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Meditation
Posted by Holger:
“Meditation is not a state where you go in and you come out, neither is it a function, nor an activity. Before you go towards meditation you should first become acquainted with your nearest environment: your ways of thinking, your feelings, sensations, your fear, insecurity and so on. This calls for a quality of attention free from expectations, anticipations. It requires an innocent mind, an innocent attention. In this innocent attention the mind has no role to play for it has nothing to gain. This quality of attention of which I am speaking is a very deep relaxation.
Pure attention is not localized anywhere. When you are familiar with your nearest surroundings, how you function, you will find you are no longer involved in them and you will have the impression that all that appears in your daily life appears in this pure attention. There will be a kind of transformation of energy where you no longer emphasize the object aspect but feel yourself more and more in attention, what could be called the subject aspect. This attention will unfold, it will become alertness, it will become awareness, all your body will be present in it.
I would say, the inner need to meditate comes from the experience of attention without tension, as in deep sleep. In the morning when you say I slept well, the feeling of having slept well does not mean because your body was relaxed, it has a deeper meaning, the deep experience of peace.
Attention is not inside nor outside, so you can never go to meditation. When you try to meditate you create a state, you have a goal you are trying to achieve. Meditation is not a reduction, not a kind of interiorization. Meditation is an instantaneous apperception. So that when there is still even the slightest anticipation of going somewhere, or achieving something you go away – because meditation is your natural state, presence IS. The mind can be still from time to time, but the nature of the mind is activity, is function. Your body can be empty, relaxed from time to time, but your body is also function. It is therefore a violence against nature to attempt to stop the mind or body functions.
So when we speak of this stillness, of attention, presence, it has nothing to do with the stopping of the function of the mind, or the stopping of the activity of the body. What we understand by meditation, what we understand by presence is behind activity and non-activity – and even the geometrical term “behind” is wrong – meditation, attention, presence is the vastness in which all activity and non-activity happen. This vastness is directionless, and in it the functions of the mind and the body appear and disappear because these functions are expression, an extension of our real being, presence.
Don’t forget that in meditation there is not a meditator. So if you are drawn to meditate take it only as a laboratory experiment where you explore, you look at the facts. You will see as you begin this experiment that you are looking for the meditator, but that the meditator, is nothing other than an intellectual construction. When you see that there is no meditator, then there is a stopping of meditation and there is only beingness.
And as one cannot find a better word than the word current, I would say it is a current of love.”
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“Your real self, your true nature is what is closest to you: it is yourself. Each step taken to reach it moves you further away from there. Attention is not inside nor outside, so you can never go to meditation. When you try to meditate you create a state, you have a goal you are trying to achieve. Meditation is not a reduction, not a kind of interiorization. So that when there is still even the slightest anticipation of going somewhere, or achieving something you go away – because meditation is your natural state, presence IS. The mind can be still from time to time, but the nature of the mind is activity, is function. Your body can be empty, relaxed from time to time, but your body is also function. It is therefore a violence against nature to attempt to stop the mind or body functions.
The mind must come to a state of silence, completely empty of fear, longing and all images. This cannot be brought about by suppression, but by observing every feeling and thought without qualification, condemnation, judgement, or comparison. If unmotivated alertness is to operate the censor must disappear. There must simply be a quiet looking at what composes the mind. In discovering the facts just as they are, agitation is eliminated, the movement of thoughts becomes slow and we can watch each thought, its cause and content as it occurs. We become aware of every thought in its completeness and in this totality there can be no conflict. Then only alertness remains, only silence in which there is neither observer nor observed. So do not force your mind. Just watch its various movements as you would look at flying birds. In this uncluttered looking all your experiences surface and unfold. For unmotivated seeing not only generates tremendous energy but frees all tension, all the various layers of inhibitions. You see the whole of yourself. Observing everything with full attention becomes a way of life, a return to your original and natural meditative being.
It is only through silent awareness that our physical and mental nature can change. This change is completely spontaneous. If we make an effort to change we do no more than shift our attention from one level, from one thing, to another. We remain in a vicious circle. This only transfers energy from one point to another. It still leaves us oscillating between suffering and pleasure, each leading inevitably back to the other. Only living stillness, stillness without someone trying to be still, is capable of undoing the conditioning our biological, emotional and psychological nature has undergone. There is no controller, no selector, no personality making choices. In choiceless living the situation is given the freedom to unfold. You do not grasp one aspect over another for there is nobody to grasp. When you understand something and live it without being stuck to the formulation, what you have understood dissolves in your openness. In this silence change takes place of its own accord, the problem is resolved and duality ends.”
One Source
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Jean Klein
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Created: December 11, 2022
Last modified: December 12, 2022
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