When people who read this column ask me why it’s called “Life 101,” I tell them that it’s about what life can teach us when our eyes are fully open to see. This month’s column, however, is about what life can teach us when our eyes are fully closed. I don’t mean closed as in blind to reality, but closed as in blind to the outside world, so that we can explore, for a change, the inside world, and find at the end of that journey a destination so alive, so expansive, and so blissful that it completely captivates us. The destination is none other than our higher Self.
As a former teacher of Transcendental Meditation and trainer of its teachers, who recently introduced Higher Self Meditation into the world, I have long known and taught that our higher Self can be found at the very depth of our mind, at the transcendental level of our being. I’ve long experienced the unintended wisdom from the 1969 Coca-Cola TV ad campaign, which unknowingly "educated" viewers about a deep spiritual truth: namely, that "in the back of your mind, what you’re hoping to find…it’s the real thing."
The “real thing” is not contained in an 8-ounce glass bottle, a 12-ounce aluminum can, or a 2-liter plastic bottle. The real thing is what you truly are, it’s your higher Self, and it’s unbounded awareness and profound joy. And yes, it is what you’re hoping to find in everything you do, because everything you do is done to experience joy. There’s no greater joy in the world than the joy that exists at the eternal level of your being, which is actually transcendental to the world.
Today’s column asks you “What is your higher Self?” The wise yogis of India answer this question by saying, “Neti neti,” which means, “Not this, not that.” By that they mean that your true Self is not the role you play in society, like butcher, baker, or candlestick maker. It’s not the role you play in your family, like parent, child, or sibling. And it’s not your political or religious affiliation. It’s not even your body, mind, emotions, or ego. All of these are localized in time and space and have their own limitations and boundaries. Here’s your wonderful good news for today: your higher Self has no limitations and is boundless. And as I can report from my twice-daily sessions of Higher Self Meditation, and as the twice-daily meditations of the people I’ve taught can report, contact with it is blissful.
I titled this piece, “You can find your Higher Self with your Eyes Closed” because when something is very easy we say we could do it with our eyes closed. The same is actually true about contact with the bliss of the higher Self. Because we’re always looking for happiness if, given the correct path to find such happiness, the mind will do so without any effort whatsoever. That, in a nutshell, is why Higher Self Meditation, the method to find the higher Self, is absolutely effortless—the Universe does it for you.
You read about and watched “The Secret.” Now hear the secret of your higher Self: retire from the world of form to go to your higher Self in the formlessness of the timeless Transcendent. Then, retire from That to come back to the world of form once again.
In time, through this regular alternation of contacting your Higher Self in meditation and then going back to the activities and responsibilities of the world, a time comes when you live in the formless bliss amidst the form--in the world but not of it. There’s a word for this—Enlightenment— and it’s waiting for you in the back of your mind, it’s what you’re hoping to find. It’s the real thing.