The Door of I Am
La Puerta del Yo Soy
An invitation to notice the simple, ever-present sense of being that already accepts everything and needs no achievement to find.
The Door of I Am
Eyes open or closed
I always recommend exploring meditation with eyes open or closed.
If you find it much more comfortable to close your eyes, you can explore leaving them open, and vice versa.
We usually become habitually comfortable closing our eyes and get into a bit of a mental space.
So you can explore what happens with eyes open.
It's really up to you to just see and explore what happens.
The body and the breath
We can begin with the body.
A more traditional anchor is the breath and bodily sensations.
The mind never needs to stop. It can, but it's not what really matters.
We get tired of thinking, we get tired of the mind,
but the way through that is not by stopping the mind.
It's more about seeing the nature of thought.
Once you fully see the nature of thought, the mind has no power.
So keep your attention with breathing sensations.
The most fundamental knowing
There is something here that's undeniable.
You could describe it as experiencing the most fundamental knowing.
Before we know what we're experiencing, there is experiencing.
You hear words, you hear sounds, you feel sensations.
It's so fundamental and so permanent, so constant, we forget about it.
We label this, we give it a name: I.
And then we give it characteristics.
I am a woman, I am a man.
Before we give names and characteristics, there is a pure I am.
When there is thinking, there is still I am.
When there is distraction and thought and emotions, in all that remains this I am.
I am is the door
And Jesus said, I am the door, I am the way.
I suggest that it's not Jesus the person, but the I am is the door.
There is a treasure hidden in knowing more deeply the nature of this I am.
You cannot become I am.
You cannot develop into I am.
You cannot attain or achieve or reach I am.
I am already is.
It is the freedom from becoming.
You can also know it with its other names: consciousness, beingness.
When this is known deeply, it is seen that there is only one.
It is what is shared.
The dance of separation
But part of us cannot coexist with I am.
Part of us wants to be separate.
And it's this dance between belonging, the longing to return home,
with the desire to be fully separate.
That dance, that tension.
You can feel it as pushing and pulling on thought,
trying to make stable something that is imagined.
Only I am is stable.
The mind is a river flowing incessantly, never arriving.
As the Buddhists say, beaten incessantly by the infinite waves of samsara.
Rest your exhausted mind.
The universal heart
I am is the universal heart: loving, open, unguarded.
The challenges of life, in a sense, purify our desire and our longing
so that it be the longing of one thing.
Nothing else satisfies the heart of being.
Look for what you long for the most.
Trust that longing.
Let it grow, let it burn, let it be sweet.
We trust.
What you're looking for is available.
Trust that.
You're looking for being and you already are.
It's a sweet paradox.
Stillness
And it might be scary. Vulnerable.
We believe ourselves to be in motion, constantly.
Stillness is death.
Breath comes and goes,
thoughts come and go,
sounds come and go,
emotions come and go,
ourselves come and go.
Notice this.
Acceptance that is already here
Our being never moves.
It receives everything, all experience. It accepts.
No need to practice acceptance.
You can just notice that which in us is always accepting.
As you notice the breath, do you need to accept it?
Or is the noticing of the breath pure acceptance of it?
As you hear sounds, do you need to accept them,
or is the hearing of sounds pure acceptance of them?
As you notice thoughts, do you need to accept them,
or is the noticing of thoughts pure acceptance of them?
Emotions. Fear.
Is there any difference there?
Something in the knowing of our experience
is the absolute acceptance of it.
So intimate, so close.
Intimacy with everything
Let yourself be immersed in that intimacy with everything.
Sounds become crisp.
Thoughts are like a river of dreams,
and sensations a tingling aliveness of being.
Thinking becomes a sense of a song.
No longer an inside and outside.
No distance with everything.