Posted for Sue
You share in your book, “Catching the Big Fish,” a conviction that TM enhances your creative process.
BUT, I did NOT have the same experience with enhancing my creativity with Transcendental Meditation! As a young art student, at the California College of Arts in Oakland, I got into TM. The year was 1971. Immediately I felt a riff with my art! I began to sleep in later in the mornings in order to have the subjective “clear” experience of “transcendiing.”
My attitude toward myself, my body, and people changed. I learned a new concept: “stress.” I learned another new concept: “energy.” I learned that “stress” and “energy” were realities that effected my daily life. I thought about how much sleep I got and became concerned that I got enough for my “evolution.” I felt my body resting in a new way and I felt a new sense of peace.
I absorbed a whole new mentality. I learned that this feeling of peacefuness was due to contact with the “Field of Creative Intelligence.” I learned that Cosmic Consciousness came from contact with this inner experience, and the inner experience
was PEACEFUL. I began to attribute good things happening to me to my meditating. My whole concept of life changed.
I was no longer a free agent diving into my classes with the enthusiasm of a new 18 year old freshman in college.
It was only because a teacher, the English teacher, suggested the TM lecture to the class that I even attended the lecture. I was not particularly interested in Eastern religions; I was interested in drawing and painting and being in college. I was happy!
But after I absorbed the TM philosophy and practice with the rigid discipline of twice a day meditation, I was not the same person.
I no longer felt interested in art. It happened very quickly for me. I came late to class. I got a “D” in Art History. I felt that TM held the keys to the kingdom so to speak, and everything else was not important. I sought other TMers for compamionship and a feeling of connection.
I dropped out of college by the Spring and sought work to cover the cost of a TM teacher training course. By the following Fall, one year after my TM initiation ceremony, I boarded a chartered plane from LAX to Luxembourg, and bus ride to La Antilla, Spain to learn the secrets to becoming a TM teacher. I learned how to do the initaion ceremony, puja, and experienced a lot more meditation.
When I returned home to Oakland one year later, the sights and smells overwhelmed me. Life had been speeding up while I was on another planet. I had lost the feel for my home town; I was a stranger in a strange land. My younger brother took one look at me
and went back to what he was doing. I wasn't the same. I thought I would be filled with a glow that attracts people; there wasn't a good glow!
I attended classes at another college; I couldn't connect with the classes or the people. One person mocked my religious conviction that TM was the way to release stress by declaring out loud “I go to the beach to relax!” I was a freak.
I no longer spoke the same language as people about me. I felt above them; I felt deep inside that I knew something that they didn't. I believed another new concept; “nature supports.” This meant that events in daily life would line up in support of us who meditated regularly and we didn't have to worry about our safety or our wellbeing, as “nature” would support us. I lost reasonableness.
TM philosophy and practice had taken over my mind. I sought refuge back in Switzerland in Maharishi's group-rented off-season hotels FOR TWO MORE YEARS. Finally, my family required I rejoin the fold and come home in December 1975. Back again...........
My mother got the creeps when I closed my door for my Transcendental Deep Meditation (the original name given the practice by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in about 1965). Soon, my mother, the gatekeeper, with the blessing of my father, the reasonable, dismissed me from the family home. I was old enough by then, 22, but entirely without real world skills or even the focus to get them in school.
My point is that I lost my entire artistic focus due my my practicing Transcendental Meditaion as taught by Maharish Mahesh Yogi.
When strictly practiced, one is not supposed to pay attention to thoughts during a TM meditation. One is supposed to ignore thoughts during TM!
This was the way I practiced TM.
BUT, you have divulged that you glean ideas during a meditation, and “catch fish” so to speak; this might be called the David Lynch lynchpin!
I think you have discovered a way of making TM useful to people! Pay attention to thoughts during a meditation! Oh my God!
Why not teach YOUR version to the kids in schools? It would be much cheaper; just hold a group meeting with the kids, give them all mantras (be sure to tell them where the mantras come from and that they are NOT meaningless), and let them learn to drift into daydreaming and be aloud to pick up ideas as you do! Otherwise by introducing TM in the schools, you may be introducing a method of disconnection to the kids. You may be introducing them to something that keeps them FROM their creativity! Wouldn't it feel awful to realize that that is what you have given the kids in schools by promoting TM? If such a thing happened to a single child, how would you feel?
I have a question for any artistic TM meditator besides David Lynch; HAS IT HELPED YOUR CREATIVITY?
My opinion is that David Lynch is an outrageously creative soul TO BEGIN WITH, with or without his version of TM.
