Explorations In Stillness

“When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.”

To what are we really devoted? Happiness? Security? Love? If we’re serious about living a contented life we need to answer the question: “Where, by being established here, are we always happy, always secure and always loving?” With-out answering this question, we may, like the proverbial dog, chase our tail for years and never wear, in the words of Kabir, “the face of satisfied desire.”

My experience through the practice of yoga, meditation and the teachings of non-dualism and tantra, supports the understanding that we must first search for and realize the spiritual core of our Being before we can truly live in the world with satisfied desire.

SILENCE

All great searches begin with the suspension of the statements: “I know” and “I don’t know.” This orients us in an attitude of listening. In fact, yoga may be described as the art and science of listening, and silence is the ground in which listening takes root and blossoms.

Stillness

True silence, what I call Stillness, is not the absence of thought, feeling or sound. Stillness is beyond the absence of objective silence. It is the essence of all that is. Like the paper behind the words on this page, Stillness is always present whether objective reality is present or absent. This Stillness is the homeground in which all movement unfolds.

Meditation

When we live in the attitude of listening, we live as the listening witness of all that arises. At first our search beckons us to examine the nature of the objects that arise in this witnessing; the objective world, our body, senses and mind. When we spend time with these objects with an openness that does not presume to know what they are, their underlying nature begins to unfold.

This simple activity forms the foundation of our search for Truth. Living this process brings the under-standing that anything beheld in awareness, without anticipation or expectation, becomes purified of its grosser nature. As the process deepens we may intuit the underlying essential nature of Consciousness which gives rise to all creation.

YAJÑA

This truth is embodied in the ancient process of yajña. Often taken to be an external ritual, the fire ceremony is actually a projection of the internal process of purification through awareness. During the fire ceremony objects, which represent the five elements such as butter, flowers, etc., are devotionally offered into the sacrificial fire. Symbolically, fire represents the purifying agency of awareness, flowers represent the distracting or flowering preoccupation’s of the mind and ghee represents the mind as it is clarified of its outgoing tendencies which prevent realization of truth.

From the perspective of yajña, we place all that we take ourself to be-body, senses and mind-into the fire of awareness. We then, in the words of Heideger, “wait without waiting” to see what arises out of this process of purification.

Yajña is the process of meditation. This meditation, born out of listening, is a sacrifice wherein attention is constantly offered into the fire of awareness.

Living this attitude of listening, and waiting without expectation, brings a freshness and openness to our life. Our usual patterns of reaction, justification, comparisons, judgments and defense are observed and understood to be what they are: our refusals to be with what is arising in the moment.

To be happy we need to learn how to be with all that life offers in each moment. Otherwise we live in constant contraction and turmoil, wishing that life be other than it is. Living in an attitude of accepting brings deep relaxation and loving compassion towards ourselves and others.

NON-DUAL AWARENESS

When we truly accept ourselves without reference to how we think we ‘should be’ the subtle energies which underlie our grosser nature become apparent. At this point of maturity we spontaneously turn from investigating the outward nature of objective reality to inspecting the subjective identity of the one who has been witnessing all of these happenings. The seer, who we have taken to be ourself, turns and inquires as to the very substance of itself. In this moment the seer and the seen collapse into pure seeing where object and subject are understood to be made of the same substance.

Now there is only witnessing but no witness; seeing, but no seer. This non-conceptual, non-dual understanding, that the seer and the seen are one, releases our underlying disposition of happiness which is our native ground of Being. The realization dawns that we have, in truth, never been separate from or dependent upon anything or anyone. Happiness is what we are, what we have always been, and what we will always be.

THE NATURAL DISPOSITION

With eyes reawakened in non-dual seeing, we now look back upon the objective world and realize that the substance of everything we see-objects, thoughts and sensory impressions-is made of the same substance that we feel ourself to be. The realization dawns that: “What I am, all else is.” And “What all else is, I am.” This realization brings with it “the face of satisfied desire,” the end of the search and the beginning of living free from fear, insecurity and unhappiness.

Living this perspective brings freedom in action. Nothing is perceived separate from anything else. Where there is no other, there is no fear or loss. Truthfulness becomes the only way of speaking and non-hurtfullness the only way of being.

This non-conceptual understanding may give rise to thoughtful descriptions in the mind’s attempt to grasp the nature of the realization which is ungraspable. We realize that the mind tries to name it God, Divine, Consciousness, but the description is never what is described. This orients us to living the understanding rather than intellectualizing it.

LONGING

It is not difficult to know who we are, but it takes total devotion, patience and constant vigilance. When we are really interested in something we project all of our energy into it. When we are in love all of our attention goes to the beloved. If we wish to be happy, to be fearless, to be loving, isn’t it worth our total energy, effort and devotion? This is why I ask the question: “To what are we really devoted?”

The ecstatic fifteenth-century Indian poet Kabir captures the essence of what is required of us to realize the goal of meditation when he exclaims: “When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work. Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.” May we all be slaves to the search for our true Self.

RETREAT TIME

During a retreat we are free from our usual distractions. Outgoing energies are redirected into inward investigations of importance. The disciplines of yoga become yajña fires of purification. Hatha yoga purifies the physical body, pranayama the subtle energy body, and pratyahara and meditation the causal body. Sensations, the breath, thoughts and subtle energies become pointers, which refer us, not outwardly, but back to our homeground as Consciousness-Stillness.

During retreat, we have the freedom to watch our defenses and refusals to be with the ‘what is’ of each moment. We can observe our competitiveness, comparisons, pretenses, anticipation’s, expectations and judgments and place them into the fire of awareness. We can live in the understanding and accepting that what “I am, you are,” and that what “You are, I am.”

LIVING IN THE WORLD

We then bring back to daily life all that we have discovered. Daily living continues the process of retreat to hone and purify our understanding. The realization that all is Consciousness permeates the fabric or our entire life and every situa-tion becomes the opportunity for the ongoing integration of this understanding. Psychological integration and spiritual understanding merge to form the foundation for Self-realization in every moment. Now, living in the world or on retreat become one and the same movement.