Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
Reveries
6.1997 It was a long time after I heard the word 'meditation' before I came to my own sense of it. The word means, in a western sense, "to think, ponder, or contemplate." In general, to consciously activate one's mind. Having less of a relationship with myself than with others, my western meditation was and still is mostly in the form of dialogue, or rap.
My meditation began with my love of truth; one's truth, or truth regardless of one. Such want, as wanting as I still am for understanding and wisdom enabled me to live with mystery, in that, understanding often takes time, and for some..more than a lifetime. I understood Keat's idea of 'negative capability'...the capability of living with a mystery, enabling me to see it without having to rationalize it away, and occasionally resolve a few. I can live with mystery as easily as with truth. Both have their pleasures. As to the quality of my understanding, only the course of my life will reveal.
Before I began to produce notes, I learned to meditate, but my teacher was not some resident Eastern avatar. Rather, it was love..simply love of life and respect for all in it. By necessity, I was already unassuming, whether I am trying to perceive a principle based on facts, or listen to someone's expression of artificial fact, which I collected as clues to their personal truth. And when I did make an assumption, it was to see where it would lead..how far it would go. Whether based on artificial information or not, love of truth, personal or not, compels one ultimately, to be unassuming. When I am not..at least I know I'm not..because one often has to act now, and as often, it is based on assumption; nevertheless, assumptions are kept to as few as possible.
There are very old questions in me still unanswered. They accumulate over the course of one's life. With each question, there is suspension of mind, and after a time, a number of years in search of gold, I began to feel the effect of these suspensions. It was this cumulative effect that enabled me to meditate another way, to grasp and maintain a state of suspension, which lead to greater powers for seeking answers to deeper queries. So it came to be, meditation is also a'meditation, a suspension of one's thinking. Past a certain threshold from accumulated "unanswered" queries comes the greatest gift, perhaps one of the most essential powers; that is, the ability to consciously occupy one's mind and not think. Consciously suspending one's thinking indefinitely is the power one maintains over mind. Without it, I'm sure, the power over one's mind will inevitably be gained, at least in part, by someone else.
So, when I am not rapping, it may look like I am thinking, but really I am enjoying what must be one of the most pleasant experiences one can have..a special kind of peace, ironically effected by not activating one's mind, but by exercising conscious power over it. This power enables greater attention span, which ultimately facilitates thinking. The best of what one is capable of producing from thinking relates first to one's ability to not think. When it's necessary to act on assumption, at least the assumption will be as informed as much as possible.
Strength of mind is also characterized by the ability to control whether to think or not. A'meditation enables me to extend attention span, to accumulate as much information as possible, to then meditate through dialogue and eventually make assumption to be as informed and relevant to one's self as much as possible. I avoid internal monologues or dialogues. I do these sparingly, only when necessary...to minimize the risk.