The Joy of Thoughtless Awareness

I got up just before sunrise this morning to meditate. It was calm, peaceful and silent. It’s an amazing experience at that time of the morning to really listen to nature coming awake.  Suddenly, in synchronized harmony with the first burst of sunlight, birds begin to sing. Not all at once, but gradually, like a movement in a symphony that begins with a solo instrument and builds to the full orchestra. The birds announce the arrival of light.

As I listened to the birds’ song in the peaceful state of thoughtless awareness that is the fulfillment of meditation, I was vividly aware that the birds and I are inextricably linked with one life. We share this one life through different perspectives and appearances. We are not experiencing different separate lives - but rather one life through different expression.

ONE LIFE - NO FEAR

When this is experienced - there is no fear.
There is no question of evil or sense of insecurity.
It is as if everything is complete right now just as it is.

Last night I went to a Sahaja Meditation meeting in Cincinnati.  As I meditated with those people from diverse races and backgrounds there is the same sense of completeness and sense of unity of life that I experienced with the birds this morning. It is not a communion in the religious sense; where our common practice unites us, but rather the practice reveals what is always the case but hidden from us by our self-centred acquisitive minds.

REALITY IN PRACTICE

Meditation is the purest expression of the full experience of living that I’ve ever known. The beauty of it is that it does not require any system of learned belief - it is a practice that can be tried and proven without having to acknowledge or accept strange or unfamiliar dogmas as a pre-requisite. The practice itself reveals reality - and there is no compulsion to argue about it with others or threaten others with the consequences of non-practice!

For over 30 years I had searched through every religion known to man to try to possess the truth - to try and hold onto what I was told and understood about God and reality. But I did not find it to be true to my experience - the God I intuitively know is different than the God described in “other people’s mail” that is traditional religion.

At the beginning of this year I made a commitment (I hesitate to say “resolution”) to commit to cease struggling with the truths of this and that religion, and to begin the earnest practicing of Meditation, and at the time, in the back of my mind, I was concerned that I’d lose interest or that I’d lose patience because of “lack of results” (as if there is something to be achieved!!).

But, I have found Meditation to be wonderful, fulfilling and surprisingly easy to practice.

It’s been wonderful to realize that by practicing Meditation instead of religion - I’ve gained something more fulfilling than both - LIFE.