I'm going to make a few introductory comments having to do with meditation.
Not how to meditate,
But what is it and the purpose of it for those who want to practice something that deepens their relationship with the Divine.
So what we're going to do is I'll speak for probably 15-20 minutes.
Then I'll zip the lip.
And we'll meditate together.
When we're done,
When the time is allotted and finished,
We will go about our business.
But before I dismiss everyone,
You'll hear me say,
When you're ready,
Open your eyes.
Something we practice here.
And then we sit with our eyes open and remain as attentive and observant of ourselves as we can.
With our eyes seeing all that they take in and the usual flood of associations that starts the minute that our eyes are open.
One of the reasons that people close their eyes is like the turtle,
They pull in all the senses and when you do,
You have a relatively decent chance of not being carried away by some association.
We don't want to live like a turtle.
We want to be able to look around us at all times and take in absolutely everything that comes in,
Every character that crosses the stage of our consciousness and use their presence,
The appearance of those thoughts and feelings.
Not to drag us off into further sleep,
But to keep us awake.
So let's have a nice deep breath and see where we go.
Imagine for a minute that you are someone who has a more or less newly found love.
And I put it this way because I don't want to start with male-female characters.
I want to start with you and I as a character who has found someone that we are drawn to.
And we know that they are drawn to us to some extent because the time that we spend with them is enriching.
They help us discover things much like we talked about.
Now at some point it's natural you want to deepen the relationship and it feels like that's going on and there's even a discussion between you and your partner to do so.
And your partner seems to be all on board with that.
Yeah,
That's,
Yes,
Let's spend a little more time together.
And then one evening you have plans,
Part of the,
Sort of the ritual that takes place when you go from seeing each other once a week to twice a week and then maybe two and a half times a week because you tread carefully.
And sure,
And then just before the time comes for your partner to come pick you up or you go there,
There's a call and listen,
Sorry,
Love,
I have to work late tonight and I wish it weren't so but what can I do?
We have to plan carefully.
We have to make sure everything is proper.
Okay I understand because you have no reason to suspect anything.
So you on the other hand now having no plans make plans to go out with your friends and your plans to go out with friends is to go see a film.
And as you're walking from the little cafe where you're going to go to the film,
You walk by a sports bar and you look inside the sports bar and there's your partner whooping it up with his or her pals.
Now what do you think in a moment like that?
Is that his work?
Is that where she is?
Is that what she does for a living?
Throw back a few cocktails and make sports bets?
So the next day when your partner calls you and says,
Gee I missed you,
You're torn.
You may or may not say something but you know that there's something that's not quite right.
And when your partner says,
Look I want to take our relationship to the next level,
You may not say it but inwardly and eventually you would say it,
Look when you're more interested in being with me than you are with being with your friends,
Then we'll have something to talk about.
Because until then you're all lip service.
Now you can understand that can't you?
Now we're going to put ourselves not in the place of the hero who says call me when you're ready,
We're going to put ourselves in the place of the person who isn't ready because that's more like us.
Because we say we want to deepen our relationship with the Divine.
But most of the time our attention isn't on the Divine at all.
We're with our friends.
Now the thing is it's so hard to understand and I tell you,
I promise you that within you and if I have time in this short meditation talk I'll explain,
I'll put a little light on it.
It isn't that we mean as men and women to forget,
Any more than it was what that man meant to put something before a love that he had.
But that we live without understanding it and I don't care how much you say you do,
I'll tell you when you know that you live in shadow world,
When you can see it all the time.
That's when you'll know that you have lived in a level of consciousness that you took to be your own that wasn't,
That was just a phase,
Just one of the acts,
One of the levels.
It isn't that we want to forget,
It's that we don't mean to remember and there's a very distinct difference in that because it's some stage in your development you will start to understand without having to think about it.
It isn't that I want to hang out with my amour,
It isn't that I want to know something deeper of a relationship with the divine because that doesn't do me any good because that appears when something inside of me says,
Gee this didn't go good or you really need to be more spiritual you need to add tack five minutes onto your meditation time,
You need to try to put a little quiet time at night as well as in the morning.
All of that is preemptory,
It sets the stage inwardly for a person beginning to recognize I don't want to know about the divine,
I need to have a relationship with something that is with me 24-7.
What good is it to want something that goes before you to make the crooked places straight if the only time you want to be with it is when the road gets crooked.
What we need to understand is that that world of thought in that shadow world,
The crookedness is built into the path that's provided for you by the thought that says this is what you need to do and be,
It's already in it.
Now I don't want to put words in your mouth,
I don't want to be anyone or anything that you imitate,
I just want to see whether or not you know this is true.
Time for meditation.
I want to and I don't want to.
I got to get up,
That's a problem to start with.
I got to go someplace or if I'm home,
The heat's not quite right yet.
So on one hand I am drawn,
I have in me something that is drawn to,
Remember we talked about a heliotropic flower?
Power doesn't think to itself,
I should turn my face to the sun.
By its nature it's drawn to the light that gives it life.
You have in you something that is drawn to the light that gives you life,
But you also have something that is drawn to your old friends,
That is drawn to the familiar thoughts and feelings,
The summary response to a resistance that tries to find a happy medium between what you want and what you don't want,
So that you're actually in the very process of explaining to yourself why you are the way you are,
Drawn deeper into a group of friends that say they want to deepen their relationship with the divine,
But all they're really deepening their relationship with is that body of thoughts that has you captive at that level.
And at some point it is inevitable that an aspirant,
A man or a woman who feels drawn to something that they can't understand,
And I know that some of you think you do understand your relationship with God,
You can't understand,
You cannot understand what God asks of you.
It comes to you from a level of consciousness that you barely are receptive to its light,
So that mostly we become drawn to the image that we have,
The commensurate feelings that over time built into our experience of remembering and feeling those things,
So that our love of God for the most part is remembering God and then feeling what comes when we remember it as opposed to God giving us the feeling so we know what it means to be grateful for the appearance of something in ourselves that we didn't give ourselves.
And at some point in our life you will see that in you something the old work would have called magnetic sinner if it weren't for something that the divine placed in your soul.
You would never even think to yourself of the light that gives life.
You would walk around holding your fist up as Mr.
Howard used to say and calling it a torch.
So the task is to start discovering it.
It is enough to me to develop my relationship with the divine.
I can't develop my relationship with the divine,
But I can see what's interfering with it.
I can understand I need to mean to be attentive.
I need to mean to want to be awake,
Not I need to be awake after I've fallen in a pit.
That's better than not being awake,
But that's not the same as an individual starting to understand that within them there is something that is effortlessly drawn to the divine as much as the flower is drawn to the sun.
Now how do we get to the point where we understand that and what has that got to do with meditation?
Imagine for a moment that you move into a new neighborhood and you love flowers.
I doubt that.
Don't doubt anyone here doesn't have a love for God.
You couldn't be here.
And you have a rose garden,
Meaning a metaphor for that which you have taken the time and energy to ensure that to some extent your life is dotted as it's dotted with something that has a fragrance to it that you didn't create,
A beauty that you didn't produce yet that you have helped instrument into this world.
And you look over in your neighbor's yard and you see her garden,
His garden is resplendent with roses.
In fact,
You can even smell the roses from that person's yard.
Now before you get into thinking about there is someone else who grows roses better than you do,
I'm not talking about your physical neighbor,
I'm talking about the neighbor in here.
The part of you that starts you on the path to wanting to have that relationship with something that brings beauty and fragrance meaning into your life that you can't bring into your life yourself.
You cannot bring in beauty into your life by yourself.
You can bring in the memory of beauty.
You can bring in the thought of it.
You can cultivate your gardens till the cows come home and you'll walk through it and as a rule you'll rarely see what's there because you're more interested in being someone who owns a garden than someone who knows what it means to grow something yourself.
So our friend goes to the neighbor and says,
I don't understand if you don't mind.
Why?
Why are you?
We have the same soil.
I go to the same store.
I followed you and bought the same fertilizer.
We have the same gardener even though we both go out there.
What's the difference between the roses that you have and the roses that I have?
And this is assuming someone could get far enough along to actually ask that question.
Most of us would think about firebombing our neighbors roses.
Don't say you wouldn't.
What do you think jealousy is?
Jealousy is the feeling that someone has what you're supposed to have but you don't because they got a break you didn't.
So supposing you can get that far which is sort of a private conversation with God.
Why are there roses?
I know I can sense them.
I can smell them.
I feel them but I can't grow roses like those.
Why?
And the neighbor says,
Well,
I don't know.
You know,
I'm not sure what to tell you.
But I can tell you what it is that I do.
Can't tell you what you should do.
What do you do?
Every day as often as time permits me,
I go out into the garden.
And when I take the time from my life from my friends to go into the garden,
I can't help but see what's growing there.
That includes sometimes there's bugs.
I don't like bugs.
Do you like bugs?
She said,
No,
I don't like bugs.
Well,
The bugs got to go.
Not somebody else picks them off.
What good is to have somebody who gets them off once every three days?
But she said,
Mostly I just love roses.
And I think they know that I do.
I actually think they know that I love them.
Because it seems to me,
And I have no way of proving this,
She said that they're more beautiful when I leave than when I first appear.
You see,
What you're drawn to is drawn to you.
And at the level of shadows,
When you're drawn to those friends that want nothing to do with attending to something that requires you part ways with those parts of yourself,
That's what you're drawn to.
And they are drawn to you.
And you will spend your time in happy hour,
Which always turns out to be not happy hour.
So how do I deepen my relationship with the divine?
What does it mean to be a meditative human being?
It means to understand I need to mean to develop this relationship.
Of myself,
I can't do it.
But I can hold the wish.
I can have the remembrance.
And please listen,
Because this is challenging.
In the midst of being surrounded by shadows,
I can remember the light.
Not remember what the shadows are saying,
Not go with what my friends are telling me is important,
That will free me finally when I get to wherever it is that my friends are telling me I'll get to,
Or when I finally escape the conditions that those shadows are promising will bring me into some place full of light.
All of that has to be seen for what it is.
And seeing that as it is,
Is part of what meditation is.
So that I can meditate everywhere I am,
All the time,
24-7.
Apart from those times when I have to use my mind for practical thought,
That's necessary.
But apart from practical thought,
Doing the things that I'm asked to do to continue my specific role as a householder in this world,
Even when I'm amidst the thorns,
I want to remember the roses,
In the midst of the anxiety,
In the midst of the doubt,
In the midst of the anger,
In the midst of the resentment,
In the midst of judging myself for having missed the mark again.
Right in the middle of that.
To remember that there's something for me to love that actually wants me to love it,
So that in the love and attention I give to it,
What draws me to it is strengthened.
This is why it's said the aspirant of himself or herself can't do a thing.
You can't.
You think you can't.
People meditate and medicate and do all the things they do in attempt to somehow prove that they are a devoted lover of God.
The fortunate man or woman is the one who discovers that they have something in them that is devoted to God,
But they didn't put it in themselves.
They just give their attention to it,
Even in moments where they want to be devoted to other friends,
And they start to have that struggle of that fact.
Look,
I don't mean to forget.
I don't mean to go to sleep.
It's just that I have never understood that I need to mean something more than that in my life.
And the only time I finally get there is when I actually see that the one that I love in this world,
Myself,
My thoughts,
My feelings,
Does not love me the way it pretends to.
Then a natural separation between the wheat and the chaff takes place.
A beautiful parting of the ways that's not simple.
We have this romantic idea of what it means to be a spiritual person.
Truth is a full contact sport.
When you understand that,
Then you will be more and more willing to take your place in that moment where you are feeling like,
This is what I need to do,
Or I'm anxious,
Or I'm worried,
And understand,
Ah,
Now's the time to meditate.
And I don't mean find some place to sit.
I mean take your place in the third act.
Right in the middle of that moment to enter into that struggle between something that means to have your life and something that wants you to give your life to it.
You understand the difference in that,
And you practice the presence of understanding that.
You'll be meditating 24-7.
Let's meditate.
Remember the point isn't to get somewhere.
The task is to see something.
