Filling The Emptiness

Empty your mind. Just focus on your breathing. Just watch your thoughts and let them float on by.

Mindfulness/meditation is everywhere. There are dozens of apps, websites, it's mentioned in magazines and on TV. To some it is deeply spiritual, but to many it is considered to be a secular practice, stripped of it’s religious roots, and coming with a myriad of scientific benefits. It is becoming more and more mainstream.

I used to spend hours meditating. And when my mind was empty things would drop in - little insights, or a dead relative speaking to me, a perception that time and space did not exist, the sense of a ‘being’ in the corner of the room.

These instances were the exception rather than the rule, most of the time it was just me getting tangled in my thoughts, and now and then remembering I was supposed to be focusing on my breathing. But the more spiritual moments made me excited, that there was a whole spiritual realm out there that I could explore, the more I meditated, the more likely it seemed that I might get into a deep enough state that this realm would open up.

It seems that emptying our mind has the potential to become like a cosmic blank slate, ready to be filled. And what is it we are being filled with? It is just our imagination? Is it our mind playing tricks on us? Can meditation send you crazy? Or is it a real spiritual realm we have opened up?

I believe the latter. And yet, although it is very real, it may not always be true.

Like many spiritual seekers, I would get excited when I experienced something mystical, and must admit there was probably a bit of pride about it, that I was getting ‘good’ at this, that I was able to get myself into the state where more was simply happening than forgetting to notice my breathing.

And like many spiritual seekers I would take my experiences at face value, if I heard a dead relative talk to me, then I assumed it was that dead relative, and if I perceived for a split second that there was no time and space, then I felt that I had gained an insight about what our reality is really like, beyond human perception.

In the bible it says that the ‘devil disguises itself as an angel of light,’ and gives instructions for how to ‘test the spirits’ to see if the spirits come from God, or not.

But yet why would you do this, if you don’t believe in God, if you believe in an endless expanse of universal oneness that you can plug into without being mediated by some boring, strait laced religion, that is telling you to be careful.

Over this year I’ve listened to dozens of testimonies online, from ex psychics, who spoke to the dead, to a Buddhist who experienced demonic attack, from an ex. astral projecting, musician who wrote songs about selling his soul to the devil, from people who experienced alien attack, and the one thing that they all said was that calling on the name of Jesus saved them. And that the aliens were not aliens, and that the dead relatives were not dead relatives, but in fact, demons.

It led me to believe something I was hugely resistant to, that we live in a reality that is fundamentally subject to the authority of God, and Jesus, that God is real, and that the mental phenomena we experience when we go into altered states of consciousness may not always be what we think it is.

The amount of people who got help by calling on the name of Jesus left me in no doubt that we do need to run all our spiritual experiences via ‘testing the spirits’ and asking if they are of God.

This isn’t fashionable to say, and it’s not politically correct, it’s something I’ve spent many hours not wanting to believe it’s true, but the evidence stacked up to the point where I could not deny it anymore.

A line from the 1995 film The Usual Suspects says that ‘the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.’

It can seem like all fun and games to float off into the vast and boundless universal consciousness and see what happens, but I don’t think practises like visualising white light are good enough protection.

These days I prefer to be tethered, to be anchored in the safety of God. I have found that prayer gives me all the benefits that I used to receive from meditation. In long prayer sessions I can feel my body relaxing. I get the sense of stillness I often crave. I notice from time to time that breathing naturally slows down, without me making a conscious effort to pay attention to it.

I like that I am not floating off into the universe, but am in a personal relationship, like with a friend or listening partner who really knows how to listen, but times 1 billion percent in magnitude.

Sometimes I think to myself, why was the act of prayer not stripped of it’s religious connotations, why was it not mainstreamed and promoted as a way to cope with everything from workplace stress to parenting, and anxiety? It is just as beneficial, and yet, it is mindfulness and meditation that play a starring world on this world stage.

Why?