Meditation is just sitting in stillness and allowing happiness to tumble in.
Actually it isn't.
It feels like that but it's not quite right.
I wrote that quote years ago for an Instagram post.
I wrote it because that's how it felt.
I sat in meditation,
Opened up and in poured all of this joy.
But if I'd really thought about the quote at the time,
I would have realised something deeper was happening.
It wasn't happiness pouring in,
It was pain leaving.
The dross of this lifetime was being burned up,
Revealing the pure gold of absolute joy that lives at the heart of all of us.
We don't know the weight we carry because we get used to it.
Every day we add a few more grams of suffering into our emotional backpack.
Before long we are bursting at the seams.
Believe me when I say this,
We are all carrying a pain that we don't know is there or understand.
Human life is incredibly difficult,
Especially on the heart.
All the sorrow we witness,
The news,
Do you think that just evaporates?
No,
It doesn't.
It seeps deep into our bone marrow.
It turns healthy,
Life-affirming cells into something heavy,
Lifeless and toxic.
This weight becomes unbearable,
So we get good at turning away while it sits in the corner and festers.
That festering becomes an ache we can feel but cannot name.
So we carry on,
Heavy hearted,
Dancing on the surface of a smile,
It is really just a crack in concealed darkness.
Raging at the world for how it doesn't remove the pain,
It intensifies it.
Greed,
Hatred and delusion are the fabric of an unchecked mind.
It has always been this way,
Our interference only deepens the illusion.
What we try to force out of existence,
We force inside of ourselves,
We actually give more power to it.
That's not to say we shouldn't rebel,
But let it be a kind of rebellion that works for all.
Heal your own heart first,
Otherwise you'll only cause more harm as you try to help others.
Saying that makes me feel like a hypocrite,
I have so far to go and yet here I am,
Trying to teach so many,
Still it's true.
We do not know the weight we bear,
We do not,
So sit,
We need to obey the commands we give our dogs,
Sit,
Stay,
Heal,
When we sit we release pain.
And when even a little part of that pain falls away,
We feel joy.
Not ordinary joy,
Tremendous joy.
I've been through a rough time recently,
It threw my practice completely off track.
I found myself turning to the world for comfort,
Chasing pleasure in all its usual forms.
It didn't work,
Not how it used to.
I'll just sit in the sunshine,
I thought,
Listen to some music,
Relax,
I'll go to the beach,
None of it helped.
I found myself wondering why my friends seemed so content with that,
Why couldn't I be happy with a beer,
With sunshine and music.
What is wrong with me?
Of course,
There is nothing wrong with me,
I've just travelled to heavenly places within myself that are beyond worldly pleasures.
Once you've known real peace,
Real joy and the overwhelming beauty of true stillness,
How could anything on the surface ever compare?
My practice is back now and with it joy,
Not the pleasure I've used to cover pain,
But something real that rises from within.
That joy is available to you as well.
All our pain and problems are just sitting there like stagnant bath water,
Waiting for us to reach in and pull the plug.
Our problems are not solved in meditation,
They are dissolved.
May the tremendous joy that lives in you be uncovered.
May your heart become a flame that lights your world and helps others find their way.
May all the goodness at the heart of reality lift you into healing,
A healing so complete that anyone who meets you knows that light lives beneath all darkness.
I have now well over a hundred guided meditation recordings on here,
So please give one a try.
It's time to let the pain fall away and the joy tumble in.
Tomorrow we'll talk about the weight of the ego and how it burdens us.
