Closet Meditators

There is a movement afoot. The eastern practice of meditation is inculcating the western world.

Perhaps if I wrote consistently from the position of digression, it would be less of a problem. But then, I digress even further…..moving on.

Closet meditators. YES ! MEDITATORS COME OUT OF YOUR CLOSETS !

but we cant. Our closets are our chidler-spaces. Let me explain. When I was a kid growing up in Lompoc California, we dug holes. We dug these holes in the sandy soil of the coastal town known as Lompoc. For more information see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpDD0eOq-0o Not that this is the Lompoc of my yout, but this 1940 film was shot there. But I digress. Again.

We dug holes in the ground. They were our forts. We covered them with cardboard and a thin layer of sand and we created a subterranean world all our own where adults couldn’t find us. We stole candles from cupboards and stayed in our lairs for hours reading comics and enjoying the cool shade of our caves. At least that’s how I remember it. Of course it all came to an end when some ersatz adult fell to his death as he crashed through the fragile eggshell of our cardboard ceiling.

When we couldn’t dig holes we would arrange the furniture in our bedrooms and drape it with blankets creating tent cities that we could hide away from the world in. You remember these. This is a common human experience. Every kid has made one. You remember how it felt to be inside. Womb-like. And that was indeed the point.

Meditation v/s Medication. Throughout the Eastern world people seek to quiet their minds and to attain a state of celestial calm. It is in this state that wisdom and revealed consciousness coalesce and the little mind-made-me acquiesces. Little moments of P&Q – Peace and Quiet. For me, my mind has always been particularly disturbing. It is what a friend at the SOJ calls “Monkey Mind” Continuous chatter about nothing. Just noise. To wit, I really don’t even have any interest in the content. It is all just repetitive…blovious….garbage. But I digress.

Back to the closet. It has this quality. It is my fort, my tiny hole in the ground, my blanket covered furniture. My quiet space that grownups cant fit in. It is my fort. Now add some science.

For years I have been fascinated by the science of sound. All the way back to the greeks and the modes, it has been apparent that different sounds and frequencies elicit different emotional states. Not just emotional states, but states of being. Let me repeat that …. States of Being. Important. It is important because we must draw a distinction between a state of being…and a state of mind. The former is eternal. The latter….material and transient. What I have been fascinated with is the idea that the meditative state is a state of being, or a state of consciousness. A connection with the eternal. I achieve it in my closet. I do it by sitting on my woofer.

Yea. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre. Or I couldn’t find any more obsequious or antiquated language to use…yes, I sit on my woofer.

Frequencies and the use of sound to achieve balance in the chakras as well as the entrainment of the left and right sides of the brain using binaural sounds is well grounded in science. There are tons of data and research on this. I have been sifting through it with great vigor. And this is the stuff of a life’s work, not blog entry.

The bottom line, is that I have perched my bottom on a woofer. As a musician, I thought to myself…”OK self….if it is all about frequencies…and changing the frequencies for optimal health at the cellular level….if I use the concept of sympathetic vibration to get my whole body vibrating at certain frequencies…this could have curative, restorative effect. Hence, sitting on a woofer.

In my closet. I have a chair. It is mounted to a subwoofer. I drive it with an MP3 player. I use the frequencies of sound associated with the chakras produced from a sound generator (software) and I meditate in my closet, surrounded by, enveloped by, hugged by, covered by, loved by, the vibrations of sounds. Entrainment. It is very cool.

In Santa Barbara California real estate is….well…let’s just say it don’t come cheap. In my little room’ the space is all premium. I forfeit some closet space for the sake of my sanity. It is where my consciousness practice happens. Perhaps the most important practice I do. But I digress.