Why Do I Meditate? (Part III)

With my departure on a 10 day meditation retreat I thought I would write a blog on why I meditate. When I began I had intended a single entry. By the time I was done I realized that I had significantly more words than would comfortably fit in a single entry. So with that in mind I’ve prepared a series of blog entries where I explore the question of why I meditate. And with technology empowering me to schedule posts when I am not even at a computer I shall leave you to read while I spend time in my metaphysical cave.

If you’ve done much reading (or listening to masters) about meditation you’ll have likely been confronted with something along the lines of, you don’t strive to become One, you let go and surrender. For many years I kept coming across this sort of statement. And it may strike you as obvious to read this, but I’m not talking about the white-flag kind of surrender either.

At first I wanted to understand what that meant. What do you mean, let go? Let go of what? Surrender to what? Surrender to the moment? What’s the ‘moment’? And then one day, during a meditation I began to discover what all those questions were pointing toward.

It turned out that for many meditations until that point I had been improvising. I had taken an intellectual idea, assumed it as my truth, and had gone along with it. I hadn’t fully experienced surrender and only had an intellectual grasp of what it meant to let go of something I couldn’t physically touch.

In that moment I directly experienced what it was to let go. I found myself experiencing Oneness and in an instant I knew that one didn’t try to surrender – when I was confronted with Oneness I couldn’t help myself. It was as if that part of me that was Truth, individualized aspect of Spirit, was completely revealed. But this had only been made possible because I had been improvising in spiritual practice. And somehow those parts of me that had been getting in the way, like clouds in front of the sun, suddenly parted and the magnificence of it all shone through. In the face of those rays of Truth I was home.

Once you’ve glimpsed such Truth suddenly life takes on a new meaning. I wanted to play. I wanted to enjoy. I found myself in situations where people would laugh at what I would say. Suddenly, I was funny (just ask my wife – she’ll you how un-funny I used to be). The urge to be so serious about life suddenly dissolved, years of earnestness now a fading memory. Having glimpsed the Truth, the creative nature of it All had become so apparent. Spontaneity became a habit, release a pleasure – faith had been transcended by knowing and I was becoming. From that moment on I realized that I was seeing through apparent reality and surrendering to the Eternal Reality.

And once I had experienced this for myself, the yearning that had been so subtle for so many years shifted. It was grosser, more obvious. Priorities changed. Suddenly I didn’t need to ‘convince’ others with my intellectual passion and my philosophy. I stopped drinking.  I became vegetarian and then vegan.  It was not that I was trying to do these things, rather that old habits no longer did me.  Drinking wine would not feel good and the sensations of getting drunk were far less interesting that those evoked through being fully and completely present.  Meat in my stomach would feel heavy and I felt a lightness through a new approach to food that felt great.  I discovered cooking.  It turns out that I love to cook! 

In that moment, recognizing the combined effects of meditation to this point, I knew that I was both nothing and yet everything. I had leapt into the Great Oneness and knew that logic and reasoning were insignificant.  The dissolution of old habits that no longer served me began to accelerate.  My whole outlook and participation in life had begun to irrevocably shift. 

Through practices we purify and pacify the objective mind. We gain control of the objective mind. There was a time when I believed that the monkey mind was a derogatory term, suggesting a mischievous critter jumping through the trees, like the objective mind moves from thought to thought. With practice the objective mind becomes a tool. Like mental scientist I had discovered an instrument at my disposal. Suddenly I was beginning to realize that I could be a metaphysical surgeon, cutting away at the dis-eases of life.  With practice my objective mind was starting to become more like a finely tuned instrument for life.  I was struck by the effortlessness in making decisions, in somehow knowing what to do without knowing why.  Indeed, the process of shifting from faith to knowing and then becoming is truly a marvel.

The objective mind offers so much potential. It is in its nature to move around. And why not – as a facilitator between the apparent reality (which is always in movement) and the Subjective Mind we need its ability to move so freely and translate this experience of space and time. Renouncing the nature of our objective mind is to set aside a part of us that we created through will, and thus to denounce something that was in actuality an expression of the One Mind.

Suddenly, the secret was laid bare. And once you have glimpsed this secret you will never be able to fully let the realization go. The secret is actually profoundly simple. It is laid bare by the wisdom to neither deny nor be tempted to forget the True Self. And the only explanation I have for this knowing and profound transformation is my practice of meditation.