The Most Important Thing by Adyashanti

Author:Adyashanti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sounds True

Always Already Meditating

AWARENESS AND QUIET ARE THE MOST INTIMATE AND OBVIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Meditating is the core practice of most esoteric or inner forms of spirituality. Meditation in the way I use it is for waking up—“waking up” meaning the revelation of our true nature of what we are. But meditation can serve many different functions: it can relax you, it is good for your health, and it is especially good for your brain. You would think that we would give more attention to our mental, psychological, emotional, and spiritual hygiene. We have a hygiene for everything else—we brush our teeth, we keep our bodies clean, we keep our clothes clean, we straighten up our houses, and we take care of our cars. We give more attention to many of the inanimate objects in our life than we do to the well-being of our spirit, which makes us feel inspired and buoyant and gives us a direct sense and feel of the sacred and the timeless.

Whether one is spiritual or religious or not, we are all drawn to the sacred—a connection with a mysterious quality that lurks below the surface of our normal conscious attention. It is not that we need to go search for the sacred in the sense that it is hiding somewhere. The sacred is not hidden; it is the ground in which our whole life takes place, this ground of great significance, this feeling of meaning—not necessarily the definition of what that meaning might be, but the feeling of it—and the feeling of something profound and mysterious. This is what meditation, the art of deep inner listening, makes available to us.

When I teach meditation, I stress not only what we are doing but also the assumptions we bring to the simple practice of listening. We can view meditation as a form of spiritual seeking, of looking for something that we think we lack, or of trying to complete ourselves somehow, but meditation begins with the acknowledgment of what is already present, instead of the search for what is not or what we imagine is not present. One of the things I advise people to do when they sit down to meditate is to ask themselves a question: Is it true that the peace, stillness, and quiet I am about to look for are not already present here and now?

In those few seconds after you ask the question, if you are in a state of listening and of letting something other than a thought answer, your body and your consciousness can sense that there is a preexisting state of quiet and peace and that awareness itself is already present. Your mind may not be able to understand awareness, as it may not be able to grasp it, define it, see it, or touch it, but the mere fact that you can (for instance) hear someone’s voice is possible only because of the preexisting state of awareness that is functioning right now. Just asking the question draws attention

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