Edwin Rajkumar says, "I was wondering what your thoughts are on meditation and if you practice it yourself." Well, that's a good question. I think I practice it a lot. And look when I listen to someone or even when I listen to myself but let's say when I listen to someone in my clinical practice I think I do it in a meditative way in that I sit and listen and I wait for thoughts to appear rather than voluntarily thinking.

So I clear my mind. I try to keep my agendas off the table. my agendas whatever they are except that I want the best for my client in in this hour and the best say by their definition and mine jointly decided because that's all part of discussion and then I listen very carefully and I wait for the reactions that occur within me and then I share them and I think that's a meditative exercise I think it's different than voluntary thinking it's like you know there's a statement in the New Testament that says uh knock and the door will open ask and you will receive Now [snorts] that's a meditative that's a that's a call to a meditative mode of existence.

It's like well often what I do for example if I want to solve a problem is I if I have a problem with my own behavior or maybe I'm having problems in my family is I'll go sit on a bed or a chair and I'll think okay I would like an answer to this. I would like to know what the answer to this and I'm willing to accept whatever answer is appropriate. And because usually you get an answer that you don't like, right? If it's a real answer, it's not something that you're going to be all that happy about.

And then magically, so to speak, an answer appears. And I think that's a meditative practice. And the meditative practice is part to clear your mind of your proximal concerns and to concentrate more deeply on what might be regarded as eternally true and to open yourself up for a revelation in relationship to what is eternally true. And I found that incredibly effective. And I think that you can live like that. um you just have to abandon your proximal pursuits.

Now in my new book again I wrote a chapter about that called do what is meaningful and what not what is expedient and it's a bit of a meditation on the sermon on the mount I would say because the essential message in the sermon on the mount which is the foundational document of western civilization as far as I'm concerned essentially is that you should orient yourself ultimately towards the highest good that you can conceive and I've tried to formulate that and I mentioned it earlier in this Q&A that the highest good that you can conceive should be something like what would be good for you now and good for you tomorrow and next week and next month and next year.

So good for you and all the future use that might exist and also at the same time good for your family and good for the community you know conceptualized narrowly and broadly and good now for your family and the community and then also into the future. So it's something like that. It's it's a balance of goods that stretches across time and you you have to decide if that's what you really want. And my sense would be you haven't got anything better to aim at and that you should aim at the best thing that you can aim at for a whole bunch of reasons.

Is one is if you don't aim at something you're certainly not going to attain it. And if you're going to aim at something, why not aim for the best thing that you can think of? And if you do aim for the best thing that you can think of and you make any progress whatsoever, it's extremely exciting. And if you do aim for the best thing you can think of and you make some progress, then it's very life affirming and validating and that sort of quells your anxiety and your existential pain.

And so you get yourself properly oriented and and the sermon on the mount basically suggests that you do that by orienting yourself towards God. And for the psychological purposes, we could conceptualize God as the highest good that you can conceive of. And then you concentrate on the day. And so you can get up in the morning and you can think well I want the best possible thing to happen. And so what is it that I should do to serve that?

And if you ask that genuinely and that's in a meditative way, I will say you get an answer to that right away. Now the problem is is that it's usually an answer that involves some kind of sacrifice. It means that instead of doing what you would like to do impulsively right now, you're more likely to have to go do something, you know, that you've been avoiding and that's difficult. But if you do that, then you'll have some, you know, you can also leave in your day with some pleasure uh to reward yourself for doing something difficult.

But if you if you live that way, then I think that your your house stays clean and your family stays organized and the state doesn't rock and all that and all that's extremely extremely good. So [music]