Putting Wings on a Caterpillar

Why meditation cannot spiritually awaken you and what most certainly will

“Hello. Your article (The Descent) is well written and the first half resonates with me. But I have a different way of talking to people who experience this nihilism and existential void. I always tell them that at a certain point it’s not helpful to overthink the insubstantiality of things or their fleeting existence. Once we realize this, we need to come back to ourselves through meditation and reconnect with not only our awareness but our love and then we will know that the void is not just nothing. At the center of reality there is clarity and the powerful energy of love so there is no need to despair. But this has to be experienced personally through meditation. If one meditates regularly then nihilism is not necessary.”

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In my function as a spiritual writer, I am not interested in being helpful. I am interested in presenting the truth in the clearest manner that I am able to interpret it through the limited lens of my experiences. Being helpful is a tricky thing, because we presume to understand what the person needs but we cannot possibly know.

Whether the center of reality is love or not - a person must find out for themselves. Providing these assurances beforehand turns them into faith-based statements that creates another layer of belief that these individuals then cling to as a buffer against nihilism. While this may treat their symptoms, I do not personally believe it addresses the root issue. Just as the Buddha had no assurances when he sat down under the tree neither must we if we are to go through our processes authentically. The not-knowing is a key ingredient without which any realization that occurs rings hollow.

The mind is like a child. It can be unruly or obedient. However, just like with children, ‘unruly’ is not necessarily a negative thing and ‘obedient’ is not always a positive.

I lived in Japan for nearly a decade. During my time there, I taught part-time in kindergartens and in high schools. Children in Japan, I found, were generally far better behaved and more compliant than kids in the West. When my wife and I would go out for dinner with our two young daughters, who were both in kindergarten as well at the time, we would often marvel at how our own kids were so loud, expressive and unruly in public spaces whereas Japanese children were, on average, much quieter and would often stay in their seats for the entire duration of the meal barely speaking.

I found this phenomenon continued in high school and further into adulthood. While working as a consultant at a leather manufacturing company, I frequently interacted with the factory workers, some of whom had spent decades performing the same menial tasks day in and day out. They manifested an attention to detail and a discipline that I have not encountered anywhere else in the world, and their commitment to their craft and the company was unequivocal.

Initially, I marveled at this social phenomenon. I believed this society to be superior to our own. From a young age individuals display an innate ability for stillness, silence, a present-moment focused attitude towards work and duties, and most importantly, a total aversion towards displays of egotism. Japanese people as a whole exhibit a natural mindfulness in all that they do. They are able to stand or sit absolutely still in various social situations for hours. They show low levels of emotional reactivity to most personal and social crises. In fact, they exhibit a legendary degree of equanimity and organization in the face of adversity, as I am sure most readers are aware.

And yet, as my stay in Japan progressed, I began to witness the underbelly of this phenomenon. What I discovered was a system of active repression of individual expression that led to emotional stuntedness, underdeveloped egos, a lack of critical thinking and an inherent incapacity to challenge the status quo, that manifested on a societal level. In kindergarten and in elementary school, children learned to actively stifle their emotions and desires in order to keep the social order and not disturb the Wa (harmony) of the group. In high school, while kids displayed a high degree of social conscientiousness - rarely littering, cleaning the classrooms, organizing trash and maintaining bathrooms - they also displayed an emotional immaturity, a lack of intellectual curiosity and an inability to think critically when discussing topics related to society, politics, current affairs or interpersonal relationships.

Many of the adults I interacted with in private, confessed to me that they did not have any outlet for expressing their personal hopes, worries, joys and sorrows. They said that it was frowned upon in Japanese society for children to confide in their parents or even for spouses to confide in one another - and so all personal relationships, including those between loved ones, followed rigid rules of engagement the boundaries of which could not be crossed.

All of this, while on the surface presented a picture of a people who appeared relatively mindful, silent, equanimous and emotionally unreactive when compared to most of our western societies, on further examination revealed a population with dangerously high levels of emotional distress, unhappiness, anxiety, depression and some of the highest suicide rates in the world. Rampant depression is to Japan what obesity is to America. In fact, binge drinking alcohol as a coping tool for the rigid social pressures most are exposed to is so normalized in Japan that ‘alcoholism’ is a rarely recognized condition.

To quote this Psychology Today article,

“In Japan, there is no societal acknowledgment of alcoholism. For much of Japanese society, addiction to alcohol doesn't exist. In fact, binge drinking to the point of blacking out has been normalized. You can buy shots of alcohol from vending machines. Just as there are stand-up noodle shops (i.e., there are no seats for sitting), there are similar stand-up bars to service many white-collar workers who have limited outlets to cope with the stressors of life…”

My point in illustrating this dark side of Japanese society is not to stereotype or paint the country in a negative light. I consider Japan my second home and there are many things I love about the country, culture and the people with whom I share more in common than I do with my own native country of India or my adoptive home of Canada.

Instead, I use this social phenomenon as analogous to how spiritual practices like meditation and mindfulness and spiritual philosophies such as Buddhism and non-duality (Advaita) can cultivate a surface level of equanimity, calm, stillness and non-reactivity towards emotions by quieting an unruly mind. In other words, they can be effective tools for developing a well-behaved, docile and domesticated mind. On the flip side, they can easily turn into tools for repression and bypassing that serve to stunt spiritual progress rather than facilitate it (I say this as an experienced meditator with a 30-year practice). I have over the past decade through my writing, interacted with hundreds of seekers and teachers of both Buddhism and Non-Duality alike - and I have witnessed exactly the same kind of phenomenon within these groups as I witnessed living in Japan. A widespread culture of stunting the ego in an infantile state of development in the name of transcending it. And an underbelly of emotional neediness, codependence, unhappiness, lack of critical thought and a dilution of authentic expression that is a rampant trend amongst both seekers and teachers in these domains.

Meditation alone does nothing to mature the ego. Manifesting qualities such as silence, equanimity and stillness while retaining the mind’s vitality, authenticity and unique self-expression is quite another matter altogether. This cannot be achieved through suppressing the mind and its egotistical needs because suppression leads to repression which only stunts the ego’s development. Instead, it must be arrived at through a maturation, in which the mind does not remain stifled in a child-like state of ‘good behavior in hope of reward and fear of punishment’ but is allowed to fully flourish through its own hardships, rebellion, suffering and tribulations. It thus eventually arrives at its own center of stillness, organically.

Putting wings on a caterpillar does not make it a butterfly. There is something intrinsic to the process of metamorphosis that cannot be externally contrived or even stimulated. It is a collaboration between Nature and Being that occurs clandestinely beyond the consciousness of the creature. A wisdom so ancient and beyond comprehension that we cannot possibly know its intent.

Spiritual awakening is the metamorphosis of human consciousness, and it also cannot be externally contrived or stimulated. Meditation and mindfulness alone are insufficient. At best, they can teach a mind to behave. But they cannot mature a mind. Any attempt to do so only has adverse effects - it harms rather than benefits.

If you pull open the petals of a bud you will harm the flower, if you break open a chrysalis you will kill the butterfly and if you overwater a seed, you will stunt its ability to sprout.

Just as you cannot ripen an apple on the tree, you cannot ripen human consciousness. Just as when the apple is ripe enough it falls from the tree, weighed down by the gravity of its own internal juices, when consciousness is ready it awakens in and of itself, propelled by the momentum of its own maturation, without need for intervention.

All anyone can really “do” is encourage an openness to the elements. Which is all meditation is good for. Encouraging an open state of being in engaging with life in its full bluster and fury. Not as an antidote to that bluster and fury. To encourage an openness to the chaos and confusion of the mind. Not as an antidote to the chaos and confusion.

For it is the many vicissitudes of life and mind that are our truest and greatest spiritual teachers. Human beings posing as ‘spiritual teachers’ are only the middlemen. They are like brokerage agencies claiming to give you a better deal on connecting you to the true source of wisdom that is LIFE. Ignore them. There is more noise in the spiritual industry than silence. There is more nonsense that emerges from their mouths than wisdom.

The ingredients for awakening are built into your DNA. Just like a mother is biologically programmed to birth her child even if she has no clue what to do, you are programmed to awaken when your consciousness has sufficiently incubated and matured to the point of emergence. It all just happens. Whether you like it or not.

It is only through being defeated by incessant noise than the mind truly arrives at its deep affinity for silence. It is only after doing itself great violence through negative self-talk and self-hatred that the mind matures into a wise understanding of how to manifest peace and compassion. It is only by becoming utterly fatigued by incessantly moving between past and future that the mind comes to appreciate the deep rest that being present brings. It is only by being repeatedly dashed by the tempest of its own emotional states that it eventually comes to sail the calm waters of equanimity.

It is only within the mud and muck of life that the lotus blooms. You cannot keep the seed above the filth and hope for it to sprout.

Which is why when people ask me for spiritual techniques or practices it makes me laugh. Because I can read between the lines, and I know what they are really asking for is a way out of the only real spiritual practice there is and the only one that ever matters.

Living.

Life is not a problem but an opportunity. An opportunity for eternal growth, for using every moment and every experience no matter how joyful or painful to enlighten one’s consciousness ever further.

Turn towards it, not away.

Face and pursue that which you fear.

Encounter and attempt to understand that which you hate.

Consume that which makes you vomit.

Honor that which makes you suffer.

Study that which makes you lust after it and fills you with a greed for more.

Above all, do not seek to tame the wilderness within you.

Learn to thrive within your own wilds.