Welcome to this meditation where we're going to step through the portal of not knowing,
A portal into presence.
So,
This state of mind,
Of not knowing,
Really does open up an openness that is a kind of presence.
Our senses are opened when we are connected to this sense of not knowing.
And to go through this portal,
I invite you to listen very carefully to the truths I will be saying.
I will be making some statements in this meditation and I want you to listen through the words to what they're saying,
To see the reality of the statements.
So to not have a mental echo of it,
But to let it to realize the truth,
To feel the truth,
To be in that.
And some of these statements might actually trigger a resistance in you.
In that case,
I suggest that you formulate it into a question for yourself and see what that brings you.
So settle into your meditation posture.
If you want to,
You can take a pleasant deep inhalation through your nose and then release with an exhalation,
Relax your face,
Relax your shoulders,
Really land in the presence of your body because I want the words to touch your body.
So now I'm going to be slowly,
One by one,
Pick at the things we think we know and I'm going to point to the not knowing.
So now come the statements.
You do not know your past.
What you know is only memories and those are in the present.
Your memories are not the past.
There's no such thing.
You do not know the past.
You do not know the future.
We only have ideas,
Hopes and fears.
But any images you have about the future are only that,
Images.
The future is utterly unknowable.
Anything that you have read in your life,
You do not know the things you read.
What happened was,
You interacted with symbols on a screen or on paper and then your mind created images and connected these images to memories.
All of these are not reality.
Whatever you have read,
Even scientific publications,
You do not know what you read.
You only know the imagination that was created by interacting with symbols while reading.
And to repeat,
If any of these trigger resistance,
Then reformulate them into a question and see what that brings you.
You do not know 99% of what is going on inside your body right now.
It just does it completely by itself,
Whatever it's doing,
And you have no idea what your body is doing right now.
Nor do you know what is happening in your subconscious mind.
And even though you might have a lot of ideas,
You have no knowledge about what's going on outside the room that you're sitting in or the environment that is covered by your senses right now.
Anything,
Anything could be going on outside your senses reach.
And lastly,
To paraphrase Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,
You cannot know who you are.
You can only be what you are.
Meister Eckhart said,
The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me.
And as the eye cannot see itself,
Our eyes cannot see themselves.
So too,
Can you not know?
You cannot know.
You don't know who or even what you truly are.
And now I invite you to go back through the not knowings I shared and pick one to sit with for another minute.
So I was speaking about the past,
You cannot know,
The future,
What we have read,
What is going on inside our body,
What is going on in our subconscious mind,
What is going on outside of the room or the reach of your senses,
Wherever you are right now.
And you do not know who you are or what you are for that matter.
So which one resonated most for you?
Check with your body and then allow this not knowing,
This awareness,
This realization to really take you into openness,
Into presence for about one more minute until the bell goes.
And when the bell goes,
Don't think,
Ah,
That's a bell.
Don't label the sound,
But as a last practice,
Without actually being able to know what anything is,
Just allow the sound to be sounding.
Thank you.
