as you disengage from the content of your thinking and focus instead on your sensory experience, such as, for example, the movement of your breath into and out of your body.

“These are the three things: relaxation, watching, no judgment, and slowly, slowly a great silence descends over you. All movement within you ceases. You are, but there is no sense of ‘I am’ – just a pure space.” Osho

It is this pure, silent space that is the true fruit of meditation. It is this silent center that can allow us to be in our busy, doing lives, but not become trapped in the busy-ness or the doing.

Roshani Shay, PhD. is the Executive Director of the Hawaii Wellness Institute and Co-Director of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Programs of Hawaii. When she discovered meditation in 1984, it provoked a major life transformation which included dropping caffeine and cigarettes, perfectionism, and a compulsion for being a workaholic. Roshani Shay has facilitated meditation workshops for more than fifteen years and is widely known for the way she gracefully moves through challenging situations with effectiveness and relative equanimity.