Finance Monthly January 2020 Edition

you can learn to flow into it. Happiness has levels, but you aren’t going to know those levels exist until you stop labelling the things you think you know, and like a lot of twenty-somethings, there was a lot of labelling of things that I thought I knew but didn’t. Fast-forward twenty years, and a not- insubstantial quantity of traditional sitting meditation practice under my belt, along with Nena’s example in the forefront of my mind, I came across a YouTube video that played a sound that again changed what I thought was possible. The sound from the video instantly dropped me into a state of deep sleep. When I awoke, I was amazed by what I had just experienced. After waking, and a little research, I found that the audio played in the YouTube video had been patented by Robert Monroe, a sound engineer, in the early 1970s (see, e.g., US Patent 3,884,218). Monroe had developed a method of inducing sleep in humans whereby an audio signal was generated from the combination of a “familiar pleasing repetitive sound modulated by a [brainwave] sleep pattern”. Simply stated, by playing a sound encoded with a certain brainwave pattern, the listener synchronises to that pattern. In my case, the theta and delta patterns, brainwaves characteristic of sleep, which were encoded in the sound played over YouTube synced up with my brain, taking me directly to the Land of Nod. Since the 1970s, Robert Monroe’s research has been carried on at The Monroe Institute (TMI), where listeners use sound brain-mind technologies to become familiar with various brainwave patterns, and the concomitant states of awareness. Through the practice of meditation, while using that sound, one learns to recognise the pattern. Without the sound hack, meditators rely on trial and error, which is perhaps why, to become advanced, thousands of hours of sitting practice are needed using the traditional “just sit” approach. One of those traditional-method meditators, Kai Sui Fung, a 91-year-old head of a Zen Buddhist temple in British Columbia reported to the Wall Street Journal that TMI’s sound tech brought about meditation states in a week that took him thirty years of sitting practice to achieve. Allyn Evans, MBA, business consultant and co-founder of Energy Medicine Squared advises her clients to use TMI’s sound tech to reach states where, according to Allyn, they can “tap more readily into their creative self” and gain simultaneous access to both left and right brain hemispheres. Allyn’s clients have reached those deep brainwave states of theta and delta while remaining lucid and awake. This is desirable because theta brainwave activity is associated with learning, conflict resolution, and positive change, while delta brainwaves are associated with healing and regeneration. Remaining awake during change-making positive states is what advanced Buddhist meditators are all about, and what every one of my Tibetan Buddhist teachers has described as the path to insight. From Pythagoras to Thomas Edison, we have studied acoustics and the nature of sound, imagining that which may be possible. Within a range of possibilities, you will find advanced meditators, from monks to supermodels. Perhaps you have ten thousand hours to sit in meditation, and in that case, I say, go for it. But, if instead, you find yourself in a conference room rather than in robes, don’t worry. Those promised levels of greater happiness aren’t going anywhere. Do your business. But also trust in the wisdom of the hack. 47 www.finance-monthly.com FINANCE CAREERS - MEDITATION