Meditating in Challenging Times [A COVID-19 Message]

Hello friends, this is John Dupuy, CEO of iAwake Technologies. We are all experiencing some very challenging times on our planet with the advent of the pandemic, the coronavirus. I’ve seen a lot of reactions to it, but one of the reactions I see coming up most is fear, and a sense of loss. Our lives have been disrupted: my gym closed two days ago, a place where I work out every day. We can’t go to restaurants. We can’t go to movies. We can’t hang out with our human brothers and sisters because we have to protect each other and stop the spread of this deadly disease. So we know that.

What can we do? Deepen our meditation practice.

What came to me earlier, when I was doing my daily meditation, is that this can be an opportunity for cultivating depth in ourselves, and growth. If you can’t do your normal schedule, well, do something very positive. Because what we can do is we can deepen our meditation practice. I’m a daily meditator — I’ve been doing this for a long time now, at least fifteen years –and over the last few weeks, I’ve been meditating longer and going deeper. About two weeks ago, I did a very long meditation (I won’t say how long because I don’t want to recommend most people meditate that long with this technology, as it’s very powerful). But let me just say, I was going through some very hard personal stuff, and I was in much pain, darkness, and grief.

After meditating for a long time, at some point…something shifted. Instead of just the content that was causing my suffering, I became equally identified with the context — the pure awareness in which all of this was arising. When that happened, it shifted it. The phenomena Ken Wilber mentions is you can suffer more but it bothers you less. So, the suffering was still profoundly there, and I felt it. I understood it. I was there with it. Yet somehow this bigger identification with consciousness and awareness emerged, and it shifted everything. Instead of the pain, sadness, and despair, I came through that experience with a sense of gratitude, warmth, and humility — and with the okayness of the suffering and the losses themselves. 

Meditate longer, go deeper.

This shifted me into a different level of practice, and I’ve been practicing longer than I normally do — the minimum I do these days is an hour. So what I’m suggesting is that in this time where we’re cut off from our daily activities, make it a spiritual retreat. Meditate longer, go deeper. I think you will find after the first hour, it really shifts and gets deeper. And you can do a tremendous amount of inner work and spiritual work — or simply hang out in the presence in that deep stillness.

I found that since that experience, I’ve been so looking forward to my time of meditation. It’s such a great time of comfort and joy and peace. Really extraordinary. So I’m encouraging you to make this difficult time into a deep and glorious and rewarding time. 

When we meditate together…something shifts.

In addition to that, there is one more thing I want to tell you about. We have started this phenomena – an online meditation we call WeAwake. Last summer our team all got together in our home in southern Utah. We have a meditation room upstairs, and we were all meditating using the same iAwake tracks. And we noticed that it was quite remarkable how powerful the field of meditation was, created by all of us doing the same entrainment tracks and meditating in the same room together. And from that, I’m not sure, maybe I suggested it but it seemed like a collective vision — we said, “We should do this for everyone!” So that’s what we’ve done. 

Last week we did WeAwake together and did a half-hour meditation. I say a few words about meditation in the beginning, and a few words to end it off, and we all meditate in the middle part using the same track, which is free. You can stream it right there off YouTube.

The presence that happened when we were doing this meditation together was remarkable, notable — you could cut it with a knife it was so thick, though maybe thickness is not the right word to explain it. But when we do it together, something shifts. And beloved, we need to get together, and we need to transform our consciousness and open our hearts to love, compassion, and wisdom, because we’re going through very difficult and scary times, and we all need to wake up. We need to wake up together. 

So please join us. Below you’ll see how to get there and how to participate. It will also be recorded, so if you can’t be there live, you can experience the meditation at any time of day. But really try to show up, especially during this time, so that we can put our minds and hearts and spirits and souls together to achieve a level of consciousness that is going to come through us in our lives, into the collective consciousness, and do some beautiful things.

As always, with great love and respect, thank you.

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WeAwake Weekly Global Meditation Experience

Wednesdays, 12PM EDT | 9AM PDT | 5PM CET | 4PM GMT | Each Wednesday we will meditate with a different iAwake track, which you can stream for free during the meditation session and for the rest of the week afterwards. Please join us.

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Free Meditation Download and Free Resources to Help You During COVID-19

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