Meditation is not a selfish thing. Even though you're diving in and experiencing the Self, you're not closing yourself off from the world. You're strengthening yourself, so that you can be more effective when you go back into the world.
So much of what happened to me is good fortune. But I would say: Try to get a job that gives you some time; get your sleep and a little bit of food; and work as much as you can. There's so much enjoyment in doing what you love. Maybe this will open doors, and you'll find a way to do what you love.
Sleep is really important. You need to rest the physiology to be able to work weel and meditate well. When I don't get enough sleep, my meditations are duller. You may even dip into sleep at the beginning of your meditation, because you're settling down. But if you're well rested, you'll have a clearer deeper experience.
We all want expanded consciousness and bliss. It's natural, human desire. And a lot of people look for it in drugs. But the problem, is that the body, the physiology, takes a hard hit on drugs. Drugs injure the nervous system, so they just make it harder to get those experiences on your own.
I have smoked marijuana, but I no longer do. I went to art school in the 1960s so you can imagine what was going on. Yet my friends were the ones who said, "No, no, no, David, don't take those drugs." I was pretty lucky.
Instead of instilling fear, if a company offered a way for everyone in the business to dive within--to start expanding energy and intelligence--people would work overtime for free. They would be far more creative. And the company would just leap forward. This is the way it can be. It's not the way it is, but it could be that way so easily.
The thing about meditation is: You become more and more you.
Personally, I think intuition can be sharpened and expanded through meditation, diving into the Self. There's an ocean of consciousness inside each of us, and it's an ocean of solutions. When you dive into that ocean, that consciousness, you enliven it.
You don't dive for specific solutions; you dive to enliven that ocean of consciousness. Then your intuition grows and you have a way of solving those problems--knowing when it's not quite right and knowing a way to make it feel correct for you. That capacity grows and things go much more smoothly.
If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you'll have a golf-ball-sized understanding; when you look out a window, a golf-ball-sized awareness, when you wake up in the morning, a golf-ball-sized wakefulness; and as you go about your day, a golf-ball-sized inner happiness.
But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you'll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness.
Desire for an idea is like bait. When you're fishing, you have to have patience. You bait your hook, and then you wait. The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in--those ideas.
I like the saying: "The world is as you are." And I think films are as you are. That's why, although the frames of a film are always the same--the same number, in the same sequence, with the same sounds--every screening is different. The difference is sometimes subtle but it's there. It depends on the audience. There is a circle that goes from the audience to the film and back. Each person is looking and thinking and feeling and coming up with his or her own sense of things. And it's probably different from what I fell in love with.
