Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning in August of 2009. May you find them interesting and enriching.
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June 1, 2010
Student: Osho says that, Meditation is not a result of your efforts, meditation is a happening. When your efforts drop, suddenly meditation is there… the benediction of it, the blessedness of it, the glory of it. It is there like a presence… luminous, surrounding you and surrounding everything. It fills the whole earth and the whole sky.”
With this in mind, what is the difference between the meditations that happen all day long, now, and the meditation which is fit into a certain timeframe in the morning?
In once instance, it seems, I “put” meditation there (in the AM), set it up, and during the day, it “drops in” on this being, and there is only the labeling of experiences going on. Such as, oh, here is walking, or there is worry running through, how fun. So, with the morning meditation, the effort is made to meditate, during the day, it just happens. Why should we plan to meditate, when it, the coming home, happens anyway?
Michael: The only difference between structured meditation and unstructured meditation is context. They both support the other. But why do it at all? Indeed. In fact, why should we work-out, eat well, and engage in life when we’re going to die anyway? Why should we do anything at all?
I always fall back on what seems like a better question: Why not? Afterall, could it really hurt us to stop, shut up, and listen deeply? Plenty of people that I truly respect have said its cool, it’s good for us, it’s a way to inhabit share a deeper, more real sense of being. But this is only Divine peer-pressure. When I was starting on the path this is the point where faith came in. I had to trust that the deep impulse to be still was the Universe trying to evolve through me. It took work though. Still does, although not as much. The ego has managed to build up a great deal of what we might call “Karmic Inertia” lumbering in the direction of limitation, division and suffering. This pattern loses its power, believe it or not, as an profound and yet open diligence is integrated into the deep work we’re doing. We have to want the fruition of this work in order for it to be revealed. This may sound counter-intuitive to most seekers, but fire must burn in order for light to radiate. And it’s in the exploration of the wanting that non-wanting arises. From here, liberation opens itself through all things.
Pretty cool.