Meditation – Dealing with physical pain as awareness
07/24/2024
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Transcript of the Meditation
Hello, everyone. Lovely to be with you.
Every moment is a moment of love. When we know ourselves, when we are available to this moment, which is a moment of eternity, the eternity of Being.
So we invite ourself to be flooded by this love, which is peace.
Not in time. Not in memory.
So we relax, we surrender, we soak into this openness, this vastness.
Which we are, no resistance, no seeking.
There is no need to move away towards any object.
Because in moving away or moving towards something, you are separating yourself.
Peace and freedom is this non separation, meaning: no movement away from or towards anything.
Awakening to your true nature is not the pursuit of a state, or the pursuit of any experience.
So we sink deeper and deeper into presence, into being.
Nothing interferes with that. Whatever you experience, you experience within presence.
Everything you perceive, you sense, appears to you within this effortless presence.
There is nothing you need to do. We are not attempting to hold on to Presence, or to maintain a state. Rather, it’s a simple noticing that Presence is, Awareness is.
It takes on infinite forms without anything actually happening to it.
It takes on the form of a perception, while remaining as it is.
It takes on the form of a bodily sensation. There is no need for you to do anything. It’s just a bodily sensation on board. Meaning consciousness taking on the form of a sensation, of a bodily expression.
Like a screen, taking on the form of an image. Or clay, taken on the form of a pot. It is all clay. The essence is always there, unaffected.
You don’t need to do any effort to be aware. It is effortless.
One could say that the effort is in spinning a ‘me’ story: Me and my body, me and my health, separating yourself from the image, separating the screen from the image.
Separating the wave from the ocean, separating the clay from the pot.
What for? What are you trying to safeguard or to protect? It is an imaginary character, a habitual me story.
Which, once we believe in this separate entity, the body feels as a separate entity.
But there is no such a thing as a separate entity. You can take a look in this moment, in this moment of presence, in this moment of being: Simply awareness, presence.
Awareness recognizing itself.
Always in this moment, not in thinking, not in conceptualizing.
Whatever appears on the screen only interferes with the screen when you believe that it does.
It is simply a belief that there is an image apart from the screen, and that this image is staining the screen.
Once you believe that the image is staining the screen, you become preoccupied, worried, concerned.
Concerned about what you imagine yourself to be.
When you imagine yourself to be a woman, a man, a person, when you imagine yourself to be somebody, somebody seeking a spiritual experience, you’re already in ignorance.
When you are engaged in thinking and feeling, resisting what’s appearing. You’re already in ignorance, because you are separating yourself.
Sometimes consciousness takes on the form of sensations within the body. The mind also registers, recalls past experiences.
There may be pain and an old habitual response to pain. Sometimes we contract, we resist. Which only aggravates the resistance.
So we recognize pain. As an invitation. An invitation to pay attention to the body. An invitation to relax.
At the heart of the pain, there is stillness. An invitation to, to be not knowing.
An invitation to relax and release our beliefs about what we are, what the body is.
Because, after all, the body is not what you think it is or what you feel it is. It is much vaster than that. It’s not separate from the Cosmos and vaster than that.
When you notice that pain is interfering with your practice, ask yourself, whose practice?
What am I assuming myself to be in this moment? Use this opportunity to explore deeper.
What am I believing myself to be in this moment, that turns pain into something interfering with my practice or with my abidance as awareness? Who is abiding as awareness? Who?
Is there someone, somewhere? That we are identified with, that we are trying to protect, to safeguard. Who is this someone?
Of course we take care of the body, the best we can. But we are not the body, we are this formless awareness.
There may be stuff from the past that can get triggered to the surface. We can see it. Notice it. Feel it. Perceive it.
Not know it. We recognize our freedom from whatever is appearing in the body, in the mind.
When there is pain, there is pain. We don’t know it. We are it. Whatever that is, we don’t know.
We stay. We remain not knowing.
No assumptions, no beliefs about yourself. Freedom from beliefs, freedom from the past.
Because in presence all is well, there are no issues.
If you have any questions, please make sure you unmute yourself.
