Subtle Things

Subtle things: 

the mistake is in believing that meditation leads anywhere at all, or that it will deliver us to a more awakened state than where we find ourselves right now. Meditation is simply relaxing into the atmosphere of this exact and only moment, and it's here that reality is revealed - we see that there's nowhere else we could possibly be. This revelation can be so surprisingly subtle that it's lost on us at first, we're looking for something more earth shattering, lights flashing, and an altered state of consciousness. But it's the subtle things that often matter most, like a slight paradigm shift that finds us in a completely different world - even as everything looks completely the same as it did before. 

yet how we view the world that's changed. 

that's how it is with the mantra, gently thinking it, allowing thoughts their complete freedom to come and go without offering any interference. Our only role is to think the mantra, always returning to it, but not in a crowded sense of drowning out other thoughts, we're not censoring ourselves in anyway. What happens is that we slip between our thoughts into an ever present silence, always without notice until we find that we've emerged and the mind begins to churn again. It's one of those subtle things, perhaps subtlest of all in its easy shift of our attention. 

and it's nothing that we've accomplished. 

we weren't led anywhere, no lights flashed for our grand awakening.

but everything is different.

a very subtle thing indeed. 

~

Peace, Eric