Meditation happens

[Korpo]

Today I was reading a book on meditation - "True Meditation" by Adyashanti. I would love to be very dramatic about it, but to me it is a big thing. And then it isn't. It absolutely isn't. It's perfectly normal. Let me explain.

Adyashanti explains that true meditation happens, when you do not control your experience. The moment you relinquish "your" control on the mind, the mind is in meditation. Meditation is not created, it is the state the mind is in when control ceases. Meditation happens. Meditation is. Not you are meditating, meditation just happens.

You read it, and the mind yells "How!?!". What technique? No technique. Technique is control. Meditation is no control. He explains further that people meditate for purposes - health and emotional well-being, being able to concentrate, wanting to be happy, experiencing bliss. And he says there are techniques for that, and perhaps this is what you want. But he says that to enlighten to spirit, to being, to emptiness, you have to do one thing - do nothing. Be aware. Do not be aware of anything specific. Do not strive. Meditation is not an achievement. Meditation does not require control. Let go. Let it be.

As I read how he unfolded his teaching my mind was struggling. "How!?!" - "Why is that never happening to me?" - it does. It did. The two experiences I think of again and again as the most profound spiritual moments yet were precise examples of what he says:

When I had the experience of being the observer of my ego, thoughts and emotions, before that happened I was not actively trying to "do meditation". I was exhausted. I could not go on. I had nothing more to hold on. I could just plunge into this and relinquish control. I was panicking - what happens now? And an inner voice answered, a thought, something not quite describable "Just let go". Without any alternative, I did. Thoughts started racing by. My awareness was like "stuck in place" and the things of my mind were just racing by. Thought does not need much involvement it seems. It does perfectly alright without me. ;) Everything "whooshed" by and then it came to a stop. I found myself in this state where I could "look at" or "feel" the contents of my mind as things.

The other case was when I was riding a train, thinking about something. I lost myself in thought, the thoughts went on without me paying attention - I had just forgot to pay attention to my own thoughts and my awareness was - feeling good? Can't say. Suddenly I was receiving insight into how my "future self" helps manifesting stuff in the now by selecting options from the future and sending me clues what to do to bring them into being. And I was somehow this self telling me. And I was me. It was knowledge? What was that?

Reading Adyashanti's remarks on meditation, on letting go, on surrendering control reminded me of these two things. In the moments control rested, meditation happened. It was never far away. It is not to be mastered. It is so close you never look for it. It is here. It is now. It is lurking behind every thought. WE SUPPRESS IT.

This kind of meditation is not absence of thought through mind control. You cannot will the mind to be still like if you were wacking it into obedience. You let go of control, and everything arises on its own. I'm not only not my thoughts, I'm not even the thinker!! The thoughts go on and on and don't need me at all. If I don't give them energy by considering them important they would cease when they run out of steam. They roll on by because they have awareness momentum. They got my awareness. Every time I give them my awareness I keep them going. Every time I attach importance to them, thoughts happen. But even if I don't assign importance to them they go on. It thinks. I am.

Thinking back to both of these experiences with meditation I must say it took no effort I am aware of. No effort to enter them. No effort to be in them. "Let go" is sadly something active in our language, because all our verbs are actions in nature. Is it a process? I cannot say. It is a change. It should be a no-verb, a non-activity, something we cannot express. Being still, as if the two words were separate and together. Being. Still. Being still.

I can see how if you never surrender to this you can sit a lifetime. You force your experience. You "do meditation". You don't meditate in this sense. I cannot say why it is so hard to comprehend, maybe because our minds in their current form only exist as long as they are on steam, have momentum. Maybe that's why they cannot understand this. In essence this is true nothing, true emptiness.

Some say the mind is afraid of this, afraid of losing control. Adyashanti says, the mind is afraid of what happens when control is relinquished. I was afraid of it. Truly great things happened when I did. I was wearing myself down with an enormous amount of control. Less control brought more life. Two moments of no-control went so deep so quickly it is just "Wow!". I always wondered - "Why did this happen? I am no good meditator. I have no experience. I can not will myself still. I cannot get my mind to meditate." Adyashanti says, he was a lousy Zen meditator. Until he gave up on control.

Oliver

[sleeper]

That is a very insightful post.

My meditations never amounted to much until I began to surrender to them. Since then, it's hard for me to even say that i'm meditating, because i don't even know what meditation really is...

I've had to learn a lot about myself even after i started surrendering so often, but since then, every one of my meditations has been profound and rewarding, and even my life is becoming more like my meditations. I"m glad you posted this message and I hope more people hear it.

[Korpo]

sleeper,

it's amazing how long it took me to figure that out. No kidding! :)

Oliver

[Korpo]

This morning I got up, did my Qigong, and lay down again, reading a bit in said book. There's a technique inside, and I applied it. It is "let awareness become aware of whatever it wants to be aware of". What arises, arises.

So I lay there, and when something arose I felt it, and if there was bird song, there was bird song, if pain came I tried to be aware of it, and if a sensation came in my foot, I was there. My awareness flittered like a colibri, mostly. But I was aware, continuously. I became aware of breath. I allowed the breath. I became aware of feeling in my chest. The fascinating thing was how easy it was to stay aware. How everything arose of its own and went.

Some things did not go on their own. Some things made me tense up habitually. My awareness was stuck there, and I was uneasy. So, two things I did. I tried to let go of the tension and aversion. I was just taking a look at it. And then it would ease, and the stream of sensations would arise.

How vivid that felt. How alive. Things you might want to call problems, pain, stuff, arose and - dissolved! I felt energies going. I felt them getting soft. I felt them go away. When they did not, I tried to let go of the tension, and my awareness would dissolve, wander, feel, hear...

The attitude of "It is as it is - be aware of it!" made my meditation joyful. A very low-intensity joy that puts a smile on your face. A little "isn't life wonderful" feeling. While there was still pain, and all the other "problems" in my personality, and some compulsive thought, following awareness to sensations set me free. Things did not have to feel wonderful in themselves, but not giving "drama energy" to them gave me something - a peaceful feeling that was quietly joyful. An inner smile.

Oliver

[Palehorse Redivivus]

Brilliant post; this has been kind of an epiphany for me.

It occurs to me that while I've never had a need or desire to control other people, for various reasons the need to be in control of *me* at all times has been almost militant. In a way its been a good thing -- a process of taking control of all aspects back from negs, people, and any of the typical societal factors that want to tell us who to be, what to think and how to live. Unfortunately this mentality has extended to areas where it's not so productive, like meditation and manifestation. I've realized that what I do when I meditate is a lot like what I do when I shield -- I found out that I could hold up a sort of mental barrier against straying thoughts, and set part of myself to maintain it while the rest blanks out. And sure, I can maintain a blank mind for a long time now, but it's not very relaxed, and trance is almost unheard of.

I s'pose now that I've learned how to have control, I need to learn how to consciously relinquish it. *ponders*

[Korpo]

Hey, PHR.

I think you perfected something Robert seems to describe in Mind Taming, at least my take on it. I never found it relaxing, though. It blanks the mind, sure enough. But it felt tense to me. Maybe I understood it wrong, but it just wills the mind empty, by sheer willpower? Maybe I do not remember correctly.

And I thought - maybe that is what is needed in a person who's lacking control, but what if the opposite is true, when you cannot let go? Many people have an easier time letting go than me, or so I would assume. I used to need big amounts of spare time just to unwind a bit, for example. Quiet time could drive me crazy. The thought of "Just sitting" - it did not seem to appeal.

Funnily enough, it can be quite rewarding to let the mind watch what arises in the body. Since the sensations arise naturally it is a better start than thought. In my case, thought does not arise as spontaneously when I try to watch it, but the sensations did. Not seeing them as distraction but as a way to observe and train non-attachment to them, that was already nice. It helped relaxation. It eased the mind. And as it brings the mind into the body, I stayed present, felt alive.

Adyashanti wrote that you should discover that innocent attitude. I realised that flittering curiosity that watched was so easy. It wasn't bored. Everything that came up was met with interest. Meeting it with a non-attached attitude somehow unleashed an attitude of "Look what comes up next", it was a good feeling.

Oliver

[Korpo]

There's a book out there called "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind". I wonder if it tries to tell something similar.

Oliver

[star]

Ah Korpo, very good post. Letting go of control can be so difficult too. (In fact I can nearly never let it go)

[Korpo]

Letting go of control can be so difficult too. (In fact I can nearly never let it go)

Really, you? In your case I would not have assumed so. Hmmm. :? ;)

Oliver

[sleeper]

For a long time I had a love/hate relationship with mental stillness. I could make my mind still, and do meditation exercises, at the expense of the beauty of meditation, of existing. Those meditations were never profound or beautiful and I found myself becoming more of a philosopher due to those meditation sessions, rather than more spiritually aware. Slowly, over time, i realized that I was having to suppress the same types of mental interruptions in each meditation and finally bit the bullet and started searching for a way to deal with them. It seemed to me that a silent mind ideally is a mind that has nothing to say, rather than told to be quiet.

That was a few years ago. I tried (unsuccessfully, of course) to apply my new idea to the meditation techniques I had been reading about. Suddenly, recently it dawned on me that I should ask my mind why it never shuts up, and it told me (kind of). I tend to over think things, and I give my brain a bunch of tasks to do. Eventually it wants to report in, and I wasn't giving it a chance to do that until I was meditating, and even then I was trying to suppress my thoughts.

I since learned to stop giving my brain so many tasks. And when I accidentally overtask my brain and It starts reporting in, I stop whatever I'm doing and just put my awareness on it's reports. Fortunately for me, just watching my brain reports is usually enough...after that, they are gone. I also have replaced my "mental quietness" training with a "brain-report-awareness" meditation, where I give my brain much more time than it needs to report in, and I don't do anything but watch my thoughts and enjoy the stillness in between them.

[Korpo]

That's an interesting take on it, sleeper. :)

Oliver

[star]

Letting go of control can be so difficult too. (In fact I can nearly never let it go)

Really, you? In your case I would not have assumed so. Hmmm. :? ;)

Oliver

Lol! I want to get it down pat so I can start channelling better. Although I think I'm just going to hit dream recall and NEW most in attempts to improve other areas.