Biet Simkin - Dont Just Sit There!: 44 Insights to Get Your Meditation Practice Off the Cushion and Into the Real World

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Dear Papa,

Do you remember the morning I crawled around the kitchen floor on an acid trip? You walked in with a big grin on your face and said, in your heavy Russian accent, Guess where I have been all night? I looked up in an acid-washed state of wonder and asked, Where? Well, prison, you replied. Yes, they found my fake drivers license, and I spent the night in a jail cell.

You looked so happy, like you just won the Lotto, and thats just how you approached every single fucking moment, even the worst ones. Now, I go to take a nap, you said, and ambled to your bedroom. Lying on the floor, I realized I wasnt enlightened like you, even with all those chemicals designed to expand my mind. In that moment, I knew I wanted to learn everything you could teach me. You didnt make it to see me write this book, but I want you to know I figured it out.

This book is for you.

I love you,

Bietinka

I learned to meditate in diapers. Two years old, and my shaman father (think Mr. Miyagi meets Santa Claus), lifted my nearly naked baby body into his Zenned-out home office to breathe deeply, meditate, and climb into lotus pose. Next to tall stacks of textsRumi, Alan Watts, JungI planted tiny headstands, gazed into his hazel eyes, and listened as he spoke about love, the soul, and humanitys common purpose on this planet.

Conceived as a kind of freedom child in St. Petersburg by my Russian parentswho fled to Jackson Heights, Queens, to escape Soviet religious persecutionI was ready for the idyllic, all-American childhood I had come to see as my birthright by the time I was six. Then my mom was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Tragic. Sudden. Cancer. Within six months, she was gone. When asked to describe my childhood after that, I usually mention Running with Scissors , a memoir of a comically dysfunctional household headed by an eccentric therapist. If that doesnt do the trick, I tell them this story.

My father, a medical doctor by training, cured himself of tuberculosis with a shaman in the woods outside St. Petersburg via Ayurvedic medicine, yoga, and meditation. As the Soviets had banned these healing arts, my father saw America as the spot to establish a psychotherapeutic practice that integrated shamanic, spiritual traditions. Setting up his office in our new apartment, his clients tended to be, shall we say, eccentric. Once, as a teenager, I heard Bachs Goldberg Variations emanate from the living room, and strolled out of my bedroom to find his clienta pale woman in her twenties, bandaged wrists, shaved headdelicately pushing keys on our grand piano. One guy used to pee on our houseplants because he thought his urine was sacred!

A freethinker with a big gray beard and the kindest eyes, my father used to say that my shitty neighborhood public school was conformist, that the teachers and students were asleep. So I skipped classes to spend time alone in the library, reading Freud, Jung, and the other authors he favored. Nights and weekends, we meditated hours on end, and he trained me, after a fashion, in his psychotherapeutic and shamanic traditions. He also strutted around our apartment in his undies, played a mean saxophone, and drank me under the table. It was, shall we say, an unconventional childhood. And thats before I bring up my Mohawk-coiffed, metal head big brother. Hi, Genia!

Signed to a Sony recording contract at the tender age of twenty, my life blurred into a stream of limousines, recording studios, cocaine, heroin, and sex. After my mothers death, I felt like a window to my soul had cracked open, revealing a light that I desperately wanted to access. But I was stuck. Every once in a while when I was sober, I tried to meditate with my father like I used to, but it usually made the pain worse. It probably didnt help that I was the kind of spiritual person who took breaks in the middle of a yoga class to blow coke lines in the bathroom!

Dropped by Sony, my downward descent spiraled into chaos. I moved in with a guy more akin to a drug dealer than a partner, and lived in a world of fashion shows, nightclubs, and parties. Accidentally pregnant, I finally stayed sober, until my four-month-old daughter, Ula, died of SIDS. Half our apartment burned down, and we lived in the not burned out part for four months waiting for renovations. My best friend hung himself. None of this stopped me, but when my father died suddenly two years later, I cracked open completely. After a drug-fueled, hazy year straight out of Requiem for a Dream , I finally got sober.

When I finally kicked heroin, I committed to learn everything my father had tried to teach me while he was alive. I took stock of my messy life, disgusted by what I saw. At the time, I had no intention of writing a book; I was just searching for that X-Files truth. You know, the one thats out there. But the more I studied and applied what I learned to everyday experiences, I began to grasp the power of meditation as a tool for healing and breakthrough. At last, I realized the out there truth I had spent my entire life looking for was actually in here , deep down inside me.

My father used to say, meditation and yoga are wonderful tools, but theyre not the point. It didnt matter if I could meditate like a champ or pop up a kick-ass headstand; what mattered was that I could connect to my soul, and how awake I was to my true purpose on the planet. That required something new, and in mastering the spiritual toolkit I gleaned from my father, I now have access to an incredible spiritual high every day sans booze or blow.

I will be brutally honest: the work I teach isnt easy. Even as a precocious student, to transform in the way I craved required years of dedicated study. Sure, a meditative mind calms, but a serious practice typically kicks up a lot of unpleasant shit. It forces us to confront aspects of ourselves we may see as ugly or shameful. We may run right into reality when wed rather blast off to fantasyland. Meditation is first about clarifying who you truly are . Only then can you begin to create who you want to be .

Many of the concepts and ideas I lay out in this book build on a philosophy of enlightenment known as The Fourth Way, developed in the early twentieth century by the Greek-Armenian mystic and philosopher George Gurdjieff. The other three paths to spiritual enlightenment take the way of the yogi, the monk, and the fakirascetics who shed worldly aims to purify their souls. This Fourth Way shows that we dont have to escape modern life to reach enlightenment. Instead, you can use everyday experiencesa trip to the grocery store, a phone call with mom, the morning commuteto learn truths, practice mindfulness, and live on the spiritual plane. I like to think of this Fourth Way as a kind of enlightenment for the rest of us.