Meditation for the People

Roger, I liked the enthusiasm of your posts.

I am a certified Meditation and yoga teacher.

Here's why meditation courses like this, in my own opinion, might not be quite as bad as you think, financially.

Because the workshop is designed for people who, first of all, WANT holistic health help and are ok with paying an instructor.

They are sitting around and they are thinking, "I want to feel more centered. I want to feel happy. I want to feel grounded. Etc etc. I need a meditation class or something."

For whatever reason someone is feeling like they could really benefit from a meditation practice but they have no idea how to start their own, what to do, how to breathe, if they have to join a religion, take a class, adopt a philosophy, etc.

So how does that person find out what meditation means for them and how to have their OWN practice? Well that's what SelfCentered's meditation workshop is about, and a 100$ price tag for a 2-3 hour long workshop that teaches you what you need to know to have your own, personalized, practice, to me (I live in Manhattan and take yoga classes 4-5 times a week) is a great deal! Plus you never need a class again afterwards and can teach your friends for free!

So I think its a matter of perspective. And like I just said--the more people who are meditating out there without creed or set method...just because its a good thing to do...the less we'll need teachers and workshops anyway. But, for myself, I don't have the time or resources to do something like that for free.

Again, the more I teach and get paid, the more people out there will start showing others how you don't even need me to learn how to meditate anyway! But they might still have to come to me for yoga class, so I'm still going to make a living!

:-)

Hope this response is a friendly challenge to your post. Also want to point out that both of your responses felt extreme and polarized to me. Maybe if you took some time to meditate before you wrote you wouldn't have rushed the first treatise before looking at the price tag?

Do you have a few bucks and some free time? I can teach you. hehe jk jk

love,

Adam Elenbaas

Roger, It's funny that you used the word "community" and the word "event" to describe your perception.

Both are very ontologically defined "things." What does community "mean" to you?

What does an "Event" mean? Or for that matter, what does "union" mean? Can you define these things absolutely? Should you be able to?

I guess the point I'm getting at is that you seem to have some very rigid definitions of what you expect community, sharing, meditation, and SelfCentered, to be. There is a paradox there worth exploring.

Who are you to say that anything about your ideas of community, sharing, union, or an event are the best ways? Who says money or the market place are absolutely evil? By what authority?

My point is not to say that your distinctions, expectations, and visions of truth or beauty are not correct. My point is to say that you are not without your own prescriptive thoughts.

But I think that the difference in being a teacher of your thoughts, in the long history of spiritual teachers, is that you are careful to express those ideas in a constructive, nurturing, friendly, and loving manner.

What I felt from your first post was extreme joy and praise. Your second the complete opposite. I'm convinced that the posts are actually identical expressions of the same thing within your heart: passion.

It's not the rightness or the wrongness of something that justifies that passion. To me, it's you, your own identification with eternity, your consciousness, that is itself justified by its very existence---in each moment.

But we're constantly seeking for that justification. There's no "secret" I have to teach anybody. But people, myself included, desire to be in relationship with teachers. How absolutely one perceives the authority of teachers and their own ideas is a matter of ones own journey.

While you are shouting from the rooftop, don't forget that some people feel more comfortable going to a classroom. Can your shouting from a rooftop respect that yours is not the only voice screaming, and screaming is not the only way to scream?

Because personally, as a teacher of yoga and meditation, and after a number of years of working with shamans in Peru, I can tell you that the students I see failing at what they want to accomplish, the most often (including myself), confuse their brightest ideals and their darkest forms of rebellion and anger.

 It happens to good souls who were wounded. Maybe thats you?

Like good Jedi's leaving Yoda's swamp too early! We visionaries and psychonauts and artists, etc, etc, have to be careful and disciplined. Otherwise we present absolutely beautiful ideas of love that have no absolute grounding in our own work ethic. Right here, on this page. 

I don't drink coffee or beer, but I would love for you to buy me a hot tea, and we could meditate together in public at Times Square (selfcentered does great public displays of meditation here in New York).

Adam Elenbaas

If you work for 60 hours a week to barely get by, then maybe you should find a new job or look for a way to make more money? That's if and only if your financial situation and your "barely getting by" are happiness/peace altering factors that are causing you lots of turmoil.

I'm a social worker in Manhattan, for example, and don't make much money, but the money I do make I like to spend from time to time on taking classes, visiting with healers, and traveling to do interesting things or enjoy interesting meals, etc.

We live in a world that has markets and money. You can forever dislike money and the market on principle, but the bottom line is that each and every day you are still choosing to spend what you have on what services you think you most need.

The bottom line is that every single thing in the universe you could ever choose to spend your money on is "water being sold near the river." Because every single thing in the universe is alive and present and natural in terms of its eternal value.

Roger wrote, "I don't think what counts can be sold." I guess my response is: and what price did you pay to learn that lesson, or are you still paying some kind of price?

Was it in dollars or in experience?

Because it sounds like you have an experiential and "monetary" chip on your shoulder that might need to be given back or spent. Can you allow dollars and experience to coexist, or not? And if not, then why is your experience acting just like the currency you despise--determining across the market of existence what is valuable and what isn't?

Look, I'm with you. I don't think that people should be duped or taken advantage of. But I have a hard time with the accusatory tones, the cynicism, and the rebellion. It simply feels like these posts are ways of attacking and lashing out at something you are not taking the time to love--namely me and the workshop I've given a lot of my heart to creating.

Why can't you be kind? Where are your principles in the realm of human interaction and intimacy and love?

We need to get past all the ways in which woundedness informs our perceptions and our principles. There are many people who would like to know more about meditation, and they would like to know how to start their own practice...one that is not related specifically to any particular tradition or "way of doing it."

And for some people, it's worth using some of their dollars for in a world that has a market and money. Corporations pay us all of the time to teach their staff how to relax and meditate in a non religiously specific way.

What a gift to give your workers! In our workshop we blow through some of the meditation myths and pageantry in order to help people find their own independent practice, and we do it in one dynamic and powerful class that we've designed.

We hope that its innovative, fun, and helpful for people seeking guidance. And we don't care if you think its too much money. Then, you know, don't come! We pass no judgments on your financial values or priorities.

Adam Elenbaas