You are not who and what you think and believe you are as long as you think that you are imperfect, flawed, weak, inadequate, fearful or any of those things that feel unpleasant, painful or disempowering.
That ‘you’ that you believe in so strongly is a direct result of your conditioning, collective and individual.
Who and what you truly are is incapable of causing you to feel anything but good. That is the natural quality of Universal Energy, Infinite Intelligence or Love.
How do we know this?
We know this because when we sit in the stillness where all thinking has settled, where all mental and physical disturbance has settled, we experience the peace that surpasses all understanding. We experience a spontaneous, uncaused joy. We experience an expansiveness that know no limits. We experience a power that is so grounded and unshakeable.
It’s pointless arguing against this if you haven’t allowed yourself to experience it. That would be like me arguing with you that the taste of orange and cinnamon dark chocolate is awful when I haven’t tasted it myself or indeed that there is no such thing as orange and cinnamon dark chocolate because I haven’t come across it myself.
So, there are 2 things to keep in mind and their implications are critical to our personal and collective wellbeing.
First, you are not the conditioned self that you believe you are. The profound implication of this is that you stop taking anything personally – neither your perceived ‘badness’ or ‘imperfections’ or ‘failures’ nor your perceived ‘goodness’ or ‘perfections’ or ‘successes’. All these attributes and measures are constructs of a conditioned mindset.
Second, you are the stillness, the awareness, the peace, the joy, the limitlessness, the power, the beginningless and endless presence that pervades all of life. The profound implication of this is that you are not an individuated, separate being. Rather, you are the all-encompassing wholeness of life and everything and everyone that exists and has ever existed and will ever exist (and again, this time-space bound perception of reality is embedded in our conditioning), is you.
When you actually experience this and allow yourself to consistently experience this, everything that has been part of your conditioning will start to crumble and crack and break off. The falsehoods of who and what you have believed yourself to be will finally fall away and the truth of who and what you truly are will finally start to emerge.
Then you will find that life becomes so much easier to live, so much more joyous and peaceful. Then you will find that neither your happiness nor your power depends on anyone or anything. This is liberation and the practice of meditation brings with it this priceless gift.
Keep in mind, it is a GIFT. You cannot demand it nor go chasing after it. You certainly must not make it a condition for your practice i.e. I will only practice if I receive this gift. That is not the attitude for the practice of meditation.
But as you practice with freedom, with openness, with tenderness and with watchfulness, you will find that the gift has always been there waiting for you and that when you were ready, you were able to access it.
Also, bear in mind that liberation and the other gifts of meditation practice such as peace, clarity, healing in mind and body, freedom from unhelpful habits of mind and body (including anger, anxiety, fear, powerlessness and substance abuse), joy, power, are effects that you can experience almost instantly, the very first time you practice.
But, if you stop practising, YOUR AVAILABILITY to these gifts diminishes. The gifts are ALWAYS there but if you are not available to them, if you are not ready to receive them, you cannot expect to experience them.
It’s no different to the ability of food to sustain you physically. The food may be there but if you do not eat it, you cannot expect to nourish your body.
Note also that ‘availability’ is not just about taking 5 minutes to sit and watch your breath. Sure, that is important and necessary but it is not enough. Availability is also and especially about ATTENTION. Directing your attention in a gentle, focuses and consistent way.
Given our conditioning, this can prove ‘difficult’ BUT that is in fact the practice – to repeatedly redirect our attention and remain aware. It doesn’t matter that you might spend 4.9 minutes of the 5 minutes of your practice totally absorbed in your thoughts and stories. When you eventually regain your attention and become aware, you will have broken an old habit and begun a new one even if only this once. It is then a matter of giving yourself more and more opportunity to cultivate the new habit of attention and Awareness. Like learning any new skill, it takes practice.
So, if you truly wish to put an end to your suffering in whatever shape or form you experience it – a health condition, an addiction, rage, unforgiveness, guilt, sadness, loneliness, fear – it will help if you stop believing the things you believe about yourself or at least, if you start questioning these beliefs.
It will help if you can find a way of experiencing yourself OUTSIDE of these beliefs to see what else is there, to see if there is anything more to you besides your beliefs, your behaviours, your thoughts, your experiences.
The practice of meditation is a gentle and certain way of offering you this Self-Awareness.
REFLECTION
In what ways do you deem yourself imperfect, flawed, not good enough…?
Are you ‘deserving’? What are you deserving of?
Are you good enough? To what or to whom?
What do you know to be truly, irreversibly, unconditionally true about yourself?
CALL TO ACTION
Write down some of the things that you put yourself down either directly or through the voices of other people. Now, write statements that speak to the goodness within you that has always been there from before you were born. If it helps, think of yourself as a newborn child.
HEALING STATMENT
My true nature was never born and will never die. My true nature is indestructible, unenhanceable and unsurpassable. I choose to trust in and live from my true nature.
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