“It took about five years of practice to wear down the seeker in me. I strove so hard that I was completely at the end of my rope. For five years I pushed myself until I literally thought I was going to have a major psychological breakdown. I would wake up thinking, Is this the day I end up in a mental ward? One day I went into my little meditation hut in the backyard, and I said to myself, I’m going to break through. Right here. Right now. I put all of my will into it, and within ten seconds it just imploded on me. I said, “I can’t do this.” The knowledge was from my gut. “I can’t do this.” It was like when someone punches you in the stomach and all the air goes out. I was totally deflated. That’s why I often tell people my practice was the practice of failure. I failed. I didn’t progress to a higher state. I beat my head against the wall until I failed. And even then I didn’t give up. I couldn’t be that noble.”
Tag: Adyashanti
What is meditation?
True Meditation by Adyashanti
True meditation has no direction, goals, or method. All methods aim at achieving a certain state of mind. All states are limited, impermanent and conditioned. Fascination with states leads only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial consciousness.
True meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not fixated on objects of perception. When you first start to meditate, you notice that awareness is always focused on some object: on thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, memories, sounds, etc. This is because the mind is conditioned to focus and contract upon objects. Then the mind compulsively interprets what it is aware of (the object) in a mechanical and distorted way. It begins to draw conclusions and make assumptions according to past conditioning.
In true meditation all objects are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to manipulate or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness (consciousness) is the source in which all objects arise and subside.
As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.
Silence and stillness are not states and therefore cannot be produced or created. Silence is the non-state in which all states arise and subside. Silence, stillness and awareness are not states and can never be perceived in their totality as objects. Silence is itself the eternal witness without form or attributes.
As you rest more profoundly as the witness, all objects take on their natural functionality, and awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive contractions and identifications. It returns to its natural non-state of Presence.
The simple yet profound question “Who Am I?” can then reveal one’s self not to be the endless tyranny of the ego-personality, but objectless Freedom of Being — Primordial Consciousness in which all states and all objects come and go as manifestations of the Eternal Unborn Self that YOU ARE.
© 1999 Adyashanti. All rights reserved.
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Adyashanti, ‘Relationship with thought’
Shock
“Authentic growth toward happiness comes by _taking shocks
with awareness_. Let’s see what this means.
When we are faced with an unwanted truth, we are shocked.
If we resist the blow by repressing it or denying it, we
cannot learn from it, in fact, we are worse off than before.
But if we are aware of the blow, we can see its cause in
the clash between what is true and what we falsely claim
is true. Our willing exposure of our falseness wins release
from its pain.”
~Vernon Howard, Pathways to Perfect Living, p. 97
“There are many fierce moments in any one life span: times of turmoil, upheaval, challenge, and change. These fierce moments of grace are in many ways the most spiritually important moments of our lives.”
~ Adyashanti, FIERCE GRACE, Awakening in the Midst of Turmoil
-isms
Adyashanti:
“If you filter my words through any tradition or ‘-ism’, you will miss altogether what I am saying. The liberating truth is not static; it is alive. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. What you are is the beyond – awake and present, here and now already. I am simply helping you to realize that.”
Not getting caught
“When your attention moves into the Now, there is an alertness. It is as if you were waking up from a dream, the dream of thought, the dream of past and future. Such clarity, such simplicity. No room for problem-making.”– Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
Immeasurable Reality
Truth refers to the whole of existence and beyond. Truth exists as much in your teacup as it does in your temples and churches. Truth is as present in shopping for your groceries as it is in chanting to God. To think of truth only in spiritual or religious terms is to miss the whole of it, for in doing so you create the boundaries and divisions that are the very antithesis of truth.
Truth is an immeasurable reality not at all separate from your own being. For in the revelation of truth, all beings rest within your being. Put more simply, if you cannot find it now underfoot, I’m afraid that you have missed it entirely.
© Adyashanti 2009
Svaha 