I invite you to find a comfortable position,
One which allows your body to fully relax and let go.
Allow your shoulders to drop and melt.
Allow your breathing to become fluid and easy.
Finding yourself that meditation isn't about trying to create a particular state,
But a relaxing,
A letting go,
A remembering of the peace that is already here.
Allow awareness to reveal to you now your natural,
Uncontrived state.
Allow yourself to fall into this peace which surpasses all understanding.
Into this ripe field of awareness,
We are going to drop a timeless question of self-inquiry.
What am I?
Am I a thought?
Am I a feeling?
Am I this body?
Just who is this mysterious me that's sensing all of experience?
Just what is this thing we call I?
I invite you to stop here and really look.
What do you find when you don't go to the mind,
Or to our social conditioning,
Or to the ancient sages for an explanation?
When we look in this way,
We may be surprised to find that there's no convincing answer.
Am I my gender?
Am I my age?
Am I my profession?
No answer will truly satisfy.
No mind-created identity comes even close to touching the truth of what we are.
If we're really honest,
We have to admit that we don't know.
We're met with nothing more profound than silence.
Is this what we expected to find?
That oh,
The mind is clever,
And in its infinite cleverness,
It chimes in again.
Surely there's someone here who notices this void?
How can we base an entire life on something that doesn't exist?
We have been indoctrinated since infanthood to believe that we're a separate self.
We looked in the mirror and saw a me,
My toy,
My chair,
My mum.
How can all of that be an illusion?
But when we become curious in this way,
With the same innocence of a child,
We find a great mystery.
A vastness without limit.
What the Sufis call the dazzling dark.
We may spend our entire lives running from this space,
But it's always here,
Beckoning us,
Cajoling us,
Until one day,
We stop and really look.
How can we simultaneously be here and not be here?
Surely we must be the awareness that notices this void,
And yet,
When we identify as awareness itself,
We're caught in an infinite regression.
Who is it that notices this awareness,
And who notices the noticer of the noticer?
As they say in Zen,
It's turtles all the way down.
There's an infinite stream of dependent origination,
But no independent origin point that can be found.
Is your mind confused yet?
The mind isn't really capable of conceptualizing you as something other than a thing,
But clearly we can't find a somebody here.
How does the poor mind reconcile this seeming paradox?
It doesn't,
And that is precisely the power of paradox.
To short circuit the mind's easy conclusions.
What am I is the ultimate Zen koan.
We can repeat it again and again,
Until we've completely exhausted the mind.
Finally,
Like Ramana Maharshi's stick that's used to stir the funeral pyre,
The stick or question itself gets thrown in.
We give up all mind-made definitions,
And finally rest in the truth of what we are.
It's important to recognize that,
In our modern day culture,
We don't even know what it means to stop.
But here,
In this moment,
We can be completely authentic.
So I invite you to stop once more and tell me,
What is this that's looking out from behind your eyes?
Is it a man-awakeness or a woman-awakeness?
Does it have an age?
Does it have an agenda?
And when you don't find a self,
Rest right there.
Don't go to the mind,
Or to the past,
Or to what you've been told your whole life for an answer.
Allow yourself to rest in the mystery of what you are.
Did you know this space was here?
Did you know you were this pure?
May you be well.
May you be at peace.
Namaste.
