Sunday, October 9, 2016

the knower knows.


"there is a unity, a unified wholeness, that becomes apparent within the transcendent unified consciousness." maharishi mahesh yogi.

in those early heady days, when our minds were openned and made flexible by stuff we heard, read, ingested or thought, people from exotic far off lands brought new ideas to tantalize us. swami vivekananda, yogananda, shivananda talked about there being one essesntial life beyond all the apparent differences. they proclaimed us all to be waves upon one vast ocean without beginning or end. what's more, they insisted we could actually each experience, cognize, recognize that reality ourselves, directly, through an ancient practice called 'dhyaan,' meditation. and so it began.

the concept of looking within for direct knowledge of that oneness was what grabbed me. the possibility of first-hand understanding, spoken of by sages through time, took hold, threw me around the room, wrestled me down onto my cushion and wouldn't let me up. there was, of course, no guarantee that what they asserted was true. but if it was true, i reasoned, why not me (?) now, all these years later and after all that, i sit back and ask myself honestly: 'well, was it true?' and, with a happy heart full of deep gratitude to those sages and my teachers, i answer... : 'i have no friggin idea.'

there may have been a time when i believed meditation actually was going to open a world to me, like some sort of dream-scape, where all would be revealed, shown and known, where i would see the truth, the whole truth, the ultimate truth about life, death, creation, you, me, god. it never happened. but, wait. what did happen was so miraculous in itself that i look back on all those years like they hold within them my most treasured memories, as though i'm placing each blank photo carefully in an album to preserve for some day later on. 

much greater people than i have written and spoken of their so-called inner life. i have written and spoken enough myself, for what it's worth. what happened, happened to me. by its very nature, it is exclusive, or maybe not. suffice it to say, when one meditates with right understanding and dedication, there comes a time when a grace descends, a blessing ascends, filling one with something we call absolute bliss consciousness, guaranteed.

what i know now is that anybody who has meditated, with no definitive answers to the age-old questions, would nevertheless have a happy heart filled with a deep gratitude. moreover, i know that anybody whose meditation has matured would clearly view the duality in this world as a form of insanity. how any person or persons could ever purposely hurt another being is beyond my ability to understand. because, without a shred of evidence of that one life, it simply seems so incredibly obvious that we are, in fact, one life.


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