Meditation is Letting Go of Control
"Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it's about letting go of control. This is meditation. Anything else is actually a form of concentration. Meditation and concentration are two different things. Concentration is a discipline; concentration is a way in which we are actually directing or guiding or controlling our experience. Meditation is letting go of control, letting go of guiding our experience in any way whatsoever. The foundation of True Meditation is that we are letting go of control.
"For a human being to let go of control is actually an immense thing. It sounds easy to say, "Just let go of control.' But for most human beings, our entire psychological structure, our entire psychological self, our egos, are made up almost entirely of control. To ask a mind or an ego to let go of control, then, is a revolutionary idea. When we let go, even for a moment, certain hidden fears and hesitations arise. 'What if I let go of control,' the mind says, 'and nothing happens? What if I sit down to meditate, letting everything be as it is, and nothing happens?' This is usually why we grab on to some technique or to some discipline, because the mind is afraid that if it lets go of control, nothing will happen."
— True Meditation
Allow Everything To Be As It Is
"What happens when we allow everything to be exactly as it is? This question is the foundation of all spirituality. Until we can allow everything to be as it is, in the deepest possible way, in the most profound way, we are still involved in control. In true spirituality and in True Meditation we are letting go of this control from the beginning. We are not pumping energy into the ego, into the mind, into the controller, into the manipulator. We are actually letting go of effort, which is a revolutionary idea to most people — that we can meditate in such a way that we are not making an effort. This does not mean we are being lazy or going to sleep. But letting go of control, letting everything be as it is, is a means of letting go of effort. So when I say that we let go of control, that we let everything be as it is, it is the same as saying we let go of making an effort. We find out what happens in our consciousness when we let go of effort, when we let go of discipline. And we can start to see in our own experience that there's a certain vitality that comes into consciousness. It's almost like a light gets turned on within, simply because we let go of effort and control. Something that is innocent and beautiful and uncontaminated starts to arise in consciousness; it starts to arise all on its own and all by itself. And this is quite different from what most of us have been taught. We've been taught that to enter a natural state of consciousness we must learn to control and discipline ourselves; what I am saying is that it's just the opposite. You come into the natural state by letting go of control by letting go of effort and resting in a state of vividness. It's very simple. It couldn't be simpler. Sit down; let everything be as it already is."
— True Meditation
Spiritually Powerful Questions
"I have noticed that very few people know how to ask a spiritually powerful question. If we don't know how to ask, then we'll just end up lost in our minds. We can sit around thinking forever about who we are. We can read spiritual discourses, philosophical discourses, religious discourses on who we are and why we are here and what this is all about. We can do that forever, and what we end up with is more thoughts, more ideas, more beliefs — not what we really need, which is a flash of insight, a flash of recognition into the truth of our being. Spiritual inquiry actually helps cultivate that flash. So how do we ask the question? How do we find out what we truly are?"
— True Meditation
Life After Awakening
"The beginning of the spiritual journey is what I call 'life after awakening.' Instead of a life lived from a separate ego, from the illusion of the egoic personality, it is a life lived from the conscious recognition of our true nature as awareness. And that's truly a new life. It's a beginning. It's an end of the identification with thoughts, feelings, and the egoic personality, but — contrary to what some people think — it's not the end of spirituality. It's actually the beginning of the true spiritual journey, the beginning of a new way of life. It's the beginning of an ongoing discovery of what it's like to live from the recognition that you are spirit appearing as a human being."
— True Meditation
Awakening From the Dream
"There's a phenomenon happening in the world today. More and more people are waking up — having real, authentic glimpses of reality. By this I mean that people seem to be having moments where they awaken out of their familiar senses of self, and out of their familiar senses of what the world is, into a much greater reality — into something far beyond anything they knew existed.
"These experiences of awakening differ from person to person. For some, the awakening is sustained over time, while for others the glimpse is momentary — it may last just a split second. But in that instant, the whole sense of 'self' disappears. The way they perceive the world suddenly changes, and they find themselves without any sense of separation between themselves and the rest of the world. It can be likened to the experience of waking up from a dream — a dream you didn't even know you were in until you were jolted out of it."
— The End of Your World
The Honeymoon of Awakening
"This dropping away of the seeker can be experienced as a huge relief. It marks what I like to call the honeymoon of awakening. At least for me, this dropping away of the seeker and seeking was experienced as if an enormous weight had been taken off my shoulders. It was a very physical experience. I literally felt like a weight was removed — a weight I had no idea I'd been carrying.
"This is a common experience for people upon awakening. At the moment that consciousness wakes up from its dream of separation, there is a great sense of relief. That's why some people will start laughing or crying or have some other sort of deep emotional release — they are feeling the relief of finally being outside of the dream state. I sometimes refer to this moment as the first kiss. Awakening is sort of like your first spiritual kiss, your first real kiss of reality, your introduction to the truth of who and what you are."
— The End of Your World
Truth
"Truth is a very high standard. Truth is not a plaything. To tell what is true within ourselves is not to tell what we think; it is not to tell our opinion. It is not to dump the garbage can of our mind onto somebody else. All of that is illusion, distortion, projection. Truth is not unloading our opinions onto someone. That is not truth. Truth is not telling our beliefs about things. That is not truth. Those are ways that we actually hide from truth.
"Truth is much more intimate than that. When we tell the truth, it has the sense of a confession. I don't mean a confession of something bad or wrong, but I mean the sense where we come completely out of hiding. Truth is a simple thing. To speak the truth is to speak from a sense of total and absolute unprotectedness."
— The End of Your World
Love and Truth
"I often say to my students, to be less than truthful with the people and situations in your life is to withhold the expression of who you are. In the end, we must come to see that truth itself is the highest good, that truth itself is the greatest expression and manifestation of love. Ultimately, love and truth are identical; they are like two sides of a coin. You can't have truth without love, and you can't have love without truth."
— The End of Your World
Time Spent Thinking
"We humans spend maybe 10 percent of our time thinking about things we really need to think about. We spend the other 90 percent of our time imagining, fantasizing, and becoming involved in all sorts of internal stories and dramas that have no basis in truth. After the awakening, I noticed that more of my thoughts were falling into the former category, and fewer were fantasies and stories I was telling myself.
"This transformation of the mind takes place over time, because it is a physical process of transformation. When our consciousness is no longer obsessed with the mind, the mind relaxes, softens, and opens. This transition may even wreak havoc with one's memory. I've had many students develop memory problems, some who have even gotten checked for Alzheimer's. There is actually nothing wrong with them; they are simply undergoing a transformational process, an energetic process in the mind."
— The End of Your World
The Journey of Awakening
"The journey of awakening is not just the journey of waking up, being free of self, and realizing that life as we knew it was a dream. It is also a reentering, coming back down from the summit of the mountain, as it were. As long as we're staying at the summit of awakening, in the transcendent place of the absolute, where we are forever unborn and forever untouched and forever undying, there is an incompleteness to our realization.
"Quite surprisingly, upon reentry, life becomes very simple and ordinary. We no longer feel driven to have extraordinary moments, to have transcendent experiences. Sitting at the table in the morning and drinking a cup of tea is perfectly adequate. Drinking a cup of tea is experienced as a full expression of ultimate reality. The cup itself is a full expression of everything we have realized. Walking down the hallway, each step is a complete expression of the deepest realization. Raising a family, dealing with children, going to work, going on vacation — all of it is a true expression of that which is inexpressible."
— The End of Your World
A Shift in One's Perception
"Awakening to truth or reality is something that is very hard to talk about because it is transcendent of speech. It is helpful, nevertheless, to work with some sort of guidepost. The simplest thing one can say about the experiential knowledge of awakening is that it is a shift in one's perception."
— The End of Your World
Enlightenment is No Guarantee
"I constantly tell people that enlightenment is no guarantee that your life is going to go the way you planned. Life will be much better than it was, but that doesn't mean it's going to go the way you want it to."
— The End of Your World
