I just practice every day. I notice the breath passing in and out of my heart. One important point of that simple meditation is not to hold onto it going in either direction, in fact, to grasp at or hold to anything misses the point entirely.
And I return to self-inquiry. It’s easy to pick anything and ask myself who is feeling this, and from whence does that sense of an “I” come. Inevitably the attachments weaken, sometimes ceasing entirely – as often does my sense of an individual ego.
And I can return again and again to the principles. Letting go of whatever I find myself clinging to. Observation. Acceptance. Staying grounded. Noticing what choices I’m connected to.
Much of the time, I notice an incredible flexibility growing and growing within..
Yet there is a deadness that shows up for me lately in this. I have been wrestling with it this whole month, maybe a little longer. Perhaps it is like when we are doing Standing Meditation in Kung Fu practice and we rigidify something, even a good structure, even a pattern of relaxation and a good way of balancing, and makes that one way into a crystalized absolute, as if it were encompassing enough to need to make a doctrine of it. Indeed, even a feeling can become a method. Then one often finds oneself standing like a dead post.
Ultimately I feel the truth of having no defined self. And many times, I sense a lot of connection with everything. In the worst of times, I feel a good deal of rightness in the world these days. In the best of times it’s like being immersed in such a dense fluid of life, everything flowing together and communicating in love and bliss.
However, I think the awareness of emptiness within should ultimately allow whatever is most appropriate for the moment, guided by intuition, to spontaneously arise. But for now my “dead post” way of approaching this is preventing such spontaneity. Absence of self-definition leads to freedom, because life is real – as Devi says, everything we touch is real, only our concepts of it are false. Maybe I am only requiring time to grow accustomed to it all.
I continue to cultivate, aware of the truths underlying my practice. I have a lot of joy and ease in my life. But from my own perspective it is hard to see what I am missing just now. So I continue meditating, hoping I’ll hit a tipping point within myself eventually. And continually watching for the solution to the constant tendency to calcify truth into some kind of concept.
To answer my own question as best I can: The obvious answer is in choice and intention. There is a need for vigilance against rigidity, but more than that — a need for a jumping into the ever changing sea of reality, a deeper kind of letting go — as there is nothing I can see that bears holding onto. And of course, I’m aware of my fear. I don’t mind fear. Still, I have only a dim idea of a way to hold such a vigilance, or to stay so keenly willing to flow with the tides of the moment.
A Journey Towards Freedom 