One of the biggest claims of Rawatism is that there is no belief involved and that Prem Rawat teaches a pure experience through meditation. Now we all know this is utter nonsense. It is clear as the sky is blue that there is a giant belief system attached to following Rawat. The moment some greater interpretation is bestowed on your experience of meditation, that is where the belief starts. And you can’t even learn the techniques without first being indoctrinated.

But what is just the experience without belief? Well it turns out there is an app for that – or really a bunch of apps. Of course ex-premies can just meditate if they want to. I don’t do it often, but on occasion. And guess what? It works just fine without the guru and his endless explanations and courses. It even works better without all the attachment of his belief system.

My wife was never a premie though and never got involved in anything like that. Recently we have had enormous stress in our lives coming from different directions simultaneously. And it has started do take its toll on her both mentally and physically. So I suggested to try one of those mindfulness meditation apps. The most popular one is called Headspace. But it cost money and my wife wanted something for free. She found one called Simple Habit. 

We tried it and it has been great so far. The first day was a fantastic explanation of the breathing technique of meditation. I would say it was way better than the way I had learned it through my initiator. Totally simple and without the veneer of holiness. And the guy did such a nice job of explaining how to deal with thoughts distracting you. Just gently accept them like clouds passing through and don’t get worked up about it.

So there you go. The knowledge of all knowledges, now available as a free app. Today we completed day 7. They are all 5 minutes long. To get full access you have to start paying for it at some point, but it’s not expensive. Nothing remotely close to the real financial cost of the “pretend it’s free” Rawat knowledge. (Another one of the Rawatism falsehoods.)

By the way, I had read on some premie’s Facebook page how they were getting all church lady about the term mindfulness. Haha. Of course they hate that just because of the loaded terminology for premies, but beyond that it exposes the whole charade for what it is. Everything about what Rawat teaches is universally available and often much more effectively taught.

One last comment about being grateful. The guy also talks about that in some of the meditation sessions in a very natural and helpful way. I remembered that I had discovered that for myself many years ago, before I heard about it as a premie dogwhistle for devotion to the master. 

I found myself just feeling naturally grateful. It starts for me with simple things, like the luxury of having a hot shower or even a wooden floor under my feet when I wake up. That all kinds of food are freely available and I have wonderful people around me. This has had a profound effect on me and really helped me to have a powerful positive attitude about life.

We all have low moments in life too though. For me, that was when our daughter became very sick when she was 14 years old. It was crushing and deeply traumatising. It still affects me. But that is part of being human and we have to embrace that as well. That we can actually feel so deeply about someone that it can almost kill us.