Your Ruling Passions


You do not have to give up any passions to meditate; on the contrary, you celebrate them even more, follow the trail they made in your nerves and body. The peacefulness and tolerance of meditation is complemented by the richness of experience represented in wild vices.

What is this desire we all share, to move with abandonment, to numb out some pain, to be intensely stimulated? Whatever the vice, there is a legitimate calling behind it. Use meditation to explore that calling.

Consider the following questions. Ask them silently to yourself and then listen for your answers. Call up your memory. You may be moved to actually speak them out loud. Come on. You won't be arrested:

• What is your favorite vice?
• What is a vice you loved but had to give up?
• What is the best you have ever felt while doing some wild & sinful activity?

Now, feel the excitement, the relaxation, the expanded awareness, the sexual intensity, flowing through your nervous system. Allow yourself to have the fullness of that without getting into trouble. Just sitting there on your sofa or in your meditation chair.

In case you've blanked out some possible vices, here's a quick list for easy reference!!!

• If you used to smoke cigarettes.
• If you used to smoke pot.
• If you used to drink a lot at parties and dance all night.
• If you used to do cocaine or other drugs.
• If you used to eat too much.
• If you used to have lots of sex or naughty sex.


These are Dionysian forms of worship, celebrations of the passions. When you go inside and cherish the experience of wildness, it becomes an Apollonian meditation — contained and outwardly respectable, because nobody can see what you’re thinking. You don’t have to stop feeling wild inside just because you aren’t acting out anymore.

The above is an unedited version of Part Seven of Meditation Made Easy. In other words, this is the manuscript that I sent in, before the editors and copy editors worked it over. The book itself is a bit better.