Available To The Subtle Stirrings Of Spirit

The distinction that I want to share with you is a distinction between spiritual freedom and spiritual illumination.

So the typical instructions for the practice of no problem is simply to sit with your eyes closed and physically still.

And then don't make a problem out of anything that happens.

So when you're sitting,

You may have all kinds of different experiences.

You may feel joy and contentment,

Or you may feel fear or frustration.

You may have illuminating awakening experiences,

Or you may feel bored.

And from the point of view of the practice of no problem,

It's all perfectly irrelevant.

It's just experience,

And the idea of the practice of no problem is to be okay with whatever your experience is,

No matter what it is.

In other words,

You simply are practicing having no preference whatsoever for any particular experience over any other experience.

It's a place of absolute indifference to the quality of your experience.

And this is,

For those of us who find a way to do it,

This is a very profound state of consciousness.

This is a state of detached observation that is often referred to as the witness position.

And when you really are able to let go in this way,

You find yourself in a place where things are arising and falling in consciousness.

Positive experiences,

Even elations and blissful explosions of energy.

And on the other hand,

Maybe fear or discomfort,

Frustration or boredom.

And no matter what it is,

You're simply observing.

It's all coming and going.

And you're not moving.

And you feel very peaceful,

Very at ease.

And you discover that in the core of your being there is an at-easeness that is much more who you are than your normal experience of ups and downs.

And for many people,

Their pursuit of meditation is a pursuit for this kind of equanimity,

This kind of ease of being,

This peaceful calm abidance in life.

And yet my experience tells me that this place of ease of being is really the first step.

In the past I've referred to it as the first surrender of meditation.

And now I'm wanting to refer to it as spiritual freedom.

This degree of freedom from self-concern,

Freedom from worry about what your experience is,

Freedom from all effort to manipulate and control your experience,

To shape it in any particular way.

When you liberate yourself from all of that activity,

You find a place of deep equanimity.

You find this place often referred to as the witness that never moves and has never moved.

And sees everything.

But from a place that is free,

That is inherently free.

I see that as the beginning,

The first step.

Because what happens,

What can happen is that we can take a step beyond that kind of witnessing position.

And the way that we do is by adding a nuance to the instruction of the practice of no problem.

So of course the instructions as given are perfect.

Don't make a problem out of anything.

But one of the nuances is that there's a certain aspect of our experience which is the mind's habitual creation of a problem.

Our minds are problem solving machines,

So to speak.

What they do for us is constantly look out into the world and search for potential problems so that we can avoid them before we encounter them.

And of course this is a very valuable thing.

We're all very lucky to have such sophisticated minds with these deep habits of problem finding and problem solving.

And if we didn't have one,

We would be in a situation where we would constantly be running into problems and not knowing how we got there and not knowing how to solve them.

So we should all consider ourselves very lucky to have this mind.

And yet when we're talking about spiritual liberation or enlightenment or freedom or awakening,

This habit of mind gets in the way.

And this is particularly vivid when we think about the practice of no problem.

Because we can decide that we're going to allow anything that happens in our experience not to be a problem.

And the fact that we do that doesn't necessarily mean that our mind is going to stop seeking for,

Identifying,

And trying to solve problems.

Because that's what it does.

I've often used the analogy of a highway.

If you're driving a car 80 miles an hour down the highway and you finally decide to take your foot off the gas,

The car isn't going to screech to a halt just because you took your foot off the gas.

It's going to more or less keep going at the same speed it was going at and only very gradually slow down.

And the same thing is true of your mind.

You know,

If you've been using your mind nonstop to identify problems and solve problems,

To be constantly engaged in the process of worry and self-concern,

And you decide that you want to break and you take your foot off the gas,

Your mind isn't going to just screech to a halt.

It's going to keep going.

Luckily,

That doesn't have to stop us.

That doesn't have to mean we have a problem.

Just because your mind is going to continue to have a problem doesn't mean that you have one.

And this is when meditation enters into a realm that is mystical,

Magical,

Miraculous.

And I think this is a realm of meditation that often people don't get to.

It's not often even,

Often people don't even know that it's something they can aspire toward.

And the step that I'm talking about is the step where even your mind's habits of making a problem are not a problem.

So not only is everything that arises in your consciousness,

Every feeling,

Every thought,

Every fear,

Every joy,

Not only are you not making those a problem,

But when your mind inevitably starts finding problems,

Identifying problems,

Complaining about this,

Complaining about that,

Saying this isn't working,

Saying that isn't working,

Telling you you're having the wrong experience,

Telling you what the right experience should be,

Telling you how you should pursue the right experience,

When your mind starts doing all that,

Which is what minds do,

If you are able to not make a problem out of that,

You enter into a whole new dimension of meditation practice.

In fact,

At that point,

I would find it difficult to talk about it as meditation practice,

Because at that point,

It really becomes awakening.

Because what you start to awaken to,

You move beyond practicing having no problem into a realization that you don't have one,

That there isn't one,

That things are just the way they are,

And part of the way they are is that your mind is constantly finding problems,

But that's just the way it is,

And really none of it's a problem.

It's all just stuff.

Now,

Of course,

This doesn't mean that we are happy with all of it or that we might not want to change things.

That's all true.

But in the meditation practice itself,

We simply abide in the recognition that none of it is a problem and never has been.

And then something,

Some other dimension starts to open up,

And it's a dimension that I want to talk about as allowing the meditation to happen without you.

And what that means is,

When you sit down,

You are simply going to not make a problem out of anything.

And even if your mind starts to make a problem,

You're not going to make a problem out of that.

So that means there is literally nothing that could happen during the span of your meditation that could possibly be a problem.

Because anything at all that could possibly arise in your experience during meditation,

You've already decided beforehand is not going to be a problem.

You're not going to make a problem out of it.

So since that's the case,

There's literally no reason for you to even be present to observe what's happening in your meditation while it's happening.

You're not going to make a problem out of it anyway.

You're not going to do anything about it.

You're not going to respond to it.

So there's literally no reason to even look at it,

To see what it is.

You know,

When I was on retreat,

I was saying,

If someone ran into the room that you're in and they said,

There's not a problem in that other room,

You wouldn't go running there to look to see what wasn't a problem.

If it's not a problem,

There's no reason to look.

So the same thing's true in your meditation practice.

You've already decided that there's not a problem in your practice.

So therefore,

There's no reason to look into the experience you're having to see if it's not a problem or to see that it's not a problem or to see what kind of not problem it is.

And so I encourage you to let the practice happen without you.

In other words,

You sit in meditation with the intention of having no problem.

You let the meditation begin.

You don't make a problem out of anything that happens.

And once the meditation ends,

You simply conclude that there was nothing wrong and that nothing had been a problem and you walk away and leave it.

You don't need to think about it.

You don't need to go back and review it.

You simply conclude that there was nothing wrong.

And once you are able to do that,

Once you are able to have no problem,

Once you are able to experience the kind of spiritual freedom of no problem,

An interesting question arises.

What happens to you if you don't need to be there to look at the experience you're having to know that it's no problem because you have already determined that it's going to be no problem anyway?

So if you don't need to be there to look at it,

To make that assessment,

What do you do?

Where do you go?

And what happens is that you become available.

This is what I previously called the second surrender of meditation and now I want to call and speak about it as spiritual illumination.

Because when you are available,

When you're no longer embroiled in,

Enmeshed in,

Engaged with your mind's habits of fear,

Worry,

Self-concern and making a problem out of things,

Once you've liberated yourself from that whole mechanism,

You're available.

And what you're available for are the more subtle stirrings of the soul,

The illuminations of the spirit that inevitably begin to emerge in your experience,

Once you're not busy with all of the normal worry and fear and self-concern.

That's when cascades of insight and revelation and realization start to flood into your experience.

Because you're available,

You're no longer embroiled in and enmeshed with your common experience of yourself,

What I sometimes like to refer to as the current paradigm of being,

Once you cease engaging with the current paradigm of being in which you are an individual with problems to solve,

And you let go of that whole mechanism,

You become available to begin to be carried into a new paradigm,

To begin to have your experience of reality reconfigured by more subtle perceptions,

More subtle energies,

That maybe have always been there,

But you were too preoccupied with something else to notice.

In a moment,

I'm going to start a meditation practice,

And from the time that I start it until the time that it ends,

We will simply be in silence.

And no matter what arises in your experience,

Don't make a problem out of it.

And when your mind inevitably starts making problems,

Don't make a problem out of those either.

And if you find it in yourself to do this,

Allow your meditation to happen without you.

See if you can find it in your heart to allow yourself to be that free,

And then,

From that place of deep spiritual freedom,

Deep abandon and let go,

See what illuminations of spirit arise in your consciousness.

And so with that,

Please find a comfortable place to sit.

And when I say the meditation has begun,

Simply sit still.

Don't make a problem out of anything that arises in your consciousness,

Including the inevitable arising of all of your mind's habits of making problems.

And if you can,

Allow your meditation to happen without you and see what happens.

And so with that,

Let's begin the meditation.

And now,

Please find your place of being.

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Thank you very much for that meditation.

Thank you.