Meditators For Bernie

Meditators For Bernie
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

What's at Stake Here

Hillary seems to believe that the Presidential Election is the political equivalent to the WWE Professional Wrestling circuit and for good reason, the comparison doesn't seem to be that far off.

  • Play-by-play announcers (Stephanopoulos, Muir, Pelley, Lauer, Holt, et al.) with a bias towards the home team? ✓
  • Pre-determined winner? ✓
  • Vilified opponent? ✓
  • Glitzy fanfare? ✓
  • Chairs being thrown? Er...depends on who you ask.

She's even gone as far as calling herself the winner long before the contest is over. She's furious that Bernie isn't playing along with her Fantasy WWE World where he's tagged out in exchange for a high level cabinet seat or Vice Presidential nomination and ultimately everyone celebrates the culmination of a fair process and a unified party.

But Bernie ain't playing and neither are the #BernieOrBusters.

The system is rigged and there's a movement afoot of people who are not buying into the establishment's circus act anymore. Bernie can't be bribed; not by a Brink's armored truckload of Goldman Sachs money and not by a cabinet seat.

The entire Primary system should be abolished as unconstitutional; it filters out democracy while not even bothering to pretend to be a democratic process in and of itself. "Your voice, your vote?" Are you being serious right now Stephanopoulos? You know full well that the system is rigged. If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem. You're better than that.

Not to pick on George specifically, but he is a meditator and he should know better. The vast entity that is western civilization is fundamentally unhealthy on all levels; emotionally, physically, socially, physically and spiritually and at no time has this been more evident than in the spectacle that is the 2016 Presidential Campaign. As an example of our aggregate insanity, choosing the status quo literally means choosing our own demise and yet that looks like it might actually happen. Yet again. Maintaining the status quo means death to the middle class, death to the environment, death to our democracy and death to the American Dream and we need to do everything in our power to make sure this doesn't happen.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, what's at stake in this election is our future and this process is going to decide whether or not we're going to continue along the same unhealthy trajectory or whether we're going to evolve. There's something happening right now on the planet that's much bigger than just this election and it's possible that a relatively small, but powerful demographic within the Bernie Movement could help determine our future; meditators.

John, Paul, George & Ringo with Maharishi in Rishikesh
John, Paul, George & Ringo with Maharishi in Rishikesh

Personally, I've been meditating pretty much daily since 2003 and I would like to call on other meditators to join together in tilting the balance of power in this contest in favor of progressive ideas and agendas. Enough people setting an intention of healing will make a significant difference, not just in this election but in our society in general. That's not to suggest we create something similar to a guided 21 day Weight Loss Meditation program, but rather creating a coalition of experienced meditators with several years of deep meditation practice.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once said that when you've reached the number a people in a population meditating that is equal to or greater than the square root of 1% of the overall group size, it would be enough to heal and evolve that population. That works out to approximately 18,000 meditators needed for the U.S. and I think we're just about there. We need to heal everywhere throughout society and Bernie's campaign is the only one that is based on healing.

Meditators, is it possible to mobilize (or in the context of sitting, immobilize) ourselves and put our collective energies of love and compassion to good use by meditating as a group with the clear intention of healing our society? A large enough group of meditators with a focused, laser beam of intention can penetrate through this stagnant sociopolitical inertia like a hot knife through butter.

For those of you interested in meditation but don't know much about it, let me share a few things that I've learned over the years.

First off, if you'd like to join in and don't currently have a meditation practice, here's what I would say to you. I've done three different methods; TM, Vipassana and Sahaj Samadhi and based on my experiences, I'd personally recommend Sahaj Samadhi (www.ArtOfMeditation.com). There are many more techniques, but these are the only ones I've got direct knowledge of so these are the only ones I can speak to.

Vipassana Meditation is said to be a very pure pedigree of Buddhist Meditation, past down over the past 2500 years in a fairly narrow, one to one guru-chala (teacher-student) lineage. Vipassana has been re-introduced to the masses as of late by S.N. Goenka but since it is a ten day silence immersion program, it may not be as accessible as TM or Sahaj for most people. Still, if you can afford the time and want to go sit for ten days, this is a great course.

Tanscendental Meditation (TM) www.tm.org was developed by Maharishi in the 1950s and was very popular in the U.S. by the 60s. TM's popularity grew significantly in the 70s with Merv Griffen having Maharishi on his daytime talk show regularly and as most people know, celebrities such as the Beatles, Donovan and Mike Love of the Beach Boys were all huge proponents of TM. Interestingly enough, when the George, John, Paul and Ringo went to Rishikesh (shown in the above photo), they didn't go there to learn how to meditate, they already knew how to do that. They went to Rishikesh to take the Teacher Training Course and learn how to become TM teachers. Just imagine how things might have been different had John's agent hadn't made up that story about Mia Farrow and the Beatles had completed TTC.....

Sahaj Samadhi, which in Sanskrit means effortless meditation, came from the same pedigree and lineage as TM with both coming through the lineage of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. While TM and Sahaj are nearly identical, what Maharishi did in developing TM is introduce a minor tweak to an ancient practice. Sahaj Samadhi is TM without that tweak so Sahaj is much closer to the original, authentic practice developed several millennia ago. Interestingly enough, Sahaj Samadhi meditation dates back prior to the time that Buddha lived so actually Buddhist meditations are also a derivative of Sahaj!!

The good thing about Sahaj Samadhi is that there is a living Master right now on the planet, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who's brought Sahaj Samadhi with him and any time you've got an opportunity to learn from and spend time with a Master, you should take advantage of it. Sri Sri is touring the U.S. with stops in eight cities so if you're near one of these areas and you're interested in meeting him, you should definitely attend.

You'll hear a lot of things about meditation about how it can create significant difference in the grey matter of your brain after only 8 weeks, how it helps you sleep better, how it increases your creativity and reduces cortisol the stress hormone, how it helps you perform better in sports and performance arts and other biophysiological benefits. Those are all very nice side-effects or byproducts of meditation but that's not really why most meditators meditate. Meditation provides a very deep, profound healing on all levels.

If you don't have a practice, pick one and join us. It doesn't matter what technique you use, they all eventually get you to the same place and it's from that space that we're going to send love and compassion to help heal humanity and heal the planet.

This blessing from Buddha would be a good start:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.

May they be free of suffering and the cause of suffering.

May they never be disassociated from the supreme happiness which is without suffering.

May they remain in the boundless equanimity, free from both attachment to close ones and rejection of others.

Siddhartha Gautama (aka Buddha)

Or if that's too much to remember while meditating, there's always this version:

May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be well.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings be free from suffering.

Siddhartha Gautama (aka Buddha)

Let's all join forces and heal ourselves on a massive scale. At the end of our meditation practices, we could begin sending out one of these two blessings to heal the anger, the hurt, the greed, the bigotry and racism, the selfishness, the arrogance, the sick and the poor. When meditation is done in groups, the aggregate effect goes up exponentially so the more people we bring in, the more powerful the process will be.

Our planet's health is deteriorating and our brothers and sisters are suffering. This is literally a no brainer. We need to learn how to get out of our heads and into our hearts. This is about much more than deciding our next president. Our future is on the line. This intention of healing isn't specifically for Bernie's campaign, it's for everyone involved but if our overall populace were generally healthier than they currently are, there's only one of the three remaining candidates that most people would choose.

This is a trailer for my new film on healing, The Physics of The Soul. I find the song quite apropos here.

How close to an end,

must we all be,

before we see,

it's up to you and me

Frank Huguenard holds a degree in science from Purdue University and spent decades in product development in Silicon Valley prior to embarking on a career in documentary film production, specializing in films bridging the gap between Science & Spirituality. He draws on his research in the fields of combination of psychology, physics, wisdom traditions, sociology and history. You can see his films at www.beyondmefilms.com.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot