Meditation

It’s funny how, depending on where you are sitting, a positive can become a negative. In and as kids we cherish curiosity. It is the sharpest tool for learning. And it is always ‘looking around’. (That is not so much ‘drifting’ as it is ‘sensual appetite’. But we learn that it is useful to ‘say no’ to certain leadings, while we enthusiastically say yes to others. Learning disciplines is done through becoming a disciple to those who have worked out methods; literally teaching our bodies to sit still as we focus on using new tools. Human endeavor expands geometrically when we ‘spend’ our lives working ‘in concert’ with other people. But our lives can become cramped and fearful because, as the man says, we are too intent on one part of the sky. Or we can’t stop seeking new disciplines and stop and know what we have found.

     It is enlightening that meditation (and a medical job) is called a ‘practice’. One ‘seeks’ enlightenment even after having found it. Back to curiosity again. But most of your life is spent in ‘de-scribing’, making ‘things’ ‘de-finite’. It’s scary for experience to be wordless, senseless, and limitless. 

     How does meditation help, other than giving you a ‘recess’ from the obligations of your curiosity? It takes you beyond the words that limit your consciousness *and* the instincts that say, “I must *act* to be safe and in control. If you have given yourself permission to stop time for a little while, you have the new experience of being a being who exists outside time and can see what is happening without having to own it. 

     Curiously, most of us want the truth and reward of enlightenment. But the best way to seek enlightenment is to let go of any truth or reward. “Daddy, why is the sky blue?” “It isn’t. Look again.”