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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

The Access Meditation system consists of a breathing technique called Access Calm and a mental technique called Access Stillness. Let’s discuss how the mental technique works. Access Stillness is a mantra-based meditation technique. It's very different from what most people consider mantra meditation. 

Most people, when they think about mantra meditation, they think about using a word or even a phrase that has some meaning behind it and repeating that word or phrase over and over again, either silently in their mind or out loud by singing or chanting it. It’s all about forced repetition, keeping the mantra going, over and over again, as a focal point of attention. 

The idea here is by focussing the mind on the mantra through forced repetition, over and over, and over again, we gain some of the significance of the meaning of the particular mantra. The mantra may mean peace, love, happiness, power, whatever. 

This is very different from what you’ll learn here.

To best understand how the Access Stillness technique works and to compare it to other forms of meditation, it’s best to use a model of the mind. The model that I like to use is an ocean. 

Imagine your mind is like an ocean. Think about the ocean, where up on the surface of the ocean, there's waves, and that's where all the activity is. That's where our mind exists on a regular basis when we're awake when we're not sleeping or dreaming. When we're awake and engaged. The mind's constantly thinking. It's taking in all the sensory information we’re exposed to. The sights, the sounds, the tastes, the smells, the sensations. It's also thinking about past and future events. 

Now, if you’ve ever been to the ocean and gone swimming, what happens when you dive below the waves? The water under the waves, even a few feet deeper, is moving much less. It's more still. It's more quiet. You continue to take that dive even deeper under the water, and you find that the water is moving even less. Eventually, you get to a place where water is not moving at all despite everything that is happening on the surface.

That’s the design of the Access Stillness mental technique. To take the mind from a place of relative activity on the surface and de-excite the mind effortlessly, automatically and spontaneously through quieter states of thoughts, thinking and awareness until the mind reaches that place of stillness. 

When we look at most other forms of meditation, they are designed to keep us very much constrained to the surface, on that surface level of the water, just moving in a particular direction on the surface. 

Take contemplation based meditation. Meditating on a certain theme or an idea, like gratitude or compassion. If you're thinking about that theme, thinking about how you relate to it, how it relates to the world, that's a lot of mental activity there. That keeps the mind on the surface. It also happens to keep the body on the surface. The body can't get into a very deep state of rest while the mind is in that active mode. With contemplation, because the mind is active contemplating, it remains on the surface, in the waves, in activity. 

Look at mindfulness techniques, where the whole idea is to keep the awareness on present-moment experiences. You may be doing a mindfulness practice where you're lying down on the floor, and your eyes are closed and you’re just taking in the experience of what that's like, what it looks like, what it smells like, what it tastes like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, and taking in all that sensory experience, even noticing and monitoring the thoughts that you're having without judging them. 

Or you can be doing something very active. You could be washing the dishes after dinner and just taking in the experience of the washing, what that looks like, smells like, tastes like, feels like, sounds like, and when your mind starts to drift to the past or the future, you just bring your attention and focus back to what you’re actually doing. In this example, washing dishes. With mindfulness, because the mind is active paying attention to present moment experiences, it remains on the surface, in the waves. Mind and body are still relatively active. 

Then, we have techniques that use a lot of focus or concentration, where they may even be using the breath as a focal point or a mantra as a focal point, and the whole idea is to focus, focus, focus, exclude everything else. When the mind starts to go in any other direction, you just come back to that single point of focus.

Focusing and concentrating use considerable mental effort, thus the mind and body remain on the surface as well in relative activity. Think about a time where you needed to focus and concentrate. Like taking a test in school. Your mind certainly wasn’t settling down, nor was your body able to rest at all while trying to maintain all that focus and concentration. It’s funny how we assume that’s possible with meditation techniques that require focus and concentration. I had this assumption myself and found out right away that it’s not possible. A focused mind is always an active mind. 

There’s also visualization, which also happens to be is a fairly accessible form of meditation.

You can download one of these recordings from iTunes or YouTube or elsewhere, and you put your headphones on and listen to someone with a very beautiful, soft, soothing voice describe for you what would be a very relaxing scene. Imagining laying on the beach somewhere, and you hear the seagulls chirping, and the waves crashing and the smell of the salt in the air. You're just really visualizing yourself in what, to you, may be a very inherently relaxing experience.

But people also use visualization actually to visualize very intense, overwhelming experiences. And while they do that visualization, they tend to start to actually feel overwhelmed. The heart rate doesn't decrease. It increases. They start breathing heavy. They do this purposefully to become conditioned to being overwhelmed. Not fun, relaxing, or enjoyable. 

The process of visualization, like contemplation, mindfulness, and focus/contemplation, uses mental effort. To listen and follow along to the guided instruction and to construct that mental picture keep the mind active, on the surface, in the waves. 

So how does the Access Stillness technique differ? How does it take the mind below the surface, under the waves, to that place of stillness? 

There are four specific design features. 

First, the mantra itself is not a word or phrase. It’s a sound. It has no direct, intended, or associated meaning. The mantra is a meaningless sound. 

You don't chant it. You don't sing it. You experience it silently in the mind as a thought while sitting very comfortably with your back supported and your eyes closed. The correct experience of that sound causes the mind to settle on its own.

The fact that the mantra has no meaning is critically important. If it had any meaning at all, you would think about what the mantra meant and how that related to you and the world. It'd be similar to contemplating gratitude or compassion or friendliness or kindness. It would keep the mind right there on the surface, so the fact it has no meaning is crucial.

The second feature of the mantra is the sound quality. And this relates to the way our minds are designed. 

The only premise that you need to agree with is this: when given a choice, your mind will always choose the more fascinating, more satisfying experience. Again, when given a choice, your mind will always choose the more fascinating, more satisfying experience. If that sounds right to you, if you agree your mind works like that, then Access Stillness will work for you. 

The best way for me to explain this is by analogy. Imagine we're sitting in the same room. And there was some music playing in this room, and we agreed, "You know what? This music in this room's not very good." But from a nearby room or out in the hallway, there was some really fantastic music playing. What would happen? Without focusing, without concentrating, without any effort whatsoever, our awareness would be directed towards that music that we prefer. Now, if that happens to be an intended experience, we say, "We're attracted by that music out there. It's great.”

If it's an unintended experience, meaning we should be listening to the music in here or having a meeting or doing work or whatever, and our awareness is still drawn to that more enjoyable music outside that we prefer, we say "We're distracted by that music out there. It's great.” Attracting, distracting, they both describe the same phenomenon, just in different contexts. It’s this phenomenon that is part of the basis of how the Access Stillness technique works. When given the choice, your mind will always choose the more fascinating, satisfying experience. 

So imagine, you’re sitting very comfortably with your back supported and eyes closed. You have some other thoughts going on, perhaps thinking about the day’s earlier events or what’s ahead and you start to experience the mantra silently in your mind as a thought, and your mind is naturally attracted to mantra like a magnet, without any focus or concentration or effort whatsoever. The mantra is that more fascinating, enjoyable music down the hall. 

The third feature of the mantra is all about having correct experience of it, and this requires some training. 

The training is in something that you used to be quite good at, but we need to relearn it because all of our other training in life has actually taught us to do the opposite. What we need to relearn is how to be effortless. That's really the key to the whole thing. 

Now, why does it require training to be effortless? Because of all your other training in life. You used to be quite good about being effortless, in fact it used to be your default setting. When you were a young child before the age of four or five, no one cared how hard you worked. 

Then you get into pre-kindergarten, the teacher starts saying, "Hey. Focus, concentrate, pay attention. Do you want to get better at this? Try harder. Try again. Do you want to do the best you can? Try as hard as you can. Work as hard as you can," and so that becomes the default training and conditioning in all other aspects of life. In fact, even if you consider yourself particularly lazy, this is also your training because everyone in life has been telling you, "Hey, don't be lazy. Work hard." And so, when we learn this meditation technique, we have to relearn how to be effortless again.

Effortlessness is the key that allows the mind to de-excite naturally and spontaneously.  When we experience the mantra silently in our mind and when we're effortless, the sound starts to get quieter and fainter and softer and more subtle. What's unique about the mantra is when it becomes softer and fainter and more subtle, that charming, fascinating aspect of it which drew your awareness to it amplifies. That magnetic pull, that bond between the mind and the mantra grows stronger the quieter the mantra becomes. 

I always found that particularly interesting myself because I thought the opposite. If that mantra was really loud, wouldn't it be really distracting? But it's actually the opposite. As the mantra gets quieter, it becomes more distracting, more fascinating, until it becomes so quiet and faint that you lose it. There's a moment that exists where there’s no mantra and no thought yet replacing the mantra. That moment of silence and stillness may last a few fractions of a second, it may last a few minutes or longer. You can really never tell, because you can’t have a thought of it as it happens. 

The first thought that you might have is, "This is it!” But once you start thinking, "This is it!”...it's not it anymore. Now you’re having some thought about having had it. So, what do you do? You revisit in that experience however many times.  It is that process of revisiting the stillness is the outcome of that correct, effortless practice. That's really how the mantra works. 

The fourth design feature of the Access Stillness technique has nothing to do with the mantra, but rather how we sit when we practice the technique. 

This will be very welcome news. Whenever we practice the Access Stillness mental technique, we sit comfortably with our backs supported, but with our heads and neck unsupported. And we always practice this technique with the eyes closed. You'd never do this sitting on a cushion on the floor or sitting on a bench without any back support or walking. And why is that? Because the whole idea is to allow the mind to settle, and for the mind to settle, we actually have to put the body in a place where it can rest and relax. The mind and body are connected. So, as the mind settles down, the body settles down. That’s why we always do this sitting very comfortably with our backs supported. 

You actually may already know how this works. If you've ever been sitting at a desk in front of a computer for a long time working, or you're attending a long lecture or whatever, and you start to get a little sleepy, instead of dozing off, what you do is you slide up to the edge of the chair. You sit on the edge of the chair with your back off the back of the chair. By holding yourself up, your body has to be more active and engaged, and that actually keeps your mind more active and engaged.

With this meditation program, we actually want the opposite. We want the mind to settle down. We want the body to get into a very deep state of rest, so we put the body back in the chair, so it doesn't have to hold itself up. That's so important. We always sit comfortably with our backs supported. It won’t work nearly as well sitting on a cushion in the middle of the floor without any back support. 

You can do this in a chair. You can do it in bed. You wouldn't do it lying down. You'd put some pillows behind your back, so your back is supported sitting comfortably upright in bed with your head off the headboard. You can really do it anywhere where you can sit comfortably and safely, uninterrupted with the eyes closed. You could do it in the car so long as you're not the driver. You can do it as a passenger, or you can do it in the driver's seat so long as your car is parked. But it's a very portable experience in that way. 

And you don’t have to sit still! There’s no need to be a statue. Comfort is our preference. If you have a little itch to scratch, go ahead and scratch the itch. If you need to move or shift to get more comfortable, that’s ok too. 

Seems pretty easy, right? It is! Access Stillness is as easy and impactful as it gets.