Friday, May 18, 2012

Awareness Is The Only Discipline


In the final analysis, awareness is the only discipline. You can transform the world just by being aware of it. But most of us are not aware. We are just thinking.

For a few minutes a day, morning and evening, become aware of awareness - simple, silent, crystal clear. Nothing but that!

Whether our meditation is devotional or impersonal, Eastern or Western, metaphysical or earth-centered, whether our vehicle is the breath or the mantra, a candle or a prayer, it has only one purpose: to settle our attention into pure awareness, free from thought, like cloudy water settling to transparency.

In the process of settling, our murky awareness passes through finer and finer states, some quite fascinating: realms of color, inner music, poetic thoughts, images of beauty past. All these states are just dust, but awareness is clear water; just passing clouds, but awareness is the empty sky.

Do I want to land on a little cloud and cling to a memory, or may I become the vast blue clarity, without form or limitastion? I grow weary gazing at even the most lovely object, but can I ever grow weary of gazing at what gazes?

Seeking psychic, mystical or celestial encounters, I will never come home to my own awareness. Such spiritual window-shopping is but inner sensationalism, just a subtler form of restless promiscuity, hooking up without true satisfaction. I can go bar-hopping in the heavens, just as I do on earth.

The poet Shelley wrote, "Deep truth is imageless." Meditation doesn't seek visions. It awakens the one who sees. Meditation doesn't go anywhere. It awakens the go-er, who is her own goal.

Stop, traveler: you are already home. Give up seeking, pilgrim: even now your feet are planted on sacred ground. Be empty, seeker of wealth: "blessed are the poor in Spirit." Your nakedness is a sparkling gown of compassion, clothing the whole earth. Being here just as you are is the revelation.

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