Transcription
For me, I've been meditating now for a little over 20 years. Um, I I started meditating even though I was raised the church I was raised in said that that actually was a bad thing to do. They they warned us against meditation. You you're opening yourself up to the devil.
>> Can I just ask which type of meditation, Don? Sorry.
>> Uh, well, so I I sit in silence and I it's so it's not any particular I have no particular tradition. I I literally just sit in silence and and um as Ruber was now I I just go directly there. I just okay time to let go of thoughts and you just let go of thoughts and you just sit there and it's it's utter silence and there's a almost like a hyper alertness. I mean just like you're just aware and but but there there's no contents going through your head. You you just you're aware of all you can be aware of the sensory experiences but but you're not thinking about them and and you get the sense like wow uh this is this is really being alive getting lost in in self-s serving thoughts you know worrying about this how do I look to that person how do I get that's all a dream that that's when I'm in that state of mind I'm I'm I'm asleep but when you let go of thoughts completely and just sit there in silence and just and just take a walk even you don't have to be in a room you can just take a walk and say oh I I'm not interested in thinking and just let go of thoughts and just look at the tree and all of a sudden it comes alive and you whoa it's you get a completely different hit from from reality as you do that and and for me that all of a sudden it makes like girdles incompleteness theorem is it's not just an abstract thing it's the truth I mean when I let go of any of these finite formal systems any thought all of a sudden I am the deep reality I am that if the unlimited truth and it's stunning you you just walk in it and and and then you then I go back to sleep right you then I go back and go back into the dream world and there I am defending myself and trying to you know upset that someone did this to cut me off on the road and then then then you wake up again and go okay I I don't need to think and whoa well I'm I'm So it's it's really it's it's it's interesting and it it I would say early on in the meditation it was all painful and it was no fun. It was just the little brief silences here and there where you get some hint that uh but but it was mostly just me facing all this jungle of emotions and thoughts and so forth and but but after 20 years I I I did it because I didn't want to take um drugs to you know help me sleep and so forth. I that's why so I wasn't for any deep reason. I just I don't want to take drugs so I'll use meditation to help me deal with with all this stuff.
But but then you realize okay well wait this is this is sort of important on its own and then you begin to realize no this is really what it's all about and then wow letting go of thought even though I'm a scientist and I think now there's this distinction between these thoughts that are just useless and so I just I don't need to think at all versus very careful thoughts where I'm doing I'm not thinking about how to polish my image and I'm just now thinking on a nice technical problem that's perfectly fine other than that then why not just let go of font and then and Then my feeling is when I want a really good idea, it's time to let go of thought because when I go into that space, I really am that unlimited intelligence. And that's where the real gems of um ideas come from is when I literally say, "Okay, no thought at all. No thought." Of course, it's been helped because I've been thinking about a technical issue. Now I let go of the thoughts and all of a sudden you get new ideas. So I actually think that this will again be science and spirituality interacting in the future in a really interesting way where scientists begin to realize no wait this perennial philosophy is how if properly understood how you get your best ideas when you go into absolute silence. So once again it's the back and forth between the absolute silence and then the precise thinking that that's what really intrigues me. That's somehow that's the heart of the game. Absolute silence, no thinking. And then not not vague thinking, not handwaving thinking, precise thinking is what gets rewarded. That's what I want to see and understand better going forward to the extent it can't be understood. Maybe I just have to be it and not know it.