P eople who follow paths of personal or spiritual development are sometimes accused of selfishness. They’re preoccupied with their own wellbeing instead of other people’s, the argument goes. They shut themselves away, meditating with their eyes closed, rather than engaging with the world, and trying to change it for the better.

I don’t think this is wholly valid. It’s true that some spiritual seekers retire to monasteries and ashrams, or treat the everyday world as an illusion that is of no consequence. One of the most extreme examples of this was the Indian mystic Ramakrishna who, when asked about the value of social action, said, ‘Hospitals, dispensaries, and all such things are unreal. God alone is real… Why should we forget him and lose ourselves in too many activities?’ ¹

In most cases, however, spiritual development makes people less self-centered and more connected. It generates more empathy and a greater concern for social and global problems. For every solitary hermit, there has been a ‘spiritual activist’ who has devoted most of his or her life to serving others. Although some of them went through periods of solitary ‘spiritual training’ early on, mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, the Baal Shem Tov (founder of Hasidic Judaism), George Fox, Vivekananda, Gandhi – and many others – lived lives of great altruism, campaigning against injustice and oppression, trying to alleviate suffering and improve the predicaments of the oppressed and poor.

As we have seen, a lack of empathy – and a consequent lack of altruism – is one of the characteristics of humania. Our strong ego-boundary ‘walls us off’ from other people, preventing us from making an empathic connection with them. In addition, our preoccupation with our own psychological discord makes it difficult for us to ‘step outside’ ourselves. We’re too immersed in our own problems to worry about other people’s. In philosopher Ken Wilber’s terms, we have an ‘egocentric’ outlook rather than a wider sociocentric or worldcentric perspective that generates a concern for social or global issues, or the desire to ‘make the world a better place.’

As a result, once you’ve healed the effects of trauma to some degree, and begun to transcend negative thought-patterns, you’ll find yourself naturally becoming more empathic and altruistic. As you become less immersed in your own subjective world of discord, you’ll reach out into other people’s mind-space. You’ll become able to ‘feel with’ them, to sense their suffering or happiness as if it were your own.

Stage 5: Service

But at the same time, it’s important to think of service – performing altruistic acts – as a developmental practice that we can consciously use as way of healing our minds. Acts of service help us to transcend separation. They help increase our empathic connection with other people, and so soften our ego-boundaries. They help us to sense our real identity as part of an ocean of shared consciousness, rather than as islands of individual consciousness, each at the center of the universe. When we serve other people – act altruistically to try to alleviate their suffering, improve their predicament or further their development – we don’t just connect with them, but with a transcendent dimension of oneness that lies behind all seeming separateness. And the more we connect with this dimension, the less self-centered and separate we become.

If you have young children or elderly parents, or if you work as a nurse, counselor or teacher, you may already be using service as a developmental practice, even without realizing it. If not, try taking on some voluntary work for a charity or community organization, a local hospice, hospital or homeless people’s hostel, a group that helps the elderly people in your neighborhood, or a conservation group. Or perhaps you could serve the whole human race in a more abstract way, through environmental, social or political social activism, trying to alleviate some of the oppression and discord that fills our world.

And after all, it’s only fitting that we should try to heal the world, after collectively mistreating it for so long. The world needs all the altruism we can give it, because of the havoc that humania has wreaked on it, through thousands of years of conflict, oppression and inequality. We have a collective duty to try to alleviate suffering in the world. And it’s also somehow fitting that, in the process of helping to alleviate the suffering of others, we also help to heal the suffering inside ourselves.

Stage 6: Conscious attention

Wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, there are always three different things we can do with our attention: we can give it to the thought-chatter in our heads, we can immerse it in tasks or distractions, or we can focus it on the present, on our surroundings and experience. For example, if you’re in the doctor’s waiting room, you can daydream (perhaps think about what you’re going to do at the weekend or mull over some problems you have at work), immerse your attention in a magazine, or observe the other people around you and the objects and décor of the room itself. Or when you go for a jog, you can daydream, listen to an audio book on your iPod, or give your attention to your surroundings, the scenery you pass and the nature around you. In shorthand, you can think of these three states as ‘the three As’: abstraction (i.e. immersion in thought-chatter), absorption (i.e. in activities or distractions), and attention (i.e. conscious attention to our experience).

It isn’t cut and dried, of course – in a state of abstraction or absorption, you’re usually in a state of partial attention too. For example, even if you’re daydreaming or listening to an audio book while jogging, you’re obviously still attentive to your surroundings to a degree – enough to pay attention to the traffic, or to keep to your normal route. But usually this is only a very basic and functional attention; the largest proportion of your mental energy is given up to absorption or abstraction.

Every moment of our lives, we unconsciously evaluate these three options and choose one of them. Normally we choose one of the first two As, of course, and enter into internal or external ‘elsewhereness.’ But after the previous five stages, you should find yourself spending more time in the third state. As your psychological discord decreases – and as you become more used to your own mental space and less dependent on distractions – you’ll naturally find it easier to pay conscious attention to your experience. But like service, conscious attention should also be a practice in itself, and a habit that can be cultivated and encouraged.

This means making a conscious effort to focus your attention on the here and now. Whenever you realize that you’re elsewhere, try to make a habit of bringing yourself back to the present. Whenever you realize that you’ve become immersed in thought-chatter, withdraw your attention from it and re-focus on your surroundings and your experience. Focus on the room you’re in and the objects and other people around you, and on the sounds you can hear. Look at the color and shape of the objects and their relationship to each other. Feel the texture of the table you’re sitting at, the pen you’re using or the carpet under your feet. Make a conscious effort to use your sense of smell – perhaps the room or the street is filled with smells you weren’t aware of. Do the same whenever you feel the impulse to immerse your attention in distractions or activities.

It’s important to remember to do this gently. Don’t jolt your attention away from thought-chatter – if you do, you’ll generate resistance, which will make it difficult for you to be present. Presence can’t work with forced attention, but only with relaxed and natural awareness. Rather than forcing yourself, just gently guide yourself back into the present, and reorientate yourself there. It’s like walking in the park with a toddler who doesn’t understand the concept of a straight line and keeps veering off the path in different directions: every few steps you have to gently pick him up and point him in the right direction.

For example, when you’re walking to the train in the morning with your mind buzzing with thoughts about what happened last night or what’s ahead of you today – give yourself a gentle mental nudge and bring your attention away from those thoughts and into the present. Transfer your attention away from your thought-chatter toward the sky above you, the trees and buildings, and the cars around you, and the awareness of yourself inside your body, walking in the midst of these surroundings. When you’re eating your evening meal and realize that you’re reading a newspaper, give yourself a mental nudge and transfer your attention to the taste of the food and the chewing and swallowing. Or when you’re in a meeting at work: take your attention out of the discussion for a moment and be aware of the room you’re in, take in its shape and its colors and its furniture. Be aware of yourself sitting there, of your bottom against the surface of the chair, your back against its back, and your feet on the floor.

We usually assume that activities like driving or eating or cooking aren’t enough in themselves, because they’re essentially mundane and dreary. We feel as though we need to combine them with distractions – like reading the paper while you eat or having the TV on in the kitchen while you cook – to make them more bearable. But when we do actually give ourselves wholly to the activities we find the opposite: these activities are sufficient in themselves; in fact, they provide a sense of ease and harmony that no distraction or daydream ever could.

With conscious attention the whole world becomes much more fascinating and beautiful. We realize that objects and scenes are only beautiful or fascinating in proportion to how much attention we give to them. Beauty isn’t just something innate, a quality that some objects possess – much more than that it’s something that we create. The more attention we invest, the more beauty and fascination we perceive. Everyday objects and scenes only seem mundane because we don’t give them real attention. When we do consciously attend to them, we realize that they’re just as attractive as ancient artifacts that we go to museums to look at, or unfamiliar foreign scenes that we travel across the world to see.

Once you get into the habit of bringing yourself back to the present you’ll be surprised how easy it is to do. It quickly begins to feel natural, making our normal state of abstraction seem absurd. Why should I let these crazy whirls of memory and association take up my attention when there is this endlessly rich and intricate world in front of me, filled with layer after layer of is-ness and wonder? You might ask yourself. Being immersed in thought-chatter instead of giving your attention to your experience is like traveling to a beautiful city – such as Paris or Venice – and spending all your time there in your hotel room watching TV.

Conscious attention in relationships

It’s especially important to practice conscious attention in our relationships. Often we don’t give the people we’re with our full attention or communicate with them properly because we’re partially elsewhere. Particularly when we’ve been friends or partners with people for a long time and take them for granted, we let thought-chatter immerse our attention while we’re talking with them – or even more blatantly, give part of our attention to the radio or TV. Your wife might be telling you about the terrible day she’s had at work, but she’s said similar things to you a hundred times before and you’re busy thinking about the football match you’re going to watch on TV later, or about what you’ve got to do at work tomorrow. The person you’ve sat next to at work for the last three years is telling you about the vacation he’s booked for the summer, but you’ve always found him a bit boring and just automatically nod while daydreaming about the new girl on reception downstairs.

Many couples who have been together a long time are like this. They’ve known each other for so long that they no longer make the effort to listen to each other. They automatically switch off their attention, assuming that there is nothing new or interesting the other person can say. As a result, they become strangers to each other. They no longer share their thoughts and feelings; there’s no exchange of ideas, feelings and energy, and so no real relationship. There’s always a barrier between them – the barrier of their thought-chatter, on both sides. As a result, their selves never truly meet each other.

This creates discord in relationships. If you’re largely elsewhere when you’re with your partner or friends, you’re unconsciously telling them that you don’t value them. They will sense this, and feel insecure and demeaned as a result, which will lead to resentment and hostility.

If two people are largely elsewhere to each other, it also means that they don’t genuinely know each other, in the same way that we don’t genuinely know ourselves. They don’t communicate intimately and directly, but only through their surface egos, without revealing their true selves. And this can lead to discord because it creates misunderstanding and mistrust. If you don’t truly know someone, it’s easy to misinterpret their actions and intentions, and you can never be completely sure of their feelings toward you.

Once you’ve begun to transcend humania, you’ll find yourself naturally being more present to the people around you, as you will to life in general. But again, it’s also worth practicing this consciously. When you’re with you partner, your friends and colleagues, make a conscious effort to be present. Make the effort to be truly alone with them with no noise or distractions around you, with the TV and radio turned off and no newspapers or magazines to distract you. Try to give them your whole attention, reminding yourself not to take this person for granted, and that their every thought or feeling is as valuable as your own. Being nakedly alone with the person might feel uncomfortable at first, in the same way that inactivity, silence and solitude may feel uncomfortable. But once you establish a real connection with the person and begin to feel an exchange of empathy, this unease will fade away.

And this applies to the people who aren’t so close to us too. The store assistant, the cab driver, the receptionist, the waitress or the person sitting next to you on the train – try to give them your complete attention. Be receptive and respectful to them, rather than treating them like objects. Even very brief contact with someone can create an empathic bond.

Relationships often have a power dynamic to them. One party is often in a superior position to the other. For example, a teacher usually feels he is in a dominant position to his students, a manager feels she is superior to her workers, a passenger in a taxi feels he has higher status than the driver, and so on. In sexual relationships, one partner may feel dominated by the other, or the relationship itself may be a constant power struggle, with one or both partners feeling belittled or mistreated and fighting to bend each other’s will to their own. Even with friends and colleagues, we often feel that there are people who have stronger, more confident personalities than us and who make us feel inferior, while there are others we feel very confident with as if we’re dominant toward them.

But when we’re fully present to other people, this power dynamic is no longer important. We’re no longer two separate entities jostling for prominence, and feeling inferior or superior according to our level of dominance. The boundaries between us fade away, as a flow of empathy unites us. Relationships no longer give us an ego-gratifying sense of status, but an infinitely more satisfying sense of communion and understanding.

Mindfulness

Another term for what I’m calling ‘conscious attention’ is mindfulness, of course. I’ve been using ‘conscious attention’ because it’s more descriptive of the actual state. (I also think the term ‘mindfulness’ is potentially misleading, in that in everyday speech the ‘mind’ is usually equated with the intellect, which isn’t involved in this state at all. In this sense, it could be more accurately called ‘mind-emptiness.’)

The great thing about using this as a practice is that, unlike sitting meditation, you can do it absolutely anywhere, in any situation. This is why some people find mindfulness more natural than sitting meditation, and why it’s probably best to practice mindfulness first. Meditation and mindfulness – or conscious attention – are very similar, but the main difference between them is that in meditation we try to empty and still the mind, aiming to attain a state of pure (or at least purer) consciousness. Meditation is also usually done in withdrawal mode. It’s something that you step out of your everyday life to do, when you go into a quiet room, sit down quietly and close your eyes. On the other hand, in mindfulness you don’t try to do anything, you just observe what’s happening around you. You don’t try to quiet your mind; you just observe it. You don’t withdraw from the world; you just give your whole attention to your experience in the world. You can eat, drink, walk, brush your teeth or talk to your friends mindfully, if you pay full attention to the activities, without analyzing them.

And eventually, as with the habit of positive thinking and dis-identifying from thoughts, at some point conscious attention will become so natural and habitual that you won’t need to practice it anymore. You won’t need to make a conscious effort to focus on the present; you will just be present.

Stage 7: Meditation

Meditation itself is a very necessary – and very effective – method of healing our minds too. In Chapter 9 , we saw that meditation is the most effective way of temporarily transcending humania. Withdrawing from external stimuli and focusing our attention on a mantra (or our breathing or a candle flame) quiets our thought-chatter and softens the boundaries of the ego, so that we experience harmony of being. After a good practice these effects can last for hours.

But meditation has powerful long-term effects too. Over months or years of regular practice, it can help us to attain a state of permanent harmony.

The mistake made by many people is that they start meditating before they’re ready. They enroll for meditation classes while there’s still a lot of psychological discord inside them, before they’ve healed the effects of trauma, and before they’ve quieted their thought-chatter or dealt with underlying negative thought-patterns. If you meditate at this stage, it can be counterproductive, possibly even dangerous. You may find yourself engulfed by the pain of repressed traumatic experiences, or feel overwhelmed by the chaotic negativity of your thoughts. At the very least, you’ll probably be scared off the practice for the foreseeable future. That’s why it’s so important to go through the previous six stages before sitting down to meditate. You need to have healed your psychological discord to a significant degree already. But by this point, particularly after practicing conscious attention, you should be able to adjust to sitting meditation fairly easily.

Meditation has been shown to have a massive array of benefits – physical benefits such as reduced blood pressure, a better immune system, and a greater resistance to pain; psychological benefits such as reduced anxiety and depression, and greater powers of concentration and attention. ² It’s also sometimes promoted as a way of coping with stress or enhancing your performance at work. In my view though, the main purpose – and the greatest benefit – of meditation is as a therapy for our disordered minds. It’s the most effective way of healing and permanently transcending humania.

Research has shown that, like therapy, regular meditation causes physical changes to the brain. In a 2003 study, scientists at the University of Wisconsin scanned the brains of Buddhist monks who had been meditating for decades. They found that the monks’ left prefrontal lobes – the areas of the brain linked with positive moods and emotions – were unusually active. Other studies of long-term meditators have shown that their cerebral cortex (the outer layer of the brain) was thicker in areas associated with attention and emotional integration. ³

A 2011 study showed just how quickly these changes can occur. Sixteen people were given MRI brain scans before they took part in an eight-week program, which included weekly group meditations and guided audio meditations on CD every day. The participants meditated for an average of 27 minutes each day, and their brains were scanned again at the end of the eight weeks. The second scans showed increased ‘gray matter’ in parts of the brain associated with learning and memory, compassion and introspection. As for the Tibetan monks, there was also less gray matter – and less activity – in the amygdala, suggesting less anxiety and stress. ⁴

Once again, this is good evidence of neuroplasticity. And for us, the really important point is that if meditation can bring about these neurological changes so quickly, it can certainly bring about psychological changes too. In the same way that it changes the physical structure and form of the brain, meditation can change the structure of the psyche – specifically, by permanently reducing our cognitive discord and by softening the boundaries of the ego.

This is part of the reason why it’s so important to meditate regularly, and so allow the momentum of this change to build up. If you meditate twice a day for 20 minutes or more – and providing you have a reasonably good practice – each time you’ll slightly weaken the normal structure of the psyche, in the same way that every gust of a strong wind gradually weakens the foundations of a fragile house. Although the normal structure will reestablish itself a few hours after you’ve meditated, it won’t establish itself quite as strongly as before. It’s a cumulative process – after a few months of regular meditation, you’ll still be afflicted by thought-chatter, but it won’t be quite as loud and chaotic as it was before. There will be a degree of inner stillness – or at least not as much inner disturbance – and you’ll have some access to the reservoir of wellbeing that lies beneath the surface discontent of our minds. In addition, the sense of duality between you and your surroundings and between you and the activities you do will no longer be as strong. You’ll begin to feel that you are part of the world rather than just an observer of it.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the last chapter , regular meditation will enhance the progress you’ve made at the earlier stages of this path. Going back to Stage 3, for example, meditation will help you to ‘dis-identify’ with your thoughts more, to stand apart from their flow rather than let them take you away. (As I mentioned in that section, the specific aim of Vipassana meditation is to detach ourselves from the stream of our thoughts and feelings, and just to witness and observe them.)

Similarly, with Stage 4, meditation will reduce the negative tone of your thinking. As your sense of ego-separateness and incompleteness fades away, the atmosphere of your mind will be less charged with anxiety. As a result, your thoughts will be less tinged with negativity, in the same way that a person’s behavior will be less agitated and nervous in a large room filled with light rather than a small, dark room. Any leftover negative ‘scripts’ you have will become weaker, and hopefully disappear altogether.

And of course, meditation will help to further the progress you made at Stage 1, helping you to grow more used to your own mental space. After a few months of regular meditation, you should be well accustomed to the territory of your mind, and feel more at ease there. As a result, the impulse to immerse your attention in distractions and activities will die away even further.

This will also help you to know yourself in a way you never did before. Normally, because our attention is always focused externally, we’re strangers to our own selves. All we know of our own selves is the surface level discord and discontent we try to run away from. But meditation enables us to go beneath the surface and explore our being more fully and deeply. It enables us to examine how our own minds work, how our thoughts and feelings arise, how external events affect our moods, and so on. It helps us to become more attuned to ourselves, to know when it’s the right time to retreat and relax, or when it’s time to be active. Unfamiliarity usually brings a degree of mistrust and fear, as with two neighbors who have lived next door to each other for years but have never spoken to each other. But once the neighbors start talking to each other and develop a relationship, the mistrust disappears. And it’s the same with our inner being: once we begin to explore it and connect with it, fear is replaced by harmony.

Regular meditation may also give you a new sense of being grounded in yourself. When identity is rooted in the ego, it’s always very changeable. Your feeling of who you are changes according to the mood you’re in, the thoughts you’re having, the roles you’re playing and the people you’re with. You may feel like a certain person when you’re in a miserable mood at home alone, and another person when you’re out enjoying yourself with your friends in the evening. You may have one identity when you’re thinking about the past, and another when you think about the future. This may give you a frustrating sense of inconstancy, almost as if you’re on a kind of identity carousel, which never stands still for more than a few hours. The esoteric philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff said that human beings consist of millions of different ‘I’s, constantly jostling to take over our consciousness. According to Gurdjieff, almost every second a new ‘I’ occupies the ‘seat’ of our identity, so that we have no genuine sense of self. This may be a slight exaggeration, but the essential idea is certainly valid.

However, meditation will make your sense of identity more stable. The millions of different ‘I’s will give way to a much more solid and deep-rooted ‘I’ that remains constant through all your different experiences and situations. There’s a sense that this is who you really are – who you really were all the time; the essential self that was obscured like a blue sky behind clouds.

It’s important to remember that, on a psychological level at least, there’s nothing particularly esoteric about meditation. It’s essentially just a way of quieting thought-chatter and softening the boundaries of the ego. As we saw in Chapter 9 , there are a lot of other activities that have a similar effect, such as yoga, tai chi, swimming, and running, or contact with nature. All of these are ‘meditative’ activities to some degree, and I recommend doing one or more of them at the same time as practicing actual meditation, to intensify its effect. In particular, it’s important to have regular contact with nature. As we saw earlier, contact with nature brings temporary experiences of harmony, precisely because of its meditative mind-quieting effect. In addition, nature helps to melt away our ego-boundaries, and reaffirms our sense that we’re not isolated entities, but part of a vast and intricate web of life. So a daily quiet walk through the countryside – or through a park or nature reserve, if you live too far away from the countryside – will have a similar effect to meditation itself.

Stage 8: Healing the mind through quietness and stillness

Since harmony is the mind’s most natural state, there is a natural tendency for us to return to it, in the same way that water returns to stillness without wind or waves. Under ego-madness, there is so much chaos in our minds that this tendency can’t assert itself. You could compare this to our bodies: they have a natural tendency to return to a state of health, but if we’re too busy and stressed, the process won’t work. We have to give our body the opportunity to heal itself by resting and relaxing. And while our minds are full of chatter and busy taking in information and concentrating on tasks, the gravitational pull back to harmony is completely overridden. As with the body, we have to allow our minds to return to harmony.

At this point on the journey beyond humania, this natural tendency begins to aid us. As our minds become quieter, and as we learn to live inside ourselves, it begins to exert a subtle force that increases the momentum of our movement.

However, we also need to consciously encourage this tendency, by giving it as much opportunity as we can to manifest. And the primary way we can do this is to make space for quietness and stillness (or inactivity) in our lives. Quietness and stillness allow the pull toward harmony to assert itself, just as rest allows the body’s healing properties to manifest.

For most people, quietness, stillness, and solitude are enemies to be avoided at all costs. Partly, again, this is a question of habituation. We live our lives against a backdrop of incessant noise – the chatter of TVs and radios, the roar of passing cars and airplanes, the clanging and whirring of machines. We’re so accustomed to this background ‘white noise’ that when it ceases we feel uneasy. We’re so used to the chattering of TVs and radios in our homes that when we come home to a silent house it feels wrong; the atmosphere seems somehow cold and empty.

But the main reason why we don’t like quietness and solitude, of course, is because they expose us to our psychological discord. When we’re alone we feel our ego-isolation, the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between ourselves and the world ‘out there.’ And silence means that there are no distractions around us to immerse our attention in, so that we experience the chaos and negativity of our thought-chatter.

However, once your psychological discord begins to heal, your attitude toward quietness and solitude will change radically. You will begin to relish them, rather than fear them. Rather than enemies, they will begin to seem like two of your greatest friends. Those empty moments of solitude that seemed painfully naked before will begin to seem comfortable and complete.

Whereas in our normal state silence and solitude expose us to the discord at the surface of our being, once that discord has faded away a little, they can bring us into contact with the harmony beneath the surface, the radiant wellbeing that fills the spacious expanse of our whole being. Whereas normally solitude makes us feel our dis connection from the world and other people, in this state it brings a profound experience of connection – to our own deeper selves, and to the world as a whole.

One person who experienced the healing power of quietness and solitude in a profound way is an Australian named Paul Narada Alister. In 1978, he was wrongly convicted of a terrorist attack and spent seven years in prison before being pardoned. In his book Bombs, Bliss and Baba, he describes how terrible life was for his fellow prisoners. Alone in the cells for several hours a day, the isolation made them aloof and mistrustful, and caused depression and suicidal tendencies. It also created a desperate need for distraction, leading to drug abuse, casual sex and gang activity. These are the effects of too much exposure to psychological discord that we’ve seen many times throughout this book. (Also recall Pascal’s comment – in Chapter 1 – that it’s this lack of diversion that makes prison such a fearful punishment.)

At first, Paul Narada Alister found the silence and solitude difficult to deal with too, but after a while he began to find it a blessing. He had already started to follow a spiritual way of life before prison, regularly meditating and doing yoga, which helped him to experience the positive side of silence and solitude. He used the time to reflect, contemplate and meditate for long periods, and started to experience a new sense of wellbeing and aliveness. He developed what he describes as ‘a deep sense of freedom and positivity,’ and found that he was able to function much better in his work at the prison and in his relationships with the other prisoners.

For these reasons he feels that he gained lasting benefits from his years in prison. As he writes:

The inner silence that prison afforded me gave me an experience I carry to this day. I no longer avoid solitude or isolation. If anything I look forward to [them] as a time to experience that inner silence which can give me so much bliss. Be it in meditation or just enjoying my own company, I find silence is golden when experienced as a way to get in touch with my spiritual self. ⁵

The novelist Sara Maitland had a similar experience when she spent six weeks in silence and solitude in a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye in the Scottish Highlands. The first thing she was aware of was a heightening of perception. As she describes it, ‘By the end of the second week I was feeling everything with an extraordinary degree of intensity.’ ⁶ Later she began to experience a strong sense of oneness with her surroundings that she describes as ‘a connection as though my skin had been blown off… I felt absolutely connected to everything.’ And these experiences were underpinned by a growing sense of wellbeing: ‘Moments of intense happiness, followed by a powerful conviction that the moment was somehow a pure gift.’ ⁷

The important factor here is that both Paul Narada Alister and Sara Maitland had already transcended ego-madness to some degree. The difference between Paul and his fellow prisoners was that his meditation practice (and his spiritual way of life before prison) meant that there was less psychological discord inside him, which enabled him to embrace silence and solitude. Similarly, Sara Maitland is a devout Catholic, accustomed to prayer and contemplation. For someone with a normal degree of psychological discord, six weeks of silence and solitude would probably lead to breakdown or insanity. But for her – as for Paul – far from giving rise to discontent and unease, they had a powerful positive effect, helping her mind to return to a natural state of harmony.

What I’m suggesting, then, is that you should make a conscious effort to bring quietness into your life, thinking of it as a kind of spiritual practice, akin to meditation or yoga. Perhaps give yourself two or three evenings each week – or perhaps one whole day – to spend in silence, doing very little. Think of these as your ‘retreat’ times. Unplug the TV, computer and CD player and enjoy the warm, spacious silence that fills the room. You don’t need to spend the whole evening or day doing nothing – you could do a few jobs around the house or a little reading. In fact, doing these activities against a background of stillness will help ensure that you do them with conscious attention.

Quietness doesn’t necessarily mean solitude either. You may want to spend the evening quietly with your partner, or with a good friend. If you’re both comfortable with silence, you won’t need to talk a great deal. In fact, if you spend time with another person against a background of comfortable silence, you’ll find that you’re able to communicate more fully and intimately, even though you might talk much less. Rather than dividing your attention between your companion and some music or the radio or TV, you give your whole self to them. You experience the power and presence of their being as well as of your own, and if your relationship with them has any discord, that will fade away too, like your own psychological discord.

But it’s important to spend some time in solitude too. Remember that having contact with your own self is just as important as contact with other people. Your relationship with your deeper being has to be nurtured just as friendships do, and it’s easier to do this in solitude rather than in company.

It’s completely natural to have friends and to socialize, and some of the most powerful and profound experiences of our lives can come through contact with other people. I’m certainly not saying that we should completely withdraw from society and become hermits in the desert. But in humania, our natural need for social contact is exaggerated by our psychological discord. As with other activities, we often use social activity as a way of escaping from our selves. We talk to try to divert our attention from our psychological discord, covering up our thought-chatter with real verbal chatter. (We prefer real verbal chatter to thought-chatter because we have some control over it, and it doesn’t take place inside our heads and so doesn’t reinforce our sense of ego-isolation.) Conversations immerse our attention in the same way that TV shows and books do, and so help us to avoid experiencing our inner discord.

On the other hand, our basic state of ego-isolation and incompleteness impels us to make contact with other people. We need social contact to try to soften the essential loneliness we feel, to try to bridge the gulf we experience between the inner and outer. Social contact can genuinely help us in this way, when we have meaningful and intimate contact with another person and the boundary between our self and theirs melts away. All too often though, we talk to other people without really making connection with them. Socializing often doesn’t really soften the isolation we feel, just distract us from it.

However, once you begin to move toward harmony, you won’t be psychologically dependent on social contact. You won’t need to frantically phone around friends if you see a sequence of empty evenings in front of you – instead, you’ll look forward to spending the time quietly and sedately with yourself. You might find that you have fewer friends than before, but these friendships will be more intimate and genuine. You’ll enjoy solitude and at the same time relish communication and friendship when you have them. As with solitude itself, you’ll have a different attitude to social contact. You won’t think of it as a source of fun or distraction, but as a source of empathy and connection, a way of melting boundaries and sharing goodwill.

This is, of course, why silence and solitude are integral parts of the monastic way of life. For monks, silence is a spiritual practice. Most monasteries have silent places, such as the church, refectory or dormitory, and certain times – including the nighttime – when speaking is strictly prohibited. Silence is seen as a way of developing self-knowledge and of clearing the mind of distractions, and so leaving it open to God. (Some monastic orders even use forms of sign language to help them to preserve silence.) Most monks live in communities, but still designate certain periods of the day for solitary prayer, reading or reflection. Admittedly, some monastic traditions seem to take this to an unhealthy extreme – for example, Carthusian monks spend all day alone in their cells, apart from three daily visits to the church. (They’re also only allowed to speak to each other twice a week, once on Sundays after lunch, and once on Mondays during a communal walk.) But at the heart of these practices is the recognition that silence and stillness are gateways to inner peace.

Living slowly and simply

Although it manifests itself most powerfully through silence and solitude, the gravitational pull of harmony can also express itself in the active part of our lives. Normally, the complexity and busy-ness of our lives overloads our minds, bombarding us with information and fuelling a whirlwind of thought, so that the gravitational pull of harmony can’t act. And nothing is more opposed to a state of harmony than the act of rushing, when our minds are overloaded with demands and completely ignore the present in an effort to reach the future as quickly as possible. But if we can reduce the general complexity and busy-ness of our lives, and make a conscious effort to live slowly and simply, then it’s possible that, even in our active phases, there will be enough stillness inside us for the gravitational pull of harmony to express itself.

Again, you’ll find yourself doing this naturally as you move toward harmony, but it’s also something that you can work on consciously. It simply means making sure that your life isn’t too cluttered with demands and activities. On a practical level, it could mean reducing your working hours (if you can afford it) and unloading unnecessary possessions. We sometimes forget that possessions are a burden, and take up our energy and attention. The more we have, the more time we spend looking after them and the more they drain our energy away. We don’t own them; they own us. Living simply could also mean reducing your obligations to other people, such as the number of e-mail correspondents you keep in contact with or the number of organizations you’re involved with.

It’s also worth making a conscious effort to live slowly, and to try to avoid rushing whenever possible. Whenever you become aware of yourself rushing – when you’re cooking, eating, walking, cleaning your house, working or talking to someone – just stop for a second to reorientate yourself in the present. Make a conscious effort to do the activity slowly instead. Don’t rush eating your meal – resist the pull of the future and take your time. Relish the taste of the food instead of unconsciously chewing and swallowing. Don’t rush when you’re driving – focus your thoughts away from your destination, and don’t think of this journey as just an irritating inconvenience to be eliminated as quickly as possible. Slow down and bring your attention to the act of driving and to the buildings and streets around you. Remember that it doesn’t matter if you’re a couple of minutes late – it’s more important to cultivate a calm state of mind rather than to arrive stressed with a mind full of thought-chatter.

As the example of driving shows, slowing down is closely connected to conscious attention, as in Stage 6. They facilitate each other. Slowing down allows us to give conscious attention to what we’re doing; and bringing conscious attention to what we’re doing naturally slows us down. It’s impossible to practice conscious attention when we hurry.

To summarize then, I recommend these eight stages as a way of healing humania and attaining a state of permanent harmony of being:

Learn the habit of resting inside your own mental space, reducing your dependency on distractions and activities.
If it’s difficult for you to face your psychological discord due to the effects of trauma, seek help to try to heal this.
Learn to step back and ‘dis-identify’ with your thought-chatter, observing it rather than being carried along.
Change the negative tone of your thoughts, by identifying your underlying negative scripts and challenging and replacing them, using the type of cognitive exercises described above.
Practice some form of service.
Practice ‘conscious attention’ or mindfulness during your daily life.
Mediate at least once a day for 20 to 30 minutes, and/or practice other ‘meditative’ activities such as contact with nature, running, or swimming
Make a conscious effort to take ‘retreat’ periods of quietness and stillness, as well as to live simply and slowly.