Meditation – Exploring the dropping of the mind
11/21/2024
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Transcript of the Meditation
Welcome, everyone.
Lovely to be. Lovely to see you.
Beautiful gathering of friends.
What is it that we are? What is it that we’re experiencing? What is this waking dream about?
Bodies are born, named by the family; the tribe rejoices. One more member of the tribe.
Then we are integrated: taught how to think, how to behave, what to believe, what not to believe.
And over time, the structures of the mind get established.
Such a natural way: Learning survival skills and the pecking order.
What is it all about?
Feeding the body, taking care of the body.
Accomplishing our goals, more and more goals.
From one thing to the next thing; and the next, and the next. What’s happening?
So many thoughts connected to our conditioned mind.
Memories that appear to us.
Where are we heading?
Our culture, our society gets more and more complex.
The sense of isolation on the increase; loneliness, meaninglessness.
As if we’ve been dropped in the ocean and need to hold on to various rafts and various aids to float and survive. For what purpose?
What are we what are we protecting? What are we aiming for?
When we turn, to the mind for answers, we we find a maze, a history; with all its carnage and wars and tribal rivalries.
Endless thoughts.
But where is the light? Is there a light?
This is just an experiment in nothingness, this human experience, a big mistake that we are living?
Can the mind answer these questions? Can we find the answer in appearing and disappearing thoughts and memories and sensations?
Is the question ‘what is this about’ a relevant question?
Or are we meant to just go through the motions? The conditioned mind from one thing to the next thing to the next thing.
Could it be that it’s just a movement away from stillness?
Because from the mind’s perspective, there are no goodies in stillness. No things to identify with, to grasp on, to defend, to be proud of.
From the mind’s perspective, we need to think about something, get the juice, squeeze that expression, that experience to get something for me! A bag of goodies.
A petrifying, rotting bag of goodies, stale.
This silent presence, what is the threat? What is it that’s being threatened?
Is this entire human experience about more and more mind, more and more phenomenal experiences.
They’re… they’re impermanent.
Then we hold on to the memories. What is it to hold on to memory? Such an empty chore, vain activity.
I have a bag full of memories! How silly.
What for a moment is the experience of being without the past, without stories, without histories, without narratives, without belonging to a tribe or a particular point of view that we hold onto and identify with?
Or is it to drop the mind? Is it that we are dropping? Is there really anything that is real that we are dropping?
How, how could we drop something which is real?
Can reality be dropped? Only the illusion.
No, we’re not even dropping it. It’s the understanding that it’s an illusion. That is the meaning of dropping. It’s an understanding.
The understanding that this mind structure has no reality of its own, just an illusory manifestation which we mistake to be real, which we choose to give it power, the power of thoughts and sensations and the power of the belief:
…that there is somebody Who is, subject to mind, subject to events?
In this moment, the absence of story and history, the absence of time, I am.
I is is-ness, is being, is this effortless awareness, which is and undeniable and knows it is and knows it is aware.
Any thought or mind impression that appears to you, when you look for it, it’s not there anymore.
You bring it back in your imagination.
So much effort in maintaining belief, in maintaining the me-narrative, me and my life and my world and my body and my money and my relationships?
Where is the peace in that? And what’s the point?
Is there any happiness in flipping the mind like, you’re flipping a pancake over and over and over?
We all love happiness and peace, sweet relationships, harmonious interactions.
Do we need to maintain a personal image? Do we need this effort, this travail?
What is it that gets in the way of being and trusting being, this effortless beingness, this effortless awareness, this silent, still, effortlessly peaceful presence.
We know that experientially. We all know experientially this effortless joy and peace and effortless happiness.
Do we need to play the me-game? Do we need to keep going back to the mind and get hooked into the me-feeling and the me-belief.
Sometimes we get the impression that we wanna get something out of our experience, get something or get somewhere, or to get it.
Who, who is behind the scene? What is what is it that wants to get something, get somewhere?
It’s such a beautiful meeting when we are with somebody who is free from the mind, is not wanting something, or working on a certain agenda about their personhood.
There is gratitude. Meeting in love, in innocence, in the purity and simplicity of a greeting that has no purpose.
Notice your feeling state, sensations in your body-mind. They only have the power that you give them.
You are the freedom. You are free. You are the freedom of being.
This awareness, this consciousness, which doesn’t get sick, doesn’t get wealthy.
Recognize yourself as that impersonal awarenesses, God’s awareness, universal awareness. There is no other reality.
There isn’t that and me as a body-mind. No. When you look for the me body-mind, you only find concepts and beliefs and what we refer to as thoughts, which we don’t even know what they are of themselves.
But what we know about thoughts and about all experiences is our direct experience of awareness, awareness, knowing it is aware.
The reality of all perceptions, that which cannot be removed.
Sometimes we say, we say that which is between perceptions, but that’s just a pedagogical means, pedagogical way of speaking, because there is no in-between, in fact.
What’s in-between? Awareness. Something else than awareness? Awareness dash nonawareness dash awareness dash nonawareness.
This is well, it’s non awareness. There’s no such thing. It’s an oxymoron.
So own your understanding. Live your understanding.
Don’t put it in the background. Oh, well, I’ll visit it when I need it. Let me continue with all my worries and concerns and troubles and depressions and…
But I can, when I need it, go back to truth, to this reality which perceives this understanding.
No. That’s like being given a beautiful pearl necklace.
Maybe speaking for the ladies or being given a beautiful gift and putting it in the attic.
You cannot put yourself in the attic. All your thoughts and images and beliefs about yourself, that’s the headache.
But you are the universe, the formless reality, the peace of being.
If you have any questions, make sure to unmute yourself and you can raise your hand, and you can turn on your videos, if you feel like it. I’d love to see you.
So any questions?
