We have all had moments when the tumult of life stops and clear and truthful insights arise from the depth of our being. We call them “aha” experiences. These moments of understanding are neither planned nor organized. They come unexpectedly and spontaneously. They are brief and carry with them a sense of truth, authenticity, and authority. We don’t know how or where they come from. We might not be able to explain these insights to others, but without question we know them to be our truth. They have a clear and decisive impact on our lives.
These spontaneous insights may be about concerns we’ve been struggling to understand or they may offer a glimpse into the great questions of life. Suddenly there is clarity. But what would it be like if we were able to have a decisive experience that fully and permanently resolved the essential questions of every human life – How can we find unchanging happiness and serenity in the midst of human life? What is our essential nature, our authentic unchanging larger self? What is the final truth of reality? There are many ways to ask these basic human questions, but I sense you know what I am aiming at. We all want to know what is the essence of human existence.
Throughout human history these are questions that philosophers, religious scholars, and mystics have sought to answer. Not surprisingly their answers have been much the same. For us their answers are instructive, but not transformative. Intellectual knowledge can inform but cannot shift one’s life towards truth. For that we each need to have a personal “decisive experience” that illuminates, in heart and spirit, the direct knowing of these truths. When it occurs, that experience is a blessing. It is grace.
When it occurs, the actual experience of life’s fundamental truths is spontaneous and unplanned, precisely because it is already and always present within each of us. However, it is densely covered over by our tenacious belief that we are our ego, our personal self. The resulting overactivity of our ego with its ruminations and doings obscures the basic ever present truth of our being.
Although we cannot, through the accumulation of knowledge or through any method or technique gain access to these revelations, we can clean up the “room” of our personal identity. We can clean up our runaway mental chatter, fixed beliefs, rigid habits, and so on – so that we can live a calmer more loving life. That increases the probability of a spontaneous breakthrough and realization, a decisive experience.
If we choose to use meditation as a tool for cleaning up our life and taking us to the near shore of the truth, we must choose carefully. Why, because meditation can be as much an obstacle as an aid. Meditation is generally taught as a technique or method to calm the mind with the aim of relaxation and stress reduction. This approach works within the scope of our ordinary mind to shift, at least temporarily, our mind and body towards greater balance and harmony. But these practices all remain within the context of the ordinary cognitive mind, the personal ego mind. To arrive at the answers to the great questions of life we must access a greater consciousness beyond the limitations of the ordinary mind.
If that is our aim, we begin at the end. We drop all of our notions about what meditation is, let go of methods and techniques, abandon hope, effort, or any goal. We simply drop into being, into presence, into awareness. That, you might say seems quite difficult. What do I do with my active mind? The answer is – nothing.
You simply observe mental activity, abiding in awareness, the witness. It’s OK for the mind to be active. The problem is our identification and attention to it. As we rest our attention in awareness and observing, the mind quiets down by itself. We are engaged in a “non-meditation” merely abiding in our true, simple, innocent, effortless, unconditioned and unfettered awareness.
And that is who we are and as close as we can come to a decisive experience of our true nature and the source of our life. The rest is grace. We merely leave everything go, cease grasping onto mental movements, and just be and abide in awareness. If you get entangled in mind traffic simply abide again in the witness state of awareness. Do nothing. Just be. Trust the natural unfolding of this sacred space of presence and learn from the experience.
That is how we fertilize the ground, preparing it for the light to open, wisdom to arise, and a decisive experience arise naturally and spontaneously.
Website: www.elliottdacher.org
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