Bonding With Yourself

The most important of all our relationships is the relationship with yourself. It is the reference point for all others. Yet we remain alienated from ourselves, from our soul. In this meditation we begin to reconnect to that from which we can never really be disconnected, except in our beliefs.

Transcript

In all self-inquiry meditation, The goal is, There's not a specific goal, There's not something you're trying to acquire, It's always an attempt to discover. The end result is not, I'm going to get something, Meditation, There's all sorts of kinds of meditation, Relaxation, Manifestation, And the like, But this is not that. It's about discovery. Who are you really? Close your eyes, Relax your body, And you'll notice as you close your eyes, The tension very naturally turns inward. It turns towards feeling. Normally our minds are quite dominated by the visual experience. About 80% of what we are normally engaged with is visual. So when you cut that off, It's very natural for the attention to want to go somewhere. This is a very powerful and authoritative place to be because you can now step into your authority and determine where it's all that that extra 80% is now going to go. The easiest, The simplest place to bring it, And the most powerful is simply into the feeling of your body. Just feel. It's very simple, Very direct. Notice you don't have to create the sensations that make up your body. You don't have to generate them. You don't have to do anything special to experience them. Take in for a moment how utterly effortless it is to simply be aware of your sensations. Now this can in fact feel a little uncomfortable simply because we've all been educated into making effort, Striving, Struggling, Accomplishing, Acquiring, But this you don't have to accomplish. You don't have to acquire. It just happens all by itself. This is innate, Natural. So this capacity to simply experience all the sensations without effort is a facet of your true being. It's not as you're not doing anything. You're just being. So this is part of your true being. It's effortless. Now you'll notice that when you are keeping your attention on the sensations, That there will be a tendency of the mind to want to comment on them, Categorize, Name, Sometimes even judge. I have preferences. I don't like that. I do like that. I want more of that. I want less of that. Don't try to do anything with those thoughts. Just notice them, But don't engage with them. Think of thoughts as being like a radio playing in another room that you don't really have any interest in. Exercises that authority to keep attention focused simply on feeling. Such a powerful authority that we have that we can actually master your own attention and direct where it goes. So now this whole inner world that you are experiencing effortlessly, Emotions can be there, Thoughts can be there. Different sensations are constantly flowing, But the mechanism of experiencing them, Of being aware of them happens absolutely naturally. There's nothing you have to do. And since you don't have to do anything, This is inherently you. Now this is different than most people think simply because our minds want to have a image of ourselves, To have a concept of me. So if I know who I am, It means I get to hold a thought about me. But notice that a thought about me is always secondary. I have to be there first before the thought can form. Like I have to be there first before someone can take a picture. And the picture is a likeness of me, But it isn't me. So prior to the thought, There's you, Just as you are. That would mean that prior to all the emotional patterns, Prior to all the conditioning, Prior to all the programming, All the thought patterns and beliefs and assumptions that got instilled in you from early childhood on through your entire life, Are all secondary. They all came later. They all influenced you. They determined the kind of experience you would have. But notice that experiencing itself, That ability to be aware of it all, Has always been there, Always the same. And any thought you have about yourself has to be secondary and can never be complete. Like one picture of you could not tell your whole life. One thought of you couldn't possibly capture all of you. So see if for a moment you can just let go of trying to define yourself as anything. For just a moment, Let go of all your ambitions, Your aspirations, What you'd like to experience in your life, What you'd like the world to be like. Just set that all aside for a moment. Instead just be present with that awareness of all of those aspirations. Nothing wrong with them. We can pick them up later. But for right now, We're not interested in what you'd like to experience. We're interested in you, The one who would like to experience. And you may find this a little bit shaky, A little bit even disorienting because the mind is so used to defining you as some thing, Defining you by your beliefs, Your aspirations, Your desires, All the things you want to experience. All well and good, But they don't define you. They can only express you. Remember, We're here to discover who you are before there are any thoughts about you. And it's that one we want to bond to. In fact, You don't even need to bond to it because there's not two of you. You don't need to bond something that is one. You don't need to bond something to itself. It is itself. But we do need to discover this self and to, In a sense, Bond with ourselves, Not as simply a thought or an image in our minds, But as that which is there before any thought, For any thought at all. So as you let go of all of that, The past, The future, The present, All of it, Present, All of it, Just notice that you are still here. And don't even try to imagine what that is. You don't need imagination, Do you? You don't need to imagine what you are. Just be what you are. Then you'll notice that all the conditioned patterns and thoughts and assumptions and experiences you've had all your life have been formed by our very first relationships with our parents and then later on with society as a whole and friends and the media and all of that. So that experience has been good or bad, Pleasant or unpleasant, Simply depending upon how that particular, Your particular conditioning and experience, The world in which you lived, How that formed. But notice that no matter what shape it took, Whether good or bad, It did have a profound effect on what you were experiencing, But it didn't touch you at all. You, That which is aware of the experience, Remained the same. It's like the sky, Clouds pass by, Gentle breezes pass by, A tornado can go by, A hurricane can go through the sky, And after it passes, The sky is absolutely untouched. Not even a trace is left. You are that sky. Now let yourself simply sink into that, That original innocence, That original purity, That sky-like nature that was never touched or influenced by what was experienced. The experience never bonded to you. Just like if you were to look at very polluted water under a microscope that was so powerful, You could actually see the individual molecules of the water and the pollution. When you zoomed in far enough, You would see they never touched, They never bonded. For a while, They seemed to occupy the same space, But the pollution moved on, The pure water remained. You are that pure water. So to bond with yourself means to let yourself, Let the sense of I, That self-image, Dissolve into this pure, Natural, Sensitive, Alert awareness of it all. Because after all, Looking at all the experiences you're having, Aren't you, Whatever you might be, The one having that experience? Can't you notice that your experiences have come and gone, Changed dramatically? Interest, Desires, Loves, Hates, All of it. Not the same now as it was when you were five or ten or twenty, However long you go on. And yet you have always been there, This remarkable, Changeless thread. Now what if every time the thought I came to you, And that thought I arises tens of thousands of times during the day, What if that thought started referring back to this changeless awareness? And not an I that refers to some picture in the mind, Some idea, Some belief, Some sense of you, That it always referred back to this place that was untouched by that. So the I am became the sky, Not the clouds, Watching the clouds, But not identified with the clouds. You would then be bonded to yourself, And you discover that everything you've ever wanted, Desired, Aspired to, You already are. You just believed that you were separated from it. This is the truth of all the sages of all times. So take a deep breath, Move your body a little bit, And as you open your eyes, Notice that you're not leaving this place, You're not leaving this place that everything reports to, This place that is aware of all experience. Opening your eyes, You're simply letting in a different experience. But you, The ultimate witness of it all, Remains the same. Go ahead and open your eyes. You're not leaving this place that is aware of all experience.