Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there. - Rumi

Few poets say as much, in as few words, as Rumi. In this one line he captures a lifetime of profound spiritual teaching.  

Close your eyes, and keep turning your attention away from the many objects of the world, mind and body, back on itself with patient affection.  

Keep it there, and resist (by ignoring not fighting) the mind`s persistent, conditioned tendencies to distract you through thoughts of boredom, a need to do, a sense of lack, or a deep drive to change or improve on the present moment.  If you don’t feed any distractions, with attention or belief, you will experience a subtle upwelling of contentment.  

This contentment when experienced via thought appears as understanding. When it is known through the senses, it takes the shape of beauty. And when experienced through feelings, it is felt as love. Really, it’s all just different facets of the one live, knowing, love.   

If you hold on to that felt experience of love/contentment when you re-engage the world, by letting your attention again flow outward, you will not completely lose yourself to the powerful objects of thought and sight.   

This allows you see life through the lens of love, and look at life through Rumi’s eyes.  

Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.

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Do Not Meditate, Be!

The 20^th century Indian sage Sri Ramana Maharshi was a great spiritual teacher and a man of few words. He taught vichara or Self-inquiry as the most direct path to realizing the truth of one’s nature.  The Marharshi instructed:

Do not meditate – be!
Do not think that you are – be!

Don’t think about being – you are!

Let’s explore this teaching by first looking at who the intended audience was. Ramana was sought out by sincere seekers. Those that through frustration, exhaustion, intuition or Grace had come to the conclusion that lasting peace and happiness was not to be found in any combination of status, riches, relationships or objects of the world.  These seekers had turned their attention around and begun the inner journey. And many had explored a wide variety of teachers, philosophies, religions and practices.

So when Ramana said, “Do not meditate – Be!”, he was not judging meditation as being useless. Meditation and many other practices such as asanas, chanting, praying, acts of service, contemplation and gratitude journaling can and do help millions to temporarily calm their minds and experience more peace, love and presence.  Rather Ramana was cautioning his more advanced students not to allow a practice to become a religion. Not to let the thoughts that keep alive the most subtle mental sense of self to take charge of any process of becoming better or enlightened. In other words do not get addicted to any ego-led practice, where one could become more masterful, holy, spiritual or otherwise worthy. Such activity would simply strengthen that which you seek to be free from.

This directive is echoed in the second line, “Do not think that you are – be!”  The thoughts that comprise our mind can never figure out, experience, or “know” the Self.  The Self is the only one that ever “knows” anything. The mind can only work with objects, and as the Self has no dimensions or physical properties, its discovery lies beyond the capability of mind. In fact, it is often said that the only way the mind can know the Self, is the same way a moth can know the flame - by dying into it.

The last line in our quote admonishes students to forget about leaving the mind in charge of “being” for the same reasons mentioned above.  It is only when you take your attention off the thoughts, perceptions and sensations that comprise our mental experience of the world, and what we believe ourselves to be, that we can we put it on the very experience of being.

What we seek is not far away. You cannot take one step in any direction and be closer to it than you are at this moment.  As the Marharsi says, just be.

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The Value Of Contemplation

For those seriously seeking to cultivate more mindfulness, peace, or presence in their life, I have always found great wisdom from contemplatives of all traditions. Recently, while leafing through an old edition by Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, I stumbled onto this quote.

“Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest. That activity, which is contemplation, is immanent and it transcends the level of sense and of discourse. Man’s guilty sense of his incapacity for this one deep activity, which is the reason for his existence, is precisely what drives him to seek oblivion in exterior motion and desire. Incapable of the divine activity which alone can satisfy his soul, fallen man flings himself upon exterior things, not so much for their own sake as for the sake of the agitation which keeps his spirit pleasantly numb. He has but to remain busy with trifles; his preoccupation will serve as a dope. It will not deaden all the pain of thinking; but it will at least do something to blur his sense of who he is and of his utter insufficiency. 

Pascal sums up his observations with the remark: “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries and yet it is, itself, the greatest of our miseries.” ”

Merton points us to the paradox that while we strive so hard to secure peace, happiness, and success “out there” in some activity or accomplishment, it can only truly be found in the reflective inactivity we try to avoid at all cost.

Any contemplation slows down the mind and nourishes the soul. It is all good.

However, contemplation of Self is the highest of practices.  When you seek to know that which knows, you might avail yourself to the greatest of discoveries.

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The Tyranny Of Doing

Have you ever tried to take a little time out from one of your typical busy days, and sit quietly, doing nothing?

I am not talking about when you collapse on the sofa at the end of the day exhausted. Nor when you stop working on one particular job only to shift your attention to the next thing that needs to be done, or even to your favorite hobby. Rather, I am asking you if you have ever paid attention to the internal dialogue that happens, when you simply attempt to refrain from doing anything. 

I attempt this regularly and am always amazed at how much conditioning I have to move on to the next task, accomplish something else, or generally keep moving and productive. My mind is quite unsettled at the prospect of doing nothing, and puts up a very good fight.  There is no end of ideas that come to mind regarding what I might do next, what I might want more of, what I might not want to happen later, etc.  And if I manage to ignore all those thoughts auditioning for attention, there can come some judgement thoughts about being lazy, or even some anxiety feeling that I might be somehow wasting my time or falling behind the rest of the world.  

The point is, we are highly conditioned organisms. At an early age we are taught the importance of delaying gratification. We dutifully learn how to focus on the task at hand, study hard, compete, accomplish, produce, acquire, achieve, etc.  Our sense of self and social status is often deeply defined by what we do, and we take pride in how much we can accomplish in any particular, day, month, or year.  After a few decades of practice we become world champion doers. Doing is us.  And along the way, we forget how to be.

Can you even remember a few moments where you enjoyed the complete simplicity and wonder of your childhood, before “doing” became a religion? Playing with your favorite toy? Splashing in the bathtub? Enjoying an ice-cream cone? Staring at the clouds or stars?

You are not a human doing. You are in fact a human being.  Being is not something you want to dip a toe into occasionally, when time permits.  It is the ocean you want to dive into. Indeed it is where you want to live from.  It is who you are.

Forget this and life turns into an endless treadmill of unsatisfying accomplishment.

Remember this, and you can reconnect with the source of all vitality, and you can still function as necessary in the world of doing. 

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Where to Shine The Flashlight of Attention?

Our human mind is powerful and wild. It is capable of helping us create the most elegant solutions to life’s most challenging problems, and also prone to wasting exorbitant amounts of time and energy; judging, comparing, resisting, desiring, fantasizing or otherwise driving you crazy.

It is a gift to even notice the mind’s wildness.

It is a gift to be called to explore and attempt to reign in some of the mind’s most outrageous flights of fancy.

It is a gift to notice that in any mind event, there is the mind and there is some part of your awareness witnessing it.

It is a gift to notice that while you may not be able to choose the thoughts, emotions or moods of the mind, you can at any time direct your attention where you want.

It is perhaps one of the most powerful teachings to coach your attention to rest with affection on your heart. Not your physical heart. Not your emotional center or simply the source of all emotion. Rather let you attention rest on the source of everything.

In other words, if your attention was like a flashlight, capable of shining on anything you are interested in, rather than letting it point outward towards, the endless stream of objects (thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc.)  Turn it inward, on the source of attention, and hold it there.

What do you notice?

Don't Bother Trying To Be Stabile

Many individuals looking for greater peace and happiness in their busy lives run into their share of obstacles.

One of the most common is the belief that once you have become aware that more balance is possible, you should somehow become stabilized in this new, improved place and be unaffected by life’s daily dramas.

Perhaps you have established a few simple, daily routines; exercise, quiet times, breath work, meditation, gratitude journaling, etc.   And while the benefits of any of these activities may be subtle, you can immediately feel the difference.

Typically, any of these sorts of practices make a good day great, an average day better, and a bad day more tolerable.  But they do not make you bullet proof.  There will always be certain circumstances or people that will get your goat and catapult you back into reactions that you may have hoped you had left behind forever.

Don’t despair. You are not hopeless. You are just human.

It is an unreal expectation to imagine that your best intentions and practice will somehow stabilize you in some perma-zen state that will leave behind all your old conditioning. (Even Jesus, the Buddha and all the Sages and Saints had their bad days too.)

Forget about trying to stabilize yourself in some perfect state.  Forget about judging yourself as being a master at this or completely hopeless. Your job is to simply remember you are that which is observing the coming and going of all states, thoughts and emotions.