The Natural State of Meditation

Good evening and welcome to satsang.

Tonight I thought I would talk about something that I rarely do but it's a good subject anyway and that is the subject of meditation. I don't talk about meditation that much because most people that I come in contact with, the majority of them, already have had a host of different forms of meditation. Some of you haven't had any which, congratulations, you haven't yet been too corrupted by the ideas. But most of the people who come have a history of meditation, which is one reason I don't talk a lot about it. The other reason is because there is this idea, that's really quite unsubstantiated, that meditation is the quickest way to enlightenment. For some people it may be, for others it's not. You never know. So in order not to give more and more energy to a lot of the notions about meditation, I don't talk about that much although I've written about it some.

But I think it's important that we understand at the beginning what meditation really is because meditation is really simply assuming the natural state. That's really what meditation is. So in meditation the most important thing to do is to diminish the meditator as much as is humanly possible. The meditator is the "me" that's meditating. So to disengage the "me" that's meditating, whatever it thinks it's doing, as much as possible, actually leads to a spontaneous and natural sense of meditation which is what meditation really is. It's a totally spontaneous, natural state of ease. The emphasis is on totally natural and totally spontaneous.

So in real meditation, the first idea is to simply allow your experience to be as it is. That's the beginning. Unless you allow your experience to be as it is, you're not going to be meditating, you're going to be involved in trying to manipulate your experience to make it something different, usually something more pleasurable or calmer, more peaceful or centered or concentrated.

But if we just start with the idea that meditation is just allowing everything to be as it is ... now why would one speak that way about meditation? The reason that I say, let everything be as it is, is because when we awaken into our natural state, our natural state is a state of allowing everything to be as it is. That's why I say, in meditation allow everything to be as it is. Because when we come into the full awakening of truth, truth is allowing everything to be as it is. In other words, there's no intermediary. There's no little "me" deciding what's good and bad, what it wants and doesn't want.

So just allowing everything to be as it is, very simple. It's a lot to ask of an ego because it's the last thing an ego wants to do. An ego wants it to be as it wants it to be. So most people I meet, that's their experience of meditation. "I want it to be one way and it keeps not being that way. I want to be really peaceful and calm and I want my thoughts to stop and enter into bliss and samadhi, that's what I want. And that keeps not happening. So I'm going to try to make that happen." Then you have an ego that starts to manipulate.

So most of what we call meditation, no matter what the spiritual culture is, is not meditation; it's really manipulation. That's what they should call it, sitting manipulation. "I'm not going to manipulate my neighbor, my lover or my boss, I'm going to sit down and manipulate myself for thirty minutes. I'm going to stop my thoughts, I'm going to focus on my [breath], between my eyes. I'm going to do anything except allow everything to be as it is." And through some miracle, by manipulating and controlling, I'm supposed to come upon the natural state, which is what enlightenment is all about. Any wonder that most people don't make it?

So if we start out with real meditation as allowing everything to be as it is, and if the mind says, "well, what do I do?" you allow everything to be as it is. And if the minds says, "that's not working," you still allow everything to be as it is. And if your mind says, "but my mind is quite chattery," allow everything to be as it is. If it's chattery, let it be chattery. If it's quiet, let it be quiet; if it's happy, let it be happy; if it's not happy, let it be not happy. Just don't manipulate it. And where you see manipulation happening, either overtly or very subtly, just notice it and let it go.

When we allow everything to be as it is and we don't manipulate it, regardless of the way it is, if we like it or not like it, if we just let it be the way it is and let go of every effort to manipulate, change or alter it, when we really, really actually allow our experience to be as it is, our experience will start to harmonize all by itself. It might not happen in the snap of a finger but it will start to harmonize which means it will be like the clouds parting, all by itself. Now if you go at it with that as a goal, then it's not going to happen. Just allowing everything to be as it is.

As you do that, the mind's tendency to focus on certain things will start to relax. Most people their mind is focused on their mind, so therefore they want their mind to stop. But if they weren't focused on their mind, they wouldn't care if it stopped or not. It's a bit like listening to the background traffic. If you're focused on the background traffic, and you have an idea that it needs to go away, then you'll be endlessly disturbed. But if you let go of focusing on the background traffic, it may be there but it isn't going to disturb you anymore. If it goes away, it goes away; if it's still here, it's still here; it doesn't matter.

When we start to allow everything to be as it is, we find that state where we stop focusing the mind anywhere in particular. Usually it's focused in thinking, for some people it's focused in feeling, they're always focused on how they feel or other people are always focused on how they think. Now this doesn't mean to try to shift the focus; it just means try to relax the focus. In the middle of a focus, you just relax. You're not trying to change anything; you're just relaxing. And the more you relax, the more open your focus gets.

It's like relaxing your hearing. If you're listening, you'll hear one sound that you'll deem very important and all of your awareness will contract on that one sound. But if you relax, you start to take in all the sounds equally, a voice, a creak somewhere, the fan over there, somebody coughing, your own breathing, maybe your mind chatting a little bit. The more relaxed you become, the more awareness opens, it becomes sort of global where you're not focused on one thing to the exclusion of other things. And this is a natural state. When there's relaxation, everyone's senses start to go global which means they stop contracting. Now if you start with a goal, "I'm going to try to hear all sounds equally," all of a sudden you go crazy because you're trying. But when you relax, everything falls into place. Nothing is emphasized to the exclusion of anything else. And you feel your body relax; you don't even try to relax it; it just happens.

So when consciousness starts to relax, to not contract or focus, which I know sounds strange because most meditation techniques tell you to focus. I'm saying just the opposite. I don't mean get hazy, cloudy and dreamy, I mean just relax. Let the focus open up. When your focus starts to open up and relax a bit and your mind stops feeling the need to control to get to a better experience, there's a natural state of peacefulness that's there. Not that peace is important. In spirituality, if we're talking about enlightenment, we're not talking about trying to get to peace, we're talking about trying to get to truth. Getting to truth may or may not be a peaceful process.

To come this far for people who aren't used to it, it takes most people a little while to get used to this. Even long-time meditators, it takes them a while to get used to it because long-time meditators, their mind is trained to focus on something specific. Watch your thoughts, watch your breathing, say your mantra, do this, do that, all of which can produce a very pleasurable effect. You focus on one thing; you start to produce a pleasurable effect, right? If you put a coca-cola can in front of you and focus on it; it will induce a pleasurable effect. It doesn't need to be a candle or a piece of incense. It can be a coca-cola bottle; it could be anything. Just focusing the mind on one thing has a pleasurable effect.

This kind of effect however is an induced effect. It is induced through something that you're doing so therefore it's not really natural. As soon as you stop focusing, the pleasurable effect starts to wear off because it's not the natural state; it's an induced state. This is one of the dangers of meditation. You may get very, very adept at inducing a pleasurable state. I've met people who can still down, cross their legs and go into bliss at the snap of a finger but they're as spiritually awake as a stone. They can go into a very pleasurable place very quickly but it doesn't actually mean that they are free because as soon as they get up then they're back at square one. Because it's an induced state. So I emphasize this about meditation, that it's not about inducing a state. You can learn to do that but it won't make anyone free; it won't take you to truth unless it just happens by accident (which is how it usually happens anyway but ... ).

If we're not doing that, if we're just relaxing and letting everything return to a natural state, if there is any effort it is simply the effort to notice and let go of any way one is manipulating their experience. In any way, you just notice it and let it go. If there's any effort involved, that's the effort.

As you're letting everything be as it is, your system, your body and mind, everything starts to come into a certain harmony. What do I mean by harmony? Simply that you stop noticing it so much. That's how you know it comes into harmony, you're not noticing your mind so much, you don't really care how you feel, you don't really care if you're thinking or not because everything comes into a uniformity, a harmony, so it doesn't matter anymore.

Then there starts to be this sense of just being awake or conscious, when the awareness is not focused somewhere, when consciousness is not directed somewhere and it's resting; then awareness starts to come back to itself, consciousness starts to come back to consciousness. It starts to take note of itself, that there is consciousness here, there is awareness here. This isn't, "now I need to try to be more aware," that's not awareness; that's concentration. You see the difference? This isn't practicing being aware. The only thing you can practice is being unaware (laughs). Because as soon as you're aware of something, you're unaware of everything else. You might be aware of one thing but the rest of infinity, you're oblivious to. So the more you practice being aware, the less aware you become. You just become focused and focused is very different than being aware.

When we're not trying to manipulate our experience, awareness starts to return to its natural state where it's not trying to manipulate anything, it's not trying to get somewhere, it's not trying to change experience or alter anything, it's not asking experience to give it something. Awareness just returns to awareness, consciousness starts to return to consciousness.

And that's about it. Because when we're not manipulating, it's much easier for the intuitive flash of self-realization, that you're not the person, in this case the meditator that's trying to meditate. That's just a movement of thought. The flash of intuition comes that there is only awareness; that's all there really is. Consciousness returns to itself, realizes itself, remembers itself as consciousness. It's very hard for consciousness to do this when it's always being directed and told what to do by the mind. There's always another agenda. It's like, "consciousness, don't worry about realizing that you're consciousness; here's what I want you to DO." So consciousness is always being directed by the mind, it's always being given directions by the mind, "be conscious of this, be conscious of that." No wonder it never wakes up; it's always got a bigger, higher agenda.

When you take the agenda away and you're letting everything simply be as it is and just seeing where that takes you … and if you start to feel something extraordinarily pleasurable, don't grab onto it and don't try to push it away; just let it be. And if it leaves, let it leave. And if you don't feel good, then don't feel good. If it stays, let it stay and if it leaves, let it leave. That's it.

Do you see how little there is for the egoic consciousness? There's nothing there for it. If you haven't done very much of this, the mind will hit this point where it will get very insecure. Because it will think, "if I'm not really doing anything, how do I know I'm going to get there? If I'm not manipulating, then maybe nothing will happen." Not that anything has ever happened because you manipulated, except misery. But you start to come into the insecurities of the egoic consciousness, that it's actually very afraid of letting everything be as it is. It's terrified of what will happen. Or of what might not happen. And if you've never let go that much to really start to feel that, you'll be surprised because then you'll see what's driven most of your spiritual life. It's been driven by this insecurity of letting go, of not having control. So instead of not having control, you've been picking up one more thing to do, one after another after another, something else to do, all so you didn't have to see that insecurity that the ego faces when it doesn't have anything to do because that's its death. Everything you DO to get rid of the ego only increases it. The less you do, it decreases.

This type of meditation is in a certain manner of speaking more passive although not in the way people usually think of passive. They think of passive as sort of weak, unawake, not fully present. Not passive in that sense but in the sense of opening, letting go, not controlling, letting everything be as it is, that kind of passivity, that kind of ease. And never forgetting that underlying all that is to directly, intuitively realize the truth of your being. Never forget that because as soon as your meditation becomes about chasing after a state, spiritually speaking it's not so useful anymore.

How many people here have used meditation to chase after a state (laughs)? Okay. And the rest of you, you're lying (laughter). No, I don't know that, I'm just playing. But most anybody who's meditated has used it that way; that's just what we do. Usually that's what we're told to do. Remember, in real spirituality it's about discovering, awakening to who and what you are. That's what it's about. It's not about chasing peace, bliss, open-heartedness, it's not about chasing anything but about finding out who and what you are. That's what it's about. So if you know that, you don't have to waste tremendous amounts of energy manipulating your meditation. Because even though you can become very skilled at it, it doesn't matter much.

The truth of who we are is not a manipulated state. It's not a state at all actually. That's the very thing we wake up OUT OF; we wake up out of states, out of mind, out of the incessant need of the body/mind to feel a particular way. The truth of our being, it doesn't care. It doesn't care if the body/mind feels really good or not so good. It doesn't care, that's why it's so freeing. Which just so happens, when you realize the truth of your being and that it really doesn't care, your body/mind feels this tremendous relief. What's the relief from? From caring! That's probably human beings' biggest burden. Now I don't mean being uncaring in the sense of being callous, nasty or indifferent, not that kind of uncaring. I mean the great uncaring that IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER HOW YOU FEEL. The peace beyond all understanding. Everybody can understand the peace of feeling happy and free, when you wake up in the morning and you're having a good day, the sun is shining and your chemicals are all mixing together beautifully and everything feels great. That's a very understandable peace, it's a beautiful peace but the peace BEYOND understanding is that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if someone walked up and gave you a death sentence, two days to live, it's okay, it's perfectly fine, there is no problem. That's the peace beyond understanding, that's the natural peace, the real freedom.

Just allowing everything to be as it is, not manipulating. Underlying this whole approach to meditation is a great trust. And the trust is built on a truth. You may or may not realize it, you will at some point if you haven't but the truth is, if allowed to do so, that is the natural way that everything moves into awakening, into harmony, that's just the way. Everything is always trying to move that way, that's its natural way. If you totally let go, you'd wake up in the blink of an eyelash. Why? Because that's the natural way. It's totally natural. You have to work really hard not to be awake, spiritually. There has to be a constant, unrelenting effort to not be in total, full-flower self-realization. That's the natural state. Everything else is a horrendous effort. And as soon as it comes to you, you realize you've put in this ungodly amount of effort to be a walking illusion (laughs).

This is underlying it, when you let go, everything returns to its source, everything returns to wakefulness, to total liberation, that's its nature. That's why when you really allow everything to be as it is, everything returns. That's the beauty of it. Now if you don't know that and you can't really know it unless you've woken up, then it's a sort of trust. Or just a curiosity, "what will happen if I totally stop manipulating myself, completely?" It can be a kind of adventure. This is a very, very deep thing. But when you do this, you just start to open up. And some of it will be quite beautiful, peaceful and wonderful and some of it won't.

In a simple way, that's the art of meditation, allow everything to be as it is. And when in doubt, allow everything to be as it is. And when you get anxious, allow everything to be as it is. And if you start to come up with all sort of fancy questions about that, allow everything to be as it is. Because when you wake up, that's what's going to be happening.

The other part of meditation that people really get hung up on is this whole part of discipline. Should I meditate? In the truth, the truth of your being doesn't even know what "should" means. In the truth, there are no "shoulds". So should you be meditating? There is no such thing as a "should". That's the only answer. Any "should" you come up with is just a concept in your mind or somebody else's.

That's another thing that destabilizes the ego because the ego says, "I want you to write out the recipe for me to get to full awakening. Should I meditate every day?" And my only answer would be, "I don't know, should you?" You see, it's blindly following ANYTHING that keeps awakening from happening. That isn't an option anymore, to blindly follow anything. That is to be asleep. It's like saying, "if I just go to sleep and follow, do what you say, I'll awaken, won't I?" No. It doesn't matter if you go to sleep and follow what the Buddha, Jesus, Ramana, all of them put together said. If you go to sleep and follow, you're just going to be an asleep follower.

Again, each person finds themselves where the ego least wants to be. Of course the ego is always fighting for its autonomy, to be its own person and all that stuff, and of course it never is. Because the ego is just what other people told it it was. So it's never autonomous even though it is always fighting for that. And yet it also wants to be led.

In most people's mind when they think of meditation, this whole idea of discipline comes into mind. Should I be meditating, how much should I be meditating, when should I be meditating? What if there were no hows or shoulds or whens? What would you be left with? Where would you have to go to find the answer to that question? If you go to your mind, it's just going to tell you what somebody else said or convince itself of something. So you can't go to your mind. If you go to what somebody else says, then you're just a blind sheep. So you can't go to what your mind says and you can't go to what somebody else's mind says.

Actually, just that, it puts you into the meditative state. Because you don't KNOW what to do. Do you see how the ego has run away from that place its whole life? This place called, "I don't really know." It keeps asking for this place called "I don't really know" to be filled up. "Tell me what to do, tell me how much to do it, tell me when to do it, tell me why to do it." Why? "Because I don't know." But that's the place you want to be! "But I don't want to be there." But all the great spiritual teachers say to rest in the unknown. "I know, but I want it to be known." Do you see what I mean?

So the idea becomes "I'm going to go with the known, I'm going to go with what somebody says to do and it will get me to the unknown." No wonder most people never make it to full awakening, huh. Then the ego gets very insecure. "But I might make mistakes. I might do it wrong. I might screw up my chance for enlightenment in this lifetime, I might really blow it." And all I can say is, you don't really have any control over it anyway. Don't worry about it.

What I'm trying to do is throw you back upon your own resources, upon your own heart, upon your own inner sense of what's true. So that none of this becomes blind. There's no blind meditating, there's no blind following, nothing becomes blind because blind is just blind. If you want to awaken, you don't have the luxury of being blind. You don't have the luxury of not questioning. The only way you're going to know if you should meditate at all or how much or when is to listen silently and deeply and feel it. That's the only way you're going to know because anything else is going to be somebody else's so it's not going to be authentic for you.

You're left to your own devices. It's the last place the seeker in you wants to be. It doesn't want to be left on its own resources. It wants to be told what to do and when. And it wants a guarantee that if you do it just the way that you're told, it will result in, whatever you want, fill in the blank. But it just doesn't work that way. If you open your eyes, it's shocking what you see. It doesn't matter if you're following the most charismatic guru or divine mother that's ever been born in history, if you're doing it blindly, you're probably not going to wake up. Your chances are really slim.

This is an awakening game. Right from the beginning you start to throw yourself upon your own resources. We're afraid to do that because we all know, every human being knows how easy it is to seduce and deceive oneself. Isn't that right? How many times have you deceived yourself in this lifetime? That's the fear, isn't it? Everyone's had that experience. "I thought something was right and it ended up not being right, I thought something was true and it ended up not being true, I thought one thing and it ended up being another so how am I to know? So if I'm on my own resources, I start to feel very insecure because I don't know." Do you see where everything keeps coming back to? This place of insecurity where the ego does not want to be. It wants to be led by the hand out of that place every time. But everything leads you back into that. The only way of dealing with that place where the mind knows it can deceive itself is to listen very deeply, very quietly. It's the only way. Rest in the unknown until it starts to become obvious and if you rest there, it will become obvious.

It seems obvious that in our culture most people by and large would do pretty good if they spent some time in silence. It's good for the nervous system, mellow them out, most people are running around like crazy, much more than necessary, and spiritual people are no different than the rest. So a little time just to relax and be quiet, for most people it would do them good. But there's no formula. You find it inside yourself. Some people will be drawn to do quite a bit of meditation, some quite little.

You can see what I'm doing here is questioning all the assumptions about meditation itself, all the assumptions about whether it's necessary or not. I'm not giving answers; I'm questioning the assumptions. Because that's what awakening is all about, coming into the truth, it's not about being blind. In the end the truth that we recognize is the truth of our own being is that which always IS. It's what always is, whether you're meditating or not, it's what always is. The mystery of being itself.

That's the foundation. The foundation of any spirituality is the foundation of silence, that's the foundation. The silence that always is. Otherwise spirituality gets too top-heavy. It gets way too conceptual, too much mind-stuff. That's why when people come to retreats with me, we have periods of silent sitting and times of satsang everyday. Because those are the two important aspects. One side that's very sort of passive, you're not straining or trying to get somewhere, you're just relaxing, letting the natural state take over, letting the natural return to the source happen when there's no manipulator. And then there's the other side which is satsang which is more dynamic, which is a questioning, a probing, to call something more out of you within this dialog. It's almost asking you to take great risks and ask important questions, not just what to have for dinner tomorrow. Real questions, frightening questions, big questions, the questions that can actually wake you up. That takes a certain dynamic quality just to be here together. Real spirituality needs both of the qualities. If it's just all questioning and inquiry, it gets too top-heavy, too much in your mind. If it gets too much focused on silence, then you end up sort of like a blob, a peaceful blob (laughter). You don't really know who you are, you haven't really awoken spiritually, but you know, who cares? You can meditate for an hour a day and one hour out of twenty-four, you feel pretty good. It loses the quality of vitality if it's all just focused on quietness. These two are very important together, a very potent mix.

So that's my talk on meditation. C'mon up (invites someone up for a dialog).