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Why do you want to meditate?
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Perhaps you want to experience deep calm. Perhaps you want to sleep better, have great sex, make lots of money, gain deep insights into the nature of reality, be a more loving person, not be so tense, be forceful and energetic, to find the real you, plumb the mysteries of the unconscious..... Does this all sound familiar? All these reasons for meditating can be distilled into one thread, no matter what the weave: |
| All beings meditate for release from suffering. |
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Release from habitual patterns that hurt, bind, make you go up, make you go down.
Freedom from patterns of behavior that make Release from patterns that hurt others. |
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Freedom from patterns like drug or alcohol use that give a temporary fix then let your whole being come crashing down in a muddle of pain and entanglement.
Release from the merry go round of confusing
Freedom from having to do the same things |
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Release from the deep fatigue, the constant
sighs. Freedom from neutrality, being nice - and bored. Does this sound familiar? Let's keep going, sing along:
Release from having to be high, up and happy.
Release from the patterns of one's country, Freedom from heart ache, not to forget simple indigestion from fast food. |
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Release from concepts and thoughts that wear you out, like a tire that has burst from too heavy a load and too many miles travelled.
Freedom from feeling entrapped, with no one Is this enough? |
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The suffering need not be extreme. It can be a constant dull itch, something
just below the threshold of acknowledgment. The discomfort of things not
quite right. It is the suffering of the little brush fires that occasionally
flare up, now here, now there. We live in an incredible time and space. For many of us, life is so rich and abundant. Instead of boring into the discomfort or itchiness as soon as it arises, we go to a movie, watch a video, jog, have a party, smoke a joint, raid the refrigerator, sleep, shop, call a friend, go to a restaurant, spend a few hours with the TV............a relentless cycle of avoidance. Then there is the approach of trying to think through the difficulties, puzzle them out. Thoughts battling thoughts, like trying to put out a fire with more fire. Only when the fuel feeding the fire dies down for a time, does one go back to the same patterns of thoughts, fantasies, actions and dreams. A relentless cycle of avoidance. Avoidance is an appropriate word to use. A + void + dance. Avoiding the voidness, non-space making, the fear of letting go into new events. No dancing. It is not easy to see into the fabric of your body that supports the flames, supports the swings, the grays. For this you need guidance, a path that goes beyond, beyond calm, beyond trying to be balanced, beyond having to maintain this or that state, beyond this or that model of behavior. The avoidance is so fast, the distractions so quick - many will deny the discomfort and dis-ease. Especially denied are the swings from happiness to unhappiness or the push to maintain being "up". Sometimes we hear the popular chorus "the ups and downs, the suffering is normal, this is really living". Have you ever wondered if this is really the natural presence of mind? Have you ever tasted in your being a flavour that transcends the lows and highs, transcends maintaining an evenness, but recognizes suffering for what it is? Not continuously pushing away suffering, anesthesia by a distraction here, now there. Again and again. How about a "coolness" that is not maintained by a clothing style, the food you eat, the religion you follow, the groups you belong to, the books you read, the music listened to, the current diet, the in sport, the latest method of education.... So close at hand that the "coolness", the fresh breeze of spaciousness has been with you, never apart from the earliest moments.
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