This healing message is a little more advanced…

Kendo wants to illustrate the differences between mental activity and meditation, for example, trying to think your way to a place of complete peace as opposed meditating your way there – the nature of the experiences and the outcomes are so very different…

You’ll be familiar with the meditation guidance to let your thoughts fall away until you’re in a place of pure, inspiring peace, but have you tried achieving this with just your mind? It’s a bit of a struggle but it’s worth trying to show how poor the mind alone is at giving you answers to profound problems.

This can be done with a philosophical device called a thought experiment, whereby you ‘think’ yourself into a situation. Let’s use a thought experiment to let everything fall away…

In full consciousness, imagine that you are not bothered by any of the things that would normally annoy you, be they experiences or situations. Then extend that to not being concerned with any responsibilities, such as your job or having to pay bills. This means not having a house to live in or any means of support, but your mind can imagine never being hungry or cold. Then imagine yourself not having to interact with any people, but being away from strangers means no friends or family either. Now you’re totally alone with nothing and nowhere to be – how does that feel? Probably not good…

If you’ve got this far, it’s wise to reverse the process and remind yourself that you do have friends and family and a home and food and drink and a life, all of which brings you back to a comforting reality! But having survived this unsettling journey, you’re no wiser.

In meditation, you’re not using the basic tools of the mind to ‘construct’ peace, you’re briefly stepping away from those clunky and basic mechanisms to let a deeper and wiser voice wordlessly bring you wisdom – your intuition. It’s Kendo’s wisdom that gives you this concept and process so you can be all that your mind is, but much more too if you accept its limitations and enable your wiser self by occasionally stepping away from mere rationalising.

The idea is both an irony and a Zen koan – convince the mind that it’s a good thing not to use it, by choice, occasionally! The proof is that this apparently non-rational (- irrational?) process works so well.

Your mind is definitely your friend, and while it’s always a good thing to educate and refine and challenge it for answers, it’s essential to understand that it’s a specialist only in the field of mental things. Your emotional and intuitive selves need to be granted space for self-expression and growth too, and part of evolving into a whole, well-rounded person means knowing when to ask the mind to take a back seat for a while, occasionally. All the aspects of your ‘self’ shouldn’t be dominated by just one – they should be co-operating as friends and partners in pursuit of the best person that you can be, and meditation is central to achieving the balance that leads to that evolution.

Meditate on that!