Jerry Seinfeld swears by it. Howard Stern too. The Beatles did it. Jim Carrey, Jennifer Aniston, and Oprah Winfrey as well. Ray Diallo even makes every employee at the world’s most successful hedge fund partake in it. The list goes on and on. Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, people are buying into it. Entire school districts in Mexico. Actors. Politicians. Even regular folks like you and me. For years it was the best kept secret in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. An exclusive club with untold benefits capable of vastly improving your life and altering the course of human history. The secret to your success. But alas, it is a secret no more. The era of Transcendental Meditation is upon us.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Meditation is New Age bullshit. Perfect for hippies and stoners to practice as a means of reaching a higher plane of existence but not something that everyday people should be doing. And I know this because it’s exactly how I felt.
But recently I started getting harassed by a co-worker to give serious thought to Transcendental Meditation or TM as it is referred to by practitioners. TM isn’t like other kinds of meditation. It’s scientifically backed and uniquely tailored to each person with individual mantras getting assigned. It’s also a relatively simple form of meditation to practice, doesn’t take long to complete, and most importantly, actually works. They even have the brain scans to prove it.
However, being the close-minded skeptic that I am I still wasn’t convinced. Unable to accept the truths that my friend was speaking I set out on my own journey to discover what TM and more generally what meditation was all about. The book Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler was my guide through the darkness. Here’s what I learned:
- Buddhist monks, professional athletes who are in “in the zone”, surfers, and people who rock out to electronic dance music all have one thing in common: they can all enter into “flow states” if the conditions are right.
- When someone enters one of these flow states four things can happen: selflessness, timeliness, effortlessness, and richness. In other words, they lose their sense of self (ego disintegration) and their sense of time (entering an infinite now) all while having an easier time of forming new connections that are more vivid and vibrant than anything else they’ve ever experienced.
- People who have deep religious experiences likely enter into these flow states as well. The vividness of the encounter is so real, so shocking, so unlike anything else they’ve ever experienced, that their rational minds chalk it up to a religious experience, truly believing that God has spoken directly to them, because there can’t possibly be a logical explanation otherwise. But there is. Just don’t tell that to a Mormon. Their prophet Joseph Smith was likely in a flow state when he had his encounter with “God”.
- Flow states are more than just a weird state of mind. They actually lead to a 200% boost in creativity, 490% boost in learning ability, and a 500% boost in productivity.
- There is actually neuroscience behind what is happening. The pre-frontal cortex is the CEO of your brain, acting as the Grand Central Station for all of your thoughts, plans, questions, and nagging doubts. It gives you your ability to plan for the future and make rational decisions. It’s development is the #1 reason why we evolved into the globe conquering species that we became. But unfortunately it didn’t come with an off switch. Our greatest gift also serving as our greatest curse as anyone who has trouble falling asleep can attest to. Meditation can help us flip that switch, deactivating the pre-frontal cortex, while letting other parts of the brain, parts that don’t normally communicate with one another, talk to each other. That’s where the new connections and ideas come from. That’s where the feeling of having an out of body experience or encounter with a higher power comes from. It’s not God talking to you. It’s the other half of your brain talking to you.
This whole time science has been focused on healing people who are sick, injured, and operating at less than 100%. But perhaps science should instead focus on achieving peak performance. On curing those who yet to reach their full potential. The kinds of people who have yet to tap into the higher states of consciousness available to them. Perhaps Transcendental Meditation can help with that. Help us to reach these elusive flow states. Once and for all.
Then again, it may not. Maybe it really is just all hogwash. But don’t you think that you owe it to yourself to find out? Owe it to yourself to see if you can be more successful? Achieve more in life? Fulfill your full potential? The secrete to success may be out there, waiting for you to tap into it. All you have to do is be willing to take that elusive first step. That so-called leap of faith that we always hear so much about. The choice is yours.
Is Transcendental Meditation the Greatest Idea Ever?
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