When friends go without saying goodbye

I only met Wendy on a couple of occasions. Both times I was amazed by her lightness and her absolute goodness. Teaching meditation means that sometimes people's personal stress comes up for them. Wendy was incredible to have around whenever this happened in a class because clearly here was a lady who had so much more on her plate than most people could even imagine and yet she came through shining. But she always listened with perfect compassion. She was incredible like that.

The saddest thing about most of humanity is that only others can truly see how magnificent we are. We are the last to appreciate our own being for the beauty that it contains. It reminds me to make sure that my loved ones know what a difference they make to my life. I wish in particular that Wendy could have known how deeply she touched my heart and inspired me.

If Wendy has taught me anything it is that we can choose to fill life with goodness and hope and magic and love. The only thing that stops us is ourselves. We are the only ones that see ourselves as not worthy, we are the only ones that see our lives as insignificant. We can make another choice though: we can choose to see ourselves as others see us, we can choose to see ourselves as God sees us.

With perfect love Wendy, fly free.

Just for this moment...

I got inspired to write something after reading a passage from someone complaining that in the 40 years of their meditation practice they hadn’t experienced so much as a peak experience, let alone lasting peace or enlightenment. It made me laugh, really in sadness mixed with amazement because for a long time they have completely missed the point of their practice. They haven’t been meditating. Essentially they’ve been going through the motions because they lost the first principle of meditation: Be innocent in this moment. In doing so, they missed the lasting peace and the enlightenment. See, the searching, the looking, the expecting – all of it hides peace from you. Any kind of searching, wanting or trying puts a big cover over God, even when the searching is noble, even when the trying is for a spiritual result. These things and freedom are mutually exclusive; they cannot exist together. Rather innocence, presence, and contentment are the signposts of God.

All true spiritual practice is the practice of letting go all the habits that take us away from our Self. As we do that in awareness, we are in the presence of Truth. It is the being aware of deep awareness exactly as it is, right now. The peace, the freedom, the joy - all the rewards of meditation come from stopping and getting off the mind train that only knows the future and the past and judgement and comparison. The beauty of a spiritual practice comes from the ever expanding realisation that you can afford to stop, you can let go of everything you have been chasing. You find that there is nothing else right now, no one to impress, no such thing as fame or fortune, no reputation or image or possession or future to secure, no past to defend, no argument to win, nothing but stillness to rest in. The relief is amazing. It’s just like I used to feel in the school holidays, I’d wake up in the morning and feel this contraction: “Oh no- I have to go to school” followed quickly by this release and joy as I realised I didn’t have to go anywhere, that there was nothing to be done right now.

By the way, this resting and contentment and allowing has nothing to do with holidays – it is completely internal. It has nothing to do with the circumstances of life. You still have things to do, decisions to make, responsibilities, commitments, you still have to wake up on a Monday morning and go to work, if that’s what you choose to do. But you are living life from a completely different place, one of joy, lightness and clarity. Those of you who practice everyday know what I’m talking about. The day is the same, except you are not. In this experience of internal rest you are active in that you feel inspired to do things, you have desires and you carry out your plans, but in this state of true non-attachment you simply are not concerned by the ups and downs or as to the outcome, because you are so present.

This moment is full of potential. Being completely full of presence is not abandoning hope and your dreams, it does not mean that you stop living, that you stop caring, that you stop feeling. It is being completely real, completely authentic to yourself without the madness that has taken over most of the world. It is stopping being what you think you should be, what you think is appropriate, it is stopping guessing what the other person wants to hear and instead it is accepting You, exactly as you are right now, saying and doing and being You. In this way the potential of you is limitless, released from the very box you put yourself in.

So if peace or happiness or freedom from limitation is important to you then rest in this moment. Pretend that this moment is the only moment there is. Allow yourself this moment, be attentive to your own presence and attend only to the needs of this moment. When you use your meditation techniques, be aware and be content, allow the experience to unfold as it will. Practice meditation not to get anything, but to lose your fixation on judgement, on the past and the future, on the shoulds. The experience you are having is the only one possible to you right now. You don’t have to lose yourself in it the experience, but you don’t have to deny it either. Instead go beyond it. Go beyond the chaos of the pushing and pulling and rest in the Self, free of expectation, free of neediness, free of loss, free of heartache, free to be whoever you are right now.

Surrender - part 2

A bunch of meditation teachers made a recording recently of what their experience of surrendering everything - every thought, feeling and action - to the Stillness was like. For me it was amazing. It reminded me on so many different levels of playing with surrender myself.

I hadn't realised it, but there was a subtle effort to secure an experience I thought I wanted. I know the silence well, but there was a lack of contentment in that experience. There was expectation that somehow, sometime (hopefully soon!), my experience was going to change, get bigger, get more profound. This was frustrating because the experience I was having in any given moment rarely met with expectation.

Instead, it's amazing the difference in allowing the silence to be exactly as it is right now. To simply rest in whatever is there. Instantly my experience of stillness and of life became so soft and embracing. There is an immediate quiet joy and gratitude for my experience and for my life. I love it.

It's also so much more obvious to me now how surrender is one big game of seeing how innocently I can approach every moment. To see the mind setting up expectations and play with simply ignoring them.

I feel so grateful for the ease of this. As opposed to rigidly trying to be still, relaxing and allowing the stillness to be is so much easier and graceful. So much better than forcing and controlling.

I love it!

Inspired

Have you ever heard a thing and only later understood it, realised it?

I don't know how many times someone has said to me something like:

"Don't do anything, just rest in the silence now. Be completely present and aware of what this moment has for you now. Remain content in your experience as it is, without judgement, without wanting to change or it to be anything else than it is, right now."

The amount of times something similar has gone through my eyes or ears and always running was this idea that even to rest I had to do something. I couldn't sit back in the comfy sofa of awareness because there was something more. It was this Noble Thought - I want everything, and what I am experiencing right now is only a taster so I'll try a little harder, be a little more one pointed, be a better student.

It's so funny because its the littlest thing that kept me from resting, from experiencing what there is in this moment, from being free to be all that presence.

So there is just the experience of stillness. Everything still comes and goes but there is this central core, untouched by any of it. I love the saying "like paint being thrown through air". Just like that. It's just what I choose to make it.

Wonderful, simple, so simple and such fun, captivating...

Dropping Keys

The small man
builds cages for everyone
he knows
while the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys
all night long
for the
beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.

~ Hafiz

I stole this from Moni Vangolen and Tomas Stubb's website. They are wonderful, still and inspiring teachers. If you are ever near them, seek them out. I feel such a connection with these guys, they are a ton of fun. yay!

Surrender

Surrender to the Source.
Surrender to Awareness, this is the only place of protection.
Surrender your heart and you will know all.
Surrender to Consciousness and Bliss.

Surrender means to surrender your bondage and simply be Freedom.
Surrender is the ego bowing down to its Source.
No more demands or commands, but just putting all in the hands of the Source.
Surrender is to submit your stupidness, your wickedness, to the will of Existence, to Consciousness and Bliss and being happy.
That’s all.

Surrender.
Let Silence have You.

- Sri H.W.L. Poonja

Cultivating the ability is stay still and let whatever happens happen is so important in meditation, and indeed in life. It's incredibly simple but huge in terms of peace and experiencing the maximum of your Self that is there to be experienced. Totally letting go and getting out of the way results in such a joyful invincibility.

It is an act of absolute humility: "I know nothing. I know what I like, I know what is important to me. But I don't know how this universe works, what is best for me, how my greatest desire will unfold for me the smoothest and quickest.”

Absolutely surrendering is finally acknowledging the uselessness of the mind’s ability to give anything that lasts in terms of satisfaction. It allows the Grace of the universe to take over. Where before we would try and work out the best way, by surrendering in this moment we let the infinite wisdom of a power much greater than our puny mortal minds the space and permission to act. By giving up the mind and surrendering in this moment, we disappear. The Source is all that remains.

We’ll always have a choice, and rightly so. I’m not saying let life continue without your input. I’m saying act, but be free of the expectation of the result of action. Be innocent. There’s a huge difference, when we sit down to ascend or meditate, in life, everywhere.

We can make the choice to continue as we always have - trying to figure it out, to protect our interests, to secure our lives and our experience - or we can let go, giving everything including our grasping pride that we know up in exchange for resting back into the stillness of our inner awareness.

Stop fighting, you don't know anything.

It is just like a journey down a river, kicking back, letting the main current take us swiftly and smoothly to the re-cognition of who we really are, versus jumping in and attempting to control our descent by holding onto the side. The only thing that happens is that our journey is not smooth, fast or pleasant: we get pummelled and beaten by the rocks and branches.

The only time this happens to you - getting stuck or having a problem - is when you don’t fully surrender to what is, when you have an expectation or a position. The universe has a wonderful way of showing you all these places. It’s easy to make a half-hearted effort at surrendering. You can even surrender 99%, but that 1% will still get you. You’ll be shown if you’re hanging on in the slightest way. And it's a great thing if you are willing to be shown. There is God, knocking on your door, showing you where you can have more. Awesome. Being humble, being willing not to know, stepping back and letting whatever happens happen is the quickest way to regaining smoothness, peace and connection, and getting more.

So, don’t try and work anything out. Invest all of your attention in the Silence that remains in you when everything else is ignored. Surrender every impulse, every emotion, every great idea back to that. It's the easiest way. Nothing else has worked.

If not Now, when?

Babaji

"Love and serve all humanity.
Assist everyone.
Be happy, be courteous.
Be a dynamo of irrepressible joy.
Recognize God and goodness in every face.
There is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future.
Praise everyone. If you cannot praise someone, let them out of your life.
Be original, be inventive.
Be courageous. Take courage again and again.
Do not imitate; be strong, be upright.
Do not lean on the crutches of others.
Think with your own head. Be yourself.
All perfection and every divine virtue are hidden within you. Reveal them to the world.
Wisdom, too, is already within you. Let it shine forth.
Let the Lord's grace set you free.
Let your life be that of the rose; in silence, it speaks the language of fragrance."

Babaji