Meditation – The Practice of Practising Not Practising 🙂

How do we do that?
Naturally.

Isn’t it the case that, at the end of a practice session, we feel a sense of relief, being at peace? Even if we feel, “Glad that’s over!” – that’s it! It’s that natural. We have stopped practising the practice. This is why Tulku Urgyen said of awareness meditation, “Short moments, many times,” and “No one became enlightened by meditating, only by breaking the meditation.”

The practice is being aware; of being aware of awareness itself. When awareness looks into awareness itself, it finds only awareness. It is empty of any thing, of any modifying contaminations. It is therefore pure awareness. That is what WE ARE! In pure awareness, there is not even a hint of practice to practise. There is nothing to do, but be.

Can we ‘be’, by not meditating? Certainly, but we have to have a tamed mind to be able to sustain emptiness in our daily conduct.

“Short moments many times,” is such a relief. There is no holding our breath to get ‘it’ right. No trying too hard. No beliefs. No high or low state.

There is a bubbling up of thoughts from our karmic pasts, but in awareness, they just pop and disappear. Thoughts still arise, but now there is more space to discriminate, to see what is of value. The ability to discriminate increases intelligence, because wisdom is present. Wisdom is knowingness of our true nature.

We can come out of pure awareness from time to time to see what’s going on, but then we are in analytical meditation. Here, “short moments many times,” is of value again, to avoid being caught up in circling thoughts.

This ‘cutting through’ creates genuine experiences; a little shock, which may be different for everyone. It could be that colours appear brighter, or the realisation that we don’t have to comply with our patterning. We can actually stand in the shoes of the ancients and masters, and experience the magic of akashic presence (the akashic record is previous knowledge which seems to come from ‘somewhere else’; perhaps from having gone through the same processes as the ancients, we came to the same conclusions).

As we become familiar with this process, so confidence increases. Every moment is a teaching.