[Unseeking Seeker]

Mindfulness, such as observing breath or being aware of thoughts and feelings, moment to moment induces single pointed attention, relaxes us, centres us but for the duration we are consciously undertaking that activity. If we substitute breath meditation with any other subject-object relationship, in my view it would be the same, although no doubt, breath is immediate and continuous.

Taking a step backwards, let’s play the devil’s advocate and question the need to meditate at all. What’s the motive and objective? Now, if we are stressed out and want to relax, to detox, fine … that’s a reasonable goal. However, going in deeper, there is a recognition that our innate awareness is unchanging, even though body ages and our understanding of the world around and within shifts over time. So what is this awareness or consciousness, as the screen upon which flow of life is experienced in linear time?

We may give it any name, how does it matter, God, soul, spirit. Essentially, if the objective of the search is to rekindle our innate divinity within, we simply acknowledge that it is evident that it is there but is yet veiled from our active cognition.

Observing breath or let’s simply say, mindfulness, wherein we choose to be aware rather than stuporous, we see that thought is an instrument. A useful instrument, it helps us get things done in the external world but cannot address issues which lack support of direct experience in lived reality. Furthermore, on reviewing thoughts, we find that they are mostly related to fears and desires rooted in attachments arising from mind-body vessel. A vessel we ensoul, no doubt, we don’t negate this. What is negation but another act of fanciful doership? However, we also realise that we are not only the mind-body. Ramana’s inquiry reinforces our ignorance: Who am I?

So, we simply delink our innate aliveness, awareness or consciousness … whatever we wish to label it as from thought forms. Thoughts arise, we look at them with nonchalance, curiosity, laughter even. They shouldn’t be there but yet they are! That sort of attitude.

In time, we abide in a continuum of stillness, in silence. Thoughts are employed when needed and that too by resonance, as a reflex, if you will.

Now, all of this goes hand in hand with our burning yearning to search for the underlying truth of our existence. We search but without thought. Thought is limited, we don’t want to go with limited.

At an optimal time, when residual fears and desires rooted in mind-body attachment recede, the emptiness within may be equated to a cleansing or purification of this earth vessel we ensoul. This activates our innate magnetism, drawing in the divine energy, which then pervades form, resulting in an explosion of ineffable bliss pervading our form in permanence. We are in the void. Love in love with love for love alone is our quest until we be to become love itself.

Obviously, we need to prioritise this shift. We are exhausted chasing illusions. We need to see God face to face, nothing less will do. Or if we drop the concept of God, that’s ok too, we want the veil of ignorance to drop and to see the source from which our awareness, our aliveness springs and flows. Or if we prefer, breath watching is fine but then how are we being breathed? What is the source of it’s power?

What I’m getting at is that no practice is needed, rather an orientation shift is required. We wish to know but don’t know how to go about it. We surrender doership, we cease thought, we are poised in animated attention, moment to moment to moment. Metaphorically speaking, we vaporise.

Let’s call this the practice of no-practice. No doubt, lower mind or ego or whatever we wish to label it as, it will ask questions, will have doubts. Again thought associated with mind-body. What if we don’t see the light? What if Kundalini doesn’t get activated? If it does, then to what degree and what thereafter? Again narrow goals seeking a ‘higher attribute’ for this here transient form. In time, we realise that doubts are essentially fears arising from ignorance. Our ego pursues us into subtle layers of awareness, congratulating itself on every wisdom download, every lively experience, every divine attribute ingrained or felt.

Once we internalise attention and let go of all knowing, all so called enableabilities of mind-body, this act of surrender, it empties us, purifies us, cleanses us. Then, with the dirt removed, magnetic currents flow and are cognised by our eternal awareness. The veils thin. All is as it is and we are one with it, without inner conflict. There is no seeking but we are as we are since yearning has replaced desire; the yearning to feel complete, unbound, blissful, luminous.

Each ascent, if we wish to use that word, marks a new beginning. There is no doing, save choosing to be aware in an orientation of agendalessness. We are in the stream, we do not resist, the currents carry us.

Essentially, we are so accustomed to striving to attain our earthy goals that we find it difficult to adopt a relaxed, non-doer meditational orientation as opposed to ritualistic meditation. Why all this needless effort? The delusion that we are only mind-body builds a complex script around our assumed identity. It is a bubble of ignorance. Once we burst the bubble, then we find that there is no one here.

The purpose of sharing all of this is not to argue about this vs that but merely to offer that any act of doership related to meditation is limited. Practice is alright to start with, to quieten lower mind. However, when we let go, so to speak, abiding in a continuum of thought rested silence and stillness, we find that the vibrant void is boundaryless. It is present in each half breath pause, in the gap between two thought trains, in the gap between perceiving and recognising, between intent and action … it is everywhere. All that is, is vibration, a dance of polarities, differentiated in space-time over a cognisable bandwidth.

To be still in the void is ego death. We don’t want to die. So the mind games continue, under a new label.