C meditations (Cm)
"I have meditated for years, gone through all the techniques, been to multiple resorts, but Ray and Cristina made it such a very simple reality. It just clicked and I can honestly say that today I live a meditative (being aware) life and I get so much more done!"
Basic Theory
With Creative (Cm) meditations we take the view that those recurring thoughts and that annoying and apparently unshakable mental activity that most meditation methods seek to eliminate from our lives exists for a reason, and is not something to be controlled or done away with, but something to be opened to, and more so explored and learned from (why would a thought be persistent if it wasn’t important, or a pain, or a feeling?) Therefore in the Creative we allow ourselves the freedom to allow our minds to wander wherever they please, while following and learning from them. We simply go along for the ride, while letting it guide us.
To understand the simplicity of Cm, think of dreams. And remember, nothing needs to make sense, but everything is meaningful. Just because a dream is a dream doesn’t make it any less you or your thoughts (Zhuangzi). Actually it’s probably more you, more conventionally unfiltered you.
As with sleep dreaming and daydreaming, you surrender to the stream of your own subconscious (see far below) and allow it to unravel freely and unmediated by the constraints or constructs (culture and uberculture) of physical and social reality. The self exploring, enjoyment and curiosity about yourself, helps to find the freedom to feel and sense for real. Cm is Self-love and Self-validation, and nothing can be healthier than that.
Cm delivers the same benefits of other, more conventional forms of meditation while making the whole process of meditation easier and more enjoyable, and at the same time increasing our creative capacities and ability to innovate and introduce new thinking and ideas to problems in life and more so, healthy and often unconventional solutions into our lives. As opposed to nearly all other forms of mediation on the market, Cm is not based on oppressing or controlling mental activity, but enticing it.
Example of a C meditation
The prompt was, "you get to have lunch with any celebrity you want."
After a few faces came and went over a minute or so, a specific celebrity’s face eventually appeared and stuck. It was Brad Pitt. Once he appeared, and since the prompt included the word “lunch” I kept trying to place him and me in a restaurant. All kinds of scenarios played out, but none of them would stick no matter how hard I persisted to see us together in a restaurant, or focus on the details of any image that appeared. Of course, in retrospect this is exactly what should have happened considering I NEVER go to restaurants and in fact avoid them at nearly all costs (that’s the whole point, see?), so why would I in a world of my own making, have lunch in one, regardless of whom it was with? After perhaps 2 or more minutes of jumping around from one stupid restaurant scene to the next, and becoming uneasy with my failure, suddenly he came bursting through the gate of the horse venue in Spain (where I was most comfortable at the time) and it was as natural and real as any memory I have. He was so happy to see me and I was so happy to see him, as if we’d met before or were already close friends, and after that moment everything else came very naturally and we hugged and clapped each other on the back as if we had already a thousand times and it was so cool and relaxed and then we walked into the kitchen talking buoyantly and laughing and while I cooked lunch for him we had the most amazing talk, and then we sat down and ate and I thanked him for the movie “Legends of the Fall” (my first experience of him as an actor), and told him the story of how that movie would predict much of my life not long thereafter, and he understood and was grateful for my having taken the time to tell him, and it was truly a beautiful and totally natural experience that required zero effort on my part, and that not only helped me to understand and deal with some issues that were behind immense anxiety at the time, it also enabled me to revisit and retreat some painful memories, and even better, by the time the clock went off I was in that place that most meditators seek, the place often called nibbana, or the place of ineffable gratitude.
And it was fun.
List of past C Meditations
Here are some Cm Meditations that we have done in the past. In each case we are interested in the who, what, where, why, and when of these, but it’s not always said in the prompt.
- "from a higher elevation you observe a polar bear standing on a chunk of ice
- "you have a meeting with any global leader anywhere you want"
- "you are speaking at a public event, now"
- "you have lunch with any celebrity you wish"
- "you have a business meeting with anyone you want"
- "you host a party with everyone you've ever known (dead or alive)"
- "you are in the jungle"
- "you are hugging"
- "you are on your way to what is, the ultimate job for you"
- "you wake up in a tent"
- "you are given an unlimited budget to go shopping"
- "you are given a free trip to any place"
- "you are building a dream house"
- "you are in the perfect school"
- "you are at an art exhibition, and while admiring a certain piece, you meet someone"
- "you start your own company”
- "you weren't expecting it to rain"
- "you are visited by a relative who has already passed"
- "Someone screams, RUN!"
- "Your grandmother/father wrote you a letter before you were born. What did it say?"
- "you are attending your own funeral"
- "there is a party going on"
- "you are a famous performer on stage"
- “you suddenly realize you are working too much”
- “an animal is heard just outside your door”
- for more, return to the main page.
More Theory and Technical Notes
We take the view that conventional models of consciousness fail to capitalize on one of the most intriguing aspects of the human psyche as suggested in modern literature, that we are endowed with at least two layers of awareness, what are called the “subconscious” and the “conscious”. Much data is offered in the way of this view, but the most intriguing to us is the purported 100-300ms gap between what is seen as the subconscious (an impulse) and the conscious level, or the physical expression or conscious awareness of the impulse (more recent research has revealed a gap as long as 7 seconds in extreme cases).
In the conventional view, the subconscious more accurately reflects who we are via its insulation against the more mundane aspects of reality, such as social and material inputs, and though it is to some extent inaccessible to analysis, it is held to be the most intriguing aspect of ourselves (the atman, the soul, the gut, our instincts, emotions, feelings, hearts), while likewise earning frequent and dutiful attempts to be engaged by some more creative and contrived means as evidenced by the various and sundry psychological tests of one form another that purport to get to the bottom of us (Meyers-Briggs etc). Given its purity and status as the holy grail, we are encouraged to “follow our hearts” and “listen to our guts” and “find our true selves” and once we do, everything we need to know will be available to us and in some cases, after some cathartic experience that may entail weeping and anger and howling and if we are really bottled up, breaking things and passing out, we’ll get better. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps not.
That 100-300ms gap is the intriguing part. What takes place between the time an impulse is measured in experiments (move the right finger) and the physical expression takes place (the right finger moves?) Or, alternatively on more daily level, why is it that we are often told not to “overthink” and why do we seem to do certain creative things better when we aren’t thinking about them so much. For an example, imagine you are alone in your room with crayons and paper having a great time, and then what happens when someone walks in? How does your response differ with each visitor?
Who knows really what the fuss is all about, and it’s all way too entangled to dis-, but we do believe that the real good stuff of us is as close to the 0ms state as possible, and the only way to get at it, is not to try. The universe, or at least the part we are interested in, doesn’t seem to enjoy being observed, at least so a great many very elaborate and expensive experiments in physics confirm, such as the famous Double Split Experiment(*), so don’t observe it. Feel it. Feeling is the most elaborate form of thought and if you don’t believe us, think about dropping a 2kg stone on your barefoot, and then drop one on your bare foot. Which experience comes more quickly, easily and saliently?
Closing, not Minding the gap.
So yes. However one wishes to describe it, it’s the time it takes for messages to travel around the central nervous system, since according to special relativity, nothing can travel faster than light. During the temporal interval, all kinds of socio-cultural and oppressive stuff can interfere with that signal. In that sense, yes, we believe in some meaningful (deeper) part of ourselves we are not normally able to access easily (encouraged not to) but would benefit from being in touch with, and that is trying to communicate very important - perhaps transformative - messages to us on a conscious level.
For now we call this something the evolution of the universe, meaning that it is in us and outside of the form that this English language I am using now, and is being read by you. This universe of ours has evolved 13.7 billion years with the same components communicating and interacting all those years. We consist of those components, too. Meditation and in particular Cm, facilitate the process of reducing that 100-300ms gap, which in turn means less social/cultural noise to interfere with our taught/learned culture and words, and more healing and finding peace and direction from that process.
What if there’s a reason you’re thinking about what you can’t stop thinking about, feeling what you don’t want to feel, and doing what you don’t want to do? If there is, Cm is a good practice to find out.
Maybe the only one