The Big Mind Process
I have looked at so many different systems and ways of meditating that I've often made myself dizzy exploring so many avenues. But some time ago I read about a simple way of reaching pure consciousness or what some schools of thought call 'the transcendent mind'. It is known as 'big mind' and having personally tried it I can attest that it works. During the training almost 100% of participants were able to have a sense of transcending.
This is also a method that can be done on your own at home.
It was devised by Dennis Merzel, a western zen master who felt that we needed to have a way of speeding up our development without having to resort to long and arduous traditional zen training. He realized that this long training would not suit every bodies lifestyle and therefore was not practical for all. Now he was working with the founders of Voice Dialogue for a time which is a type of personal development technique taken from Gestalt and Jungian therapy and used to integrate various 'parts' or sub-personalities as they are known in more traditional psychology. With voice dialogue you can just ask to speak to a particlaur part of a person, like for instance their 'controller' part, the part that controls what they do, or perhaps a child part from long ago, or even a anger part or a peaceful part, and so on.
Now by just asking to speak to these parts you bypass the ego mechanisms very easily. This may sound more complicated than it really is but in essence it is very simple to do and can often bring about quite profound changes in people who undergo this type of self-development. Eventually Genpo Merzel ( the correct title for a zen master) began to notice that this technique could be used to go past the gatekeepers of the mind. In Zen they talk about the gatekeepers of the mind that act as a barrier between the Self and the transcendent but that gate can also be an illusion, its just that we do not know how to get through it to reach a transcendent state.
So this is where voice dialogue comes into the picture, we understand through this method that most people have guardians at the gate, like the controller, or the protector parts of themselves that are strong in ego, and it is parts such as these that we have to slip past in order to attain an egoless state of transcendence. It is almost like we need permission to enter. In this case, with this method, the magic word is 'please'. By this I mean that in order to speak to various parts you have to say something like the following "Please may I speak to your 'controller' part" and the 'controller' part just says "yes, you can" and so you do. The same thing applies to all other parts of your personality.
You see the normal traditional way is to try and try and struggle to reach these transcendent states instead of simply asking permission to be in them. Let me expand on that, there is a part of us that is non-seeking, a part that is non-grasping and does not seek materialism, it has always been there and it is the door to the transcendent. All you do is first have some knowledge of these stored parts and ask each in turn to show themselves or 'speak' to us, when you have a little experience of that you can just ask to speak to the 'non-seeking' part and there it is, right there. The non-seeking mind is transcendent, it is what Genpo Merzel calls 'Big Mind' because it is the limitless mind and most importantly it is your true nature.
You see many of us have a sense that there is something greater to attain to, we may seek to move towards more wholeness but don't know how, some of us feel a need to come home to ourselves. For some people its an awakening they seek or the absolute or an enlightened sense. The longing for this absoluteness and freedom was sought after by trying to get it which of course involves grasping, which of course involves trying agin, if we use voice dialogue there is no trying, we just ask permission and voila, it is there.
As soon as we ask to speak to Big Mind we are there outside the usual bubble which means we are outside the limits of the Self where there is no fear or attachment to anything at all and no boundaries. It is a place where suffering cannot exist and we are truly free because we have moved beyond duality. This may seem too good to be true but I assure the reader that I regularly participate in Big Mind and it is truly wonderful to know that you can enter this state when you like.
I strongly advise interested readers to purchase Genpo Merzels book first. It is called Big Mind - Big Heart: Finding Your Way
