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Consciousness is not something you can grab, it's not something you can touch, it's not something you can hold. It's not something you can gather together. It is something you can experience; and the more of it we experience, the more subtly and deeply and fully we experience it, the more we experience the fact that Consciousness is indeed what we are
What we usually experience as ourselves is a sort of resistance to what we are. We experience ourselves as ideas, opinions, the opinions of others, our ideas of the opinions of others. We experience ourselves as what we're thinking, how we're feeling, the sensations of our body. If we're playing football we experience ourselves as football players. Making love, we're lovers. It's about the doing of life, not the being.
But in meditation, we settle down into a oneness with Consciousness Itself, and we begin to experience what we actually are, beyond the thoughts and feelings and opinions and doings; and the more subtly and continually we experience what we are, the more fully we can begin to embody what we are.
And what we are turns out to be exactly what we've been looking to be: capable of all things, filled with all potentiality, the fount of all love, the fount of all knowledge, the fount of all creativity. An experience of bliss, joy, happiness, contentedness. This is what we are. In our least excited state, this is what we are.
Every time we go beyond thought, every time we transcend the level from which thoughts arise, every time we allow the wave of activity that we express here in the relative world to de-excite, de-excite, de-excite, and we go to that final flattening of the wave and drop into the place of unboundedness and infinity and eternality: THAT is what we are.
I Am That.
The great teachers of the ages say 'I Am.' They say that to continue this sentence with anything other than 'That' is to begin the process of covering up the truth of our Being and moving away from the experience of oneness.
What we have in our practice of meditation is a gift beyond measure. We have the ability twice each day to settle into an experience of Self that much of the rest of the world not "would kill to find" but is killing itself to find. We have it.
What is required of us to have this gift and allow this gift to grow for us? To show up to the chair for twenty minutes, twice each day. To listen to the still, small voice within, rather than the voice of the ego that will say, 'meditation is bogus. Maybe it worked for a minute, but it doesn't work now;' or 'I don't have time to meditate. I have important stuff to do, things to accomplish, success and happiness to wrestle to the ground and capture for myself.'
Today I ran into a student who came up to me so excited. "I've been doing it! For the last seventeen days, twice each day, I've been doing it!"
Beautiful, I said. Sometimes we have to do some experimentation with our old, unsustainable ideas of happiness. And now you're back. Wonderful.
It's that simple. Wake. Shower. Meditate. Live. Pause. Meditate. Live. Sleep.
Repeat.
Today I will thank whatever higher power I speak to, or don't speak to, for this gift of meditation. And I will show my gratitude by letting myself meditate morning and evening, and making plans to do it again tomorrow.
Nesta, Studio City, CA
All material copyright JeffKoberMeditation
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