Magic and the Eight-Point Program

This week we have a post from Dick, a meditator living in Reno, Nevada. Dick shares how he sees his long practice of the eight points come alive in his new hobby of magic. 

I was introduced to the eight-point program in 1992. I was in an unusually high stress job. I had been using TM after work for ten years and that was some help. One day I returned to my office and found a paperback book, entitled “Meditation,” on my desk. I asked my secretary where it came from and she said “the new doctor.” We had just hired a new civilian doctor. It was a while before I learned that he had a famous meditator as a patient, Eknath Easwaran!

When I picked up the book, I noted that the first chapter was called “Meditation.” Hey, I already was an expert, so I moved to the second, “The Mantram.” I was skeptical, but I read it and promptly forgot about it. A few days later, we had a particularly difficult situation to deal with. My mind was racing. I decided to try a mantram walk. On the way out the door, I selected my mantram, “Jesus,” and walked repeating it for 30 minutes or so. The problem did not go away but it was a lot easier to consider options with a clearer, stiller mind.

I was hooked and never did TM again! Hello Passage Meditation!

About two years ago, I saw an ad advertising a magic lesson and decided to consider becoming a magician. As I learn more and more about magic, I see more and more of the eight point program.

Mantrams are very common in magic and are magical. Abracadabra and “the magic words” come to mind. Amazing things happen when the magic words (and mantram) are uttered!  At my age, falling asleep and waking in the middle of the night are often challenges.  I’ve tried abracadabra to no avail, but the mantram is truly magical in these situations.

The best magic is slow magic. It takes more skill to do an illusion slowly and slow increases the credibility of your audience. If you do something too quickly, most will wonder what you are trying to hide.

My favorite 8PP memory of slowing down was someone telling me about a doctor in an ER. That environment seems impossible for slowing down in a crisis, but no matter how fast the hands are moving, a slow mind is an effective ally.

Putting the audience first. Most magicians talk about their tricks. Early on I read an article about appreciating your audience and not looking down on them by calling what you did 'tricking' them. I have since tried to call what I do illusions. It is hard not to slip, but I rarely do.

Putting others first was a big challenge! The word “doormat” kept coming up in my mind. Now I work hard to change the wording a little - “putting the welfare of others first.” A lot of help for me!  Teaching online is a challenge. My students are all working adults with families and all the time challenges of our society. It is often tempting to allow extra time for work based on easily avoidable crises. I’ve found that there is a good lesson in holding to deadlines, which I consider putting their welfare first rather than the easier road of unenforced due dates.

Stop buying stuff, train the senses. The world of magic is full of temptations! Ads, videos and other magicians are always showing you the next great thing! It is a wonderful fantasy to imagine performing it. I’ve adopted “will this work for and enhance my act?” as a test.

Training the senses, outside of magic, is probably my biggest challenge. I am a fan of contemporary food and entertainment. First step in this direction was becoming a vegetarian. That is the foundation for training my taste buds - no meat and hardly any sugar or alcohol. Entertainment is a bit more of a challenge, especially violence in movies. When socializing takes a priority over avoidance, I follow EE’s advice and close my eyes when necessary.

Total focus. A magician cannot let his or her mind wander. Personal safety, the safety of others and the ability to execute an illusion well depend on total focus. You want to let your eyes guide the audience to what you want them to be watching, not some sleight of hand happening elsewhere.

One-pointed attention. Where do I start in this world of multi-tasking? Like most, I have a smartphone but I NEVER let it distract my attention. When I use it, it has my full attention, whether talking or texting. When I am doing something else, I ignore it until I can give it my one-pointed attention.

Magical Companionship. One of the unexpected benefits of magic! New friends: Justin Impossible, The Great Merlinski, Dr. D.V. Us, and Bizarro to name a few. Also two clubs: High Sierra Magic Circle and Washoe Wizards. Like meditators, magicians are very helpful by sharing their experiences and gimmicks. Unlike meditators, all magicians have a secret or two they will never share.

Spiritual Companionship has always been a major part of my 8PP. I did some work with the eSatsang for over a decade. I was one of the original members of the NYC Satsang. When we moved to South Florida and did not find a satsang, I helped get one started. I was delighted to find one in place when we moved to Reno. It started up two months before our arrival. There has to be some magic in that - thank you Mary and Dan! There is nothing like spending time with fellow meditators!

Magic reading. My magic teacher says magic is 10-20% technique and the rest presentation. While the contexts and tools of magic have evolved significantly over the years, the foundation of presentation is relatively the same. These tools are best learned from the writings about the past masters, Houdini, Harry Blackstone, Dai Vernon and Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, to name a few. Timeless wisdom is a valuable asset for any magician.

Spiritual reading provides tools for how we present ourselves during the rest of the day. The great mystics faced most of the same challenges that we do and we can learn from their successes and failures in the wonderful world of the literature of the mystics!

Wait, that is only seven…something is missing…

Yes, Meditation is Magic!

My first career was 34 years in the U.S. Coast Guard. One of the highlights was commanding the training center located just off the road between Ramagiri and Petaluma. My second career is as a university professor. As the latter winds down, I have started a new career in magic. My audiences are family, friends and a special group of seniors at a daycare center in Reno. My magic is a gift, I will never accept payment for performing.

Ever since I welcomed the eight-point program in my life, it has become a part of almost everything I do and made everything I do better. Thank you, Eknath Easwaran!

The Mantram as a Tool for Transformation

This week, we hear from Chris, a passage meditator living in New Mexico. Chris shares how she used the mantram to transform a difficult working relationship.

One of the things that attracted me to Easwaran early on was his practical approach. He never said “thou shalt”, but rather, “you don’t have to take my word for this – try it yourself”.

As a new graduate nurse practitioner, I had just moved to a rural town to work in the clinic. I was the first nurse practitioner to work in that town; the concept was new to many people. This was a small town, and word came back to me that a person with an office in the same building I worked in was making disparaging remarks about me in the community. My initial reactions were anger, contempt, ideas of vengeance – the usual parade of wounded ego characters.

In my daily reading from the Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, I had come across a new challenge. Sri Easwaran said that if a person was irritating you, your best approach was to seek that person out, spend time with him, focus on the good in him. This, Easwaran assured, would lead to freedom.

It seemed impossible to me, but I decided to try. Each morning, I got to work early, and stopped to see the man, who was also there early every day. I would go by his office, and say hello, ask him how he was doing, what was new, and then just bite my tongue and listen.

Initially while I was doing this, my mind was full of angry thoughts: “you judgmental so and so, how dare you talk about me, you don’t even know me”, sometimes alternating with my mantram “Rama, Rama, Rama”. After a couple of weeks of this experiment, I thought that it was not working at all. In fact, rather than finding freedom, I felt I was being a hypocrite by pretending to be nice while my mind was engaged in major battle with the man.

The morning I was going to quit the experiment, I opened my daily Easwaran reading, and there was my spiritual teacher, speaking directly to me (ever happen to anyone else?). EE said that if you felt you were being untrue to yourself by forcing yourself to be kind when your thoughts were anything but kind, well…you weren’t. Your real self was compassionate, forgiving, loving. Easwaran said that it wasn’t hypocritical to put on a bright smile, and act like your real self.

Chris' meditation room, with a picture of Sri Easwaran.

So I kept visiting my office neighbor every morning at work, saying hello, asking how he was, and listening. This went on for a year or so, and it dawned on me one day that it was no longer an act. I had learned that he spent an hour every night on the phone with his mother, who was a difficult person. He secretly helped people who were struggling financially. He suffered with headaches much of the time, but did his best to remain cheerful. He worked tirelessly for an organization that did a lot of good in the community.

The winter sun in New Mexico.

I had grown to admire and respect him. He still made disparaging remarks. In the small town, these comments came back to me. A friend asked me if this bothered me, and I was surprised to hear myself say no.

Truthfully…no. I had come to see the good in him, and to realize that my own security did not rest in what he had to say. The experiment had not been about changing him – it had been about changing me, about gaining some mastery over my own mind. In other words, I had found a little taste of freedom! Over the years, I have practiced this experiment over and over. It has never failed to help uncover more security and peace, and to lighten the anger load, a little at a time.

Eknath Easwaran: All of Us Are One

This week we bring you an excerpt by Eknath Easwaran from the Blue Mountain Journal.

The same spark of divinity - this same Self - is enshrined in every creature. My real Self is not different from yours nor anyone else's. The mystics are telling us that if we want to live in the joy that increases with time, if we want to live in true freedom independent of circumstances, then we must strive to realize that even if there are four people in our family or forty at our place of work, there is only one Self.

This realization enables us to learn to conduct ourselves with respect to everyone around us, even if they provoke us or dislike us or say unkind things about us. And that increasing respect will make us more and more secure. It will enable us gradually to win everybody's respect, even those who disagree with us or seem disagreeable.

When these sages talk about “realization,” what they mean is making this Self a reality in our daily living. We have to practice it in our behavior. Never talk ill of others, they are saying, even if they have faults; it doesn't help them and it doesn't help you. Always focus on the bright side of the other person: it helps them and it helps you. Work together in harmony even if you have serious differences; it will rub the angles and corners off your own personality. Then you will never feel lonely, you will never feel deserted, you will never feel inadequate; you will be unshakably secure. Interestingly enough, this gradually makes those around us more secure too.

The Upanishads tell us these words should “enter the ear.” They shouldn't just beat about the lobes; they should go in – and not just in through one ear and come out the other; we should let their wisdom sink into the mind. Then, the Upanishads say, “Reflect on them”: learn to practice these teachings in your daily life.

When we see people who are difficult to work with, for example, that's the time to practice. Instead of avoiding such people or quarreling with them, why not try to work with them? Why not work in harmony and try to support them?

This doesn't mean conniving at weaknesses, and it doesn't mean we have to say yes to everything they do or say; that’s a wrong conception. To connive at somebody who is not living up to his responsibilities not only doesn't help the situation; it doesn't help that person either. Seeing the Self in those around us means supporting them to do better – again, not through words, but through unvarying respect and personal example. It is this unwavering focus on the Self in others that helps them realize its presence in themselves – and in us and others as well.

Focusing on the Self in all

Because all of us are one, most personal problems and weaknesses are really very similar. As the Upanishad says, they differ “only in name and form.” Almost everyone is subject to insecurity, even those who appear most forceful; getting angry and throwing one’s weight around are signs of insecurity, not strength. Similarly, most of us are subject to dwelling on ourselves, often with negative feelings that can be terribly oppressive. In such cases anyone can feel inadequate, unable to cope with the responsibilities of the day.

Similarly, all of us have times when we are patient, days when we are kind, because beneath our passing, everyday personality, this transcendent Self is always present. It does people great harm to forget this and give them the impression that they are nogood by focusing attention on their faults.

Spiritual living means learning to do just the opposite. Whatever a person’s problems, we can learn to keep our attention always on the divinity within. After a while they start thinking, “Well, she must see something in me that I have never seen. Maybe it’s really there.” And slowly they begin to act on this belief.

Thérèse of Lisieux, a charming and very gifted saint of nineteenth-century France who died in her early twenties, was a great artist at this. In her convent there was a senior nun whose manner Thérèse found offensive in every way. Like many of her sister nuns, I imagine, all that she wanted was to avoid this unfortunate woman. But Thérèse had daring. Where everyone else would slip away, she began to go out of her way to see this woman who made her skin crawl. She would speak kindly to her, sometimes bring her flowers, give her her best smile, and in general “do everything for her that I would do for someone I most love.” Because of this unwavering love, the woman began to feel more secure and to respond to Thérèse’s attentions.

One day, in one of the most memorable scenes in Thérèse’s autobiography, this other nun goes to Thérèse and asks, “Tell me, Sister, what is it about me that you find so appealing? You have such love in your smile when you see me, and your eyes shine with happiness.”

“Oh!” Thérèse writes. “How could I tell her that it was Jesus I loved in her – Jesus who makes sweet that which is most bitter.”

Sometimes people tell me, “I can’t pretend like that! It’s hypocritical.” But Thérèse was not pretending. That divine spark at the core of personality is more real than anything else. In relating to Jesus in that sister rather than to her moods and caprices, she was relating to her real Self – and, by her constancy, actually bringing it to life.

Ninety-Nine Percent the Same

It is relatively easy to see the Self in others when they agree with us. It becomes difficult when they criticize us or do the opposite of what we want. But contrariness is part of life. We come from different homes, went to different schools, have been exposed to different influences, hold different views; it is only natural that we differ in all kinds of ways. Yet these differences amount to no more than one percent of who we are. Ninety-nine percent is what we have in common. When we see only that one percent of difference, life can be terribly difficult. When we put our attention on the Self in others, however, we cease dwelling on ourselves, and that opens our awareness to the much larger whole in which all of us are the same, with the same fears, the same desires, the same hopes, the same human foibles. Then, instead of separating us, the one percent of superficial differences that remains makes up the drama of life.

I remember a song from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: “You like tomayto and I like tomahto; let’s call the whole thing off.” That is all most differences amount to. If you can keep your eyes on what we have in common, you will find that most differences cease to bother you. You can remember that the other person has feelings which are just as easily hurt as yours. He too appreciates it when other people are kind – he is ninety-nine percent you. She too appreciates it when you are patient, even if she herself is irritating – she is ninety-nine percent you.

Being with people who are different is not only unavoidable; it is necessary if we want to grow. Without the company of those who differ from us, we grow rigid and narrow-minded. Those who associate only with people their own age, for example, lose a great deal: the young have much to learn from the old, and older people from the young. Similarly, if you are a blue-collar worker, it is good to know an intellectual or two; it will cure you of any awe you might have of higher education. Even the difference between an egghead and a hardhat is only one percent. Their feelings, their responses to life’s perennial problems, are very much the same.

Most of us can treat others with respect under certain circumstances – at the right time, with the right people, in a certain place. When those circumstances are absent, we usually move away. We avoid someone, change jobs, leave home, move to southern California. Yet when we respond according to how the other person behaves, changing whenever she changes, and she is behaving in this same way, how can we expect anything but insecurity on both sides? There is nothing solid to build on.

Instead, we can learn to respond always to the Self within – focusing not on the other person’s ups and downs, likes and dislikes, but always on what is changeless in each of us. Then others grow to trust us. They know they can count on us – and that makes us more secure too.

We can try to remember this always: the same Self that makes us worthy of respect and love is present equally in everyone around us. When we base our relationships on this unity, showing unwavering respect and unconditional love to all, we give them – and ourselves – a sure basis on which to stand. Everyone responds to this. It is one of the surest ways I know of to make our latent divinity a reality in daily life.