Does Meditation Alter Reality?

Got this interesting question from a reader:

‘Hi Roger, I’ve been interested in doing meditation so I’ve been reading a lot of material including your blog, and I have a question. The idea I’m getting is that meditation changes the sense of reality because it clears our conditioned mind. So my question is, because our reality is made from our conditioning, does this mean that meditation changes reality?

And my reply:

Though I can see what you’re getting at, your question rests upon a premise that’s a little wonky. So lets clear that up first.

Yes, the ultimate effect of meditation is it slowly invigorates an ongoing awareness of life ‘as it is’ rather than ‘as we think it is’. That is, it weakens the influence of our conditioned view of reality, with all its preconceptions and reactions, so we can experience life as it happens – rather than from the standpoint of perpetual review.

But this is not a black and white proposition – I mean, it doesn’t mean our conditioned reality disappears, leaving another ‘more real’ reality in its place. It’s all one reality – meditation just helps us see it more clearly.

Let me put it this way:

Let’s imagine our unconditioned awareness – that is, the reality we were born into, before it got clothed it with life conditioning – is the naked body of our being.

And then we grow up and inevitably, societal conditioning shapes our minds to fit with the culture we’ve been born into – the clothes we learn to wear over the naked body of the awareness we were born with.

Over the decades, as adults, we become so used to living within the clothes of our conditioning, that we come to regard that conditioned reality as all there is. Result being, with naked awareness forgotten, our entire life experience becomes filtered through the clothes of this conditioning, Our biases, views, opinions and emotional reactions become what we know as ‘reality – what we accept as ‘the way things are’.

But it’s not reality at all. It’s the reality we’ve been taught to perceive, which is reinforced by the cultural context we live in. We all experience the same thing, so we go with it.

So then we begin to meditate.

And one of the functions of meditation is, in simply sitting still, with our attention suspended on the breath, the naked awareness we were born with comes to the fore. And it shines a bright light on the patina of conditioned muck we’ve accumulated throughout our life – that we’ve learnt to live with.

The more we practice meditation, the more transparent these layers of conditioned muck become. Slowly, (and it is indeed a slow process), as the layers of mental clothing we’ve accumulated are seen for what they are – as simply constructs we created around reality, we begin to experience glimpses of the original reality we were born with. The naked reality behind the conditioned clothes our mind has learnt to wear.

We begin to experience life and everything around us ‘as it is’, instead of ‘as we think it is’.

But here’s the thing. Nothing is radically changed. Trees are still trees, buildings are buildings, up is up and down is down and so on. All that happens is we realize on an instinctual level, that we’ve been living in a prison of mental and sensual preconceptions about everything – a thick cloth of conceptual and perceptual habits that were, in effect, numbing us, and obscuring the elegant perfection of life.

I’m sorry if that description is a little obscure. I’ll give you an example.

I remember one time – after a few years of fiddling about with meditation, I jumped in feet first and travelled to Thailand to do my first intensive retreat. I took a train down to Chachoengsao and entered the Sorn Thawee Meditation Centre for a month of silent meditation with my first teacher, Acharn Thawee.

So, one afternoon, after I’d been meditating intensively for a couple of weeks, I stepped out of my hut for a rest.

And right then a bird flew past my head – and as I watched this bird pass, I suddenly saw every moment of every movement it made as it slipped through the air. And it was so beautiful to see. And I was shocked to realize I’d never actually seen a bird fly until then. Not really. For sure, I’d registered birds flitting past as a kind of visual shorthand, but I’d never actually experienced the magic of a bird in flight.

And it was the same with the colors of flowers, and everything around me – superficially the colors were the same as they always were – red was red, green was green and so on. But now they glowed with a depth I’d never noticed before. And there were patterns everywhere, in everything – exquisite patterns I’d never noticed before. The world was a sublime work of art. And trees – I’d spent a lifetime walking past trees, without noticing or appreciating their slow and gentle life. I can’t explain it, but suddenly I could sense the life force in everything around me. I could feel it.

And my body – rather than being a vehicle of appetites and sensations hanging off the bottom of my head, as it had always seemed to have been, I found myself increasingly aware of the myriad sensations within my body – of flesh, and bones and organs and blood. And suddenly sensations, rather than simply being either an entertainment or a pest, became brighter and more responsive – communications from the friend and partner of my body.

This is just a few of the thousands of small revelations that gradually appeared over the following years of practice – until, inevitably, my mind adapted, and it all became normal – leaving me with an overall sensitivity to things I’d never considered before in my life – my new reality.

Same as the old one – but different.

So you see, meditation does not reveal a new reality – it simply cleans it up and makes it amazing.