Nowhere to Get To
Ningún lugar al que llegar
A gentle invitation to stop striving and discover that this present moment, just as it is, is already enough.
Nowhere to Get To
Settling in
Find a stillness in your position.
It's important to not strain.
It's not about making effort.
Notice in all aspects of your experience, your body, your posture, your thoughts.
Notice all kinds of potential activity that is an effort,
still kind of pushing or striving to get something, get somewhere.
The trap of efforting
Normally we're trying to get somewhere,
even in meditation, or especially in meditation.
There's this big promise.
Meditation is the way to what you want,
the way to whatever you call it: freedom, liberation, enlightenment, consciousness.
And so then all the efforting goes to the meditation.
Being here, sitting here, meditation, spiritual work, if successful, will take everything away.
There is nothing to get, nowhere to go.
If we are able to see that, what is here becomes the destination.
It's not through a process of accepting.
That's more work and effort, the trap of "once I accept, I'll get there."
That's also a future.
So whatever is here, if there's frustration, this is it as well.
That is the destination.
There's anxiety, boredom.
That is it.
Recognizing the inner mechanism
It's a very subtle process in the mind, just pointing, constantly pointing,
using all the strategies, all the intelligence,
all the conditioning, all the learning, all the knowing, all our history,
pointing to what I need to get to.
Just notice that, recognize that.
This active inner mechanism might even feel like that's what you are.
It's this sense of honorable effort, using all of our intelligence,
strategies focused on one thing: what I need to get to.
Seeing life as a big problem, a constant rain of problems.
All I need to do is figure it out, get to that thing I need to get.
I've been doing this for decades, all day, so constant, it seems normal.
It seems big, and a possible challenge to change.
Trust
It's subtle.
It's simple.
And it's profound.
That requires one thing: trust.
It's a kind of blind trust, a trust based on an intuition.
Something that feels true.
In the many words of spiritual teachings and teachers,
there is only one thing communicated, one simple thing.
One word: now.
This. This is it.
Drop the search.
Already here
Don't look for anything tomorrow.
Look for it here.
It's already here.
It's in the sound, it's in the sensation, it's in the thoughts.
Don't fight the thoughts, they're just reflections.
Reflections of a sun on a constantly moving lake,
thoughts made of sunlight.
It's in feelings, it's in emotion.
One place where it's not: tomorrow.
Not in the past, not in the future.
No gift is needed.
No skill is needed.
Trust this moment.
Trust that it is infinite.
Fall endlessly into it.
Meditation will take you nowhere.
There's nowhere to get to.
Only this.
Turning toward now
And so the direction you follow is not tomorrow.
It's not in the future.
It's always now, always here.
We trust that.
Trust this is mystery, your aliveness in every sound, in every sensation,
also in every thought.
Thoughts want to be free.
Thoughts want to flow.
They want to be what they are.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Don't make them truth.
Don't make them reality.
Let thoughts be thoughts.
Let sounds be sounds.