Special Teaching on Form and Formless: 20 Minute Meditation

Being aware of the weather, the various ways in which the weather manifests in the present moment, is also a way of bringing you into the now. To feel the breeze of the air on your skin. For example, listen to the sounds of rain or the wind in the trees. And one of my favorite, my favorites, is watching the sky. The continuously changing paintings, abstract paintings that appear in the sky, the air, breathing in the air, the scents, the smells of nature, and taking in the entire energy field that surrounds you. Now, where I'm sitting, there's not much nature in this room. It's a little studio. But that's okay. If you go within, you encounter your own nature, your own essential nature. I believe it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American writer, spiritual writer, 19th century, who said something like, the wick of individual life runs deep into the oil of pure being. That's an interesting analogy, and quite a powerful one. The wick. If English is not your native language and you happen not to know what wick is, wick is the string that is in the candle that you light, that draws up the wax, or it's a string in an oil lamp, and you light the wick that sticks out of the oil, and you light it then as a flame, the wick draws up the oil. That oil is then consumed by the flame. So that's the wick. And in this analogy, he said the wick of individual life. Your individual life runs deep into the oil of pure being. So that means there is a great depth within you. And your individual consciousness derives its sustenance from the greater universal. Consciousness is only a manifestation or an emanation of the greater one consciousness that you also are, that you are more fundamentally than the individual. The wick that's burning on the surface. You are a surface phenomenon on the level of your physical body. And the sense perceived, all the sense perceived aspects of yourself and even your thinking, although your thinking already exists in the realm of invisibility. Nobody has ever seen a thought. You cannot see a thought. You cannot perceive it with your senses. And yet, even thinking is a relatively superficial or surface phenomenon. It belongs to the dimension of your individual form. But there could be no thinking and there could be no sense perception if you were not connected to something deeper, which is consciousness. So you are an emanation of something very profound, very deep that connects you with the totality of. Of the universe. Now, the important thing is to realize the truth of this directly, which means to sense that depth in you here and now, so that in addition to knowing yourself as an individual person, in the analogy that Amazon used, that's the wicked. In addition to knowing yourself as an individual person surrounded by many other individual persons and life forms, in addition to that, you are aware of a deeper dimension within yourself. And when I say you are aware of it may not be totally correct. Because the awareness, when you become aware of your own awareness, when you become aware of the fact that you are conscious right now, and you can only become aware of that if for a moment there's no thinking and yet you have not fallen asleep for a moment, there's a cessation of thinking, like now. What do you need to think about now? Nothing for a moment there's no thinking in that moment. There's a stillness, an alert stillness that is the awareness of who you are beyond your individual form. That is the beginning of the pure being that Emerson speaks of. It's not that difficult, especially right here and now, where you're not being disturbed, hopefully by all the demands that the world normally places upon you. It's not that difficult here now to have these brief moments and perhaps even longer moments when you are aware of an inner alert stillness, cessation of thinking. What remains is consciousness prior to thought, consciousness before it becomes a thought. And that I sometimes describe as the deep eye as opposed to the surface. I'm not talking about this eye because that's also interesting analogy, but I'm talking about the first person singular eye, I pronoun. The deep I is that being, the I am awareness of the I am ness, beingness. The self is I that you normally identify with and that normally when you use the word I in everyday usage, you refer to the surface I, your personality, your past, the person that you are. The bundle of thoughts and emotions that form make up the personality. That's the surface I. And in the absence of thought activity, the surface I subsides. And if you have not fallen below thought towards sleep, but have risen above thought, then there is an alert stillness, not a tired stillness. That is the essence of who you are, as that is the unconditioned consciousness. And it's so close, it's not that difficult to experience, to realize this alive depth in you where the personality is transcended, although you still have. You still have or you still are for a while, of course, also the surf itself is still there. And most likely you will again and again become completely identified with the surface self, which is a normal human consciousness, the normal unawakened consciousness, the normal fairly dysfunctional consciousness, and dysfunctional because it doesn't know its own depth. It doesn't know the root. You're, in other words, dysfunctional because you're out of touch with yourself, your self, meaning the deep I, the unconditioned consciousness. You cannot sense that in the background. Even while you are acting in this world as a person, you can still. This is the aim of awakening, means if you are awakened first you have glimpses of awakening where you can sense yourself as this deep I. That's fine. And then the glimpses are a little longer. And then you may find gradually in your everyday life, you can live from that deeper place that changes the way in which you think. Habitual thoughts are still there, but a greater, a deeper intelligence flows into your mind. Your thinking becomes creative, more creative, more alive, less dysfunctional. Doesn't create suffering anymore for yourself and others, because otherwise you're thinking creates an enormous amount of suffering, unhappiness. This is still the case for millions of humans on the planet. So the deepest meaning of Shakespeare's words to your own self be true. The deepest meaning of that is to be in touch with that pure being which is the unconditioned consciousness, which is your true being, your true self. It is no longer a separate self. It connects you to the totality. So this frees you from the prison of your personality. If you are not aware of that deeper dimension to who you are, you are trapped on the surface level of who you are, constantly looking for an enhanced sense of identity on the surface level, where no true and ultimately satisfying sense of identity can ever be found. It.