“There is another world, but it’s in this one.”
- Paul Éluard
I like adventures. As a toddler running away from my parents, then fantasy novels and lucid dreaming and psychedelics and near-death experiences and world travel and disorganized philosophical reading and exploring abandoned sewers and Russian mobster-owned nightclubs and whitewater canoeing and mountaineering and consciousness research and more psychedelics and more meditation and now … parenting. Back to where I started!
All adventures, at different scales, roughly in the order they arrived.
I say this to balance the mystical stuff I’m about to go into. I’m predisposed to want to find some special novel thing. That doesn’t make it true, only true for me. Well – true for others too. In fact, “truthiness” is one of its characteristics.
What is this “it”?
Mysticism 101: we can come into direct contact with a reality larger than the material world around us.
I think this is the greatest adventure a human can go on. It’s the adventure that contains and enhances all other adventures, and it’s mind-blowing that we can embark in the first place. My parents never told me about it, or my school teachers or professors. I don’t read about it in newspapers or magazines or book reviews.
It turns out (or at least it’s turned out for me) that inquiring into the nature of existence isn’t only about conducting science experiments and assessing academic ideas. It’s also a direction you can commit to with your attention, in your own experience. A direction that takes you deeper into the mystery of life, in a way that feels beautiful, and healing, and right.
It’s also impossible to do it justice in words! It’s intellectual antimatter. A swarm of clichés that pushes you further away from the very subject you care about. I know this because ten years ago, I was soundly defeated in an attempt to write such a book. After that I mostly just alluded to “it” poetically, and directed my energies towards making the common sense side of meditation more accessible.
Why say something now? Because:
Fuck it. I like the creative challenge. It’s fun and brings me joy.
I think hearing about the (personal) legitimacy of this perspective, and getting guidance about how to sensitize oneself to it, can help people accelerate the benefits of practice, and find meaning and direction and connection, and super-charge their caring action in the world, and help alleviate suffering in themselves and others (that’s a lot of reasons!)
I also think orienting to this larger reality can help correct the confused worldview of the blinkered civilization we happen to find ourselves in.
So here’s a short attempt to describe my experience of the world inside this one.
Right now I am typing this in my local library. I stop and look out the window. Trees, cars, people. It’s the same world as always. There’s causality. There’s change, and linear horizontal time. And I am part of it, watching, thinking, interacting.
And … there’s also the moment.
I was never really aware of the moment before I began meditating. I am now, although its vividness fluctuates, along with my awareness of it. The feeling I have of the moment now is one of space, and appropriateness, with less of me in it.
It’s a bit like the famous colour photograph by Jeff Wall hanging in the Tate Modern, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai). Wall worked on it for months, hiring actors, painstakingly re-creating the composition of the original 19th century Japanese woodcut. Every element has its place in relation to every other element.
I often experience moments like that. They feel outside of time, Polaroids vs a film reel. Every element in the right place. A bird calls at the very moment a memory comes and someone says a phrase from across the room. There’s a harmony to the whole tableau, but I have to get out of my own way in order to appreciate it. Sometimes there are synchronicities: perfect pairings between inside and out. In linear time, these are random coincidences. In vertical time, they seem part of a single elegant design, only without an apparent designer.
The moment is where real contact happens between people. It’s where intuition happens, and the best of religion, and magic too.
All of which is no doubt misleading, in lots of ways. Fortunately, I’m pointing to something in experience, not concepts. You can sense it in a forest glade or a room of people. You can go into deliberate silence – alone, or in a group – and feel the mystery of it work on you.
We explored exactly this subject at a recent New York Insight Meditation Center event. Nothing dramatic. Just some discussion and a couple guided practices. But people seemed open to the mystical theme, and the group chemistry felt fun and inclusive. Watch it here if you’re curious:
Whether or not we speak about them in this way, I think the benefits that happen as a result of meditation happen because we’re being moved in the direction of that mystery. Next week I’ll write about how to be more deliberate about holding that direction.
As always, curious for your comments. I’d love to hear your own take on how practice has deepened for you, in both common and uncommon sense ways.
Love,
Jeff
A few quick notes—
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New York Insight Meditation Center - Live Fundraiser
New York Insight is an oasis of practice and community in New York City, one I’ve been happy to visit the past few years. Check out their calendar of events if you’re local, or livestream them if you’re remote.
On Sunday, October 4th, they’re hosting a live fundraiser with Dan Harris, Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. About how “meditation can help us navigate anxiety, uncertainty, polarization, and rapid change while staying connected to joy, compassion, and one another.” You can sign up to attend in-person, or remotely. Anyone under 30 can email youngadults@nyimc.org to attend for free.
THIS WEEK ON THE MIND BOD ADVENTURE POD
This week on The Mind Bod Adventure Pod we’re hanging with Abigail Rose Clarke, an author, artist, and somatic facilitator. Tasha’s been a fangirl of her Instagram for ages, so this one’s a long time coming. Abigail’s approach to the somatic lives in a sweet spot: grounded by science and expanded by magic and art.
Meditation Party – New York
October 16-18, 2026
Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY
A do-nothing party with friends who take meditation seriously—and themselves less so.
Sebene Selassie, Dan Harris, and I are getting together for a few days of practice, conversation, and reckless conviviality. There will be plenty of meditation, but this is not a silent retreat. We also talk, connect, and experiment with bringing practice into actual life.
