Meditation, Willpower, and Discovering What Is Already Here
Meditación, fuerza de voluntad y descubrir lo que ya está aquí
A student reflects on the felt sense of presence that arises in the company of a teacher, and asks about the role of meditation and willpower on the path. The conversation turns to how practice evolves, how presence is discovered to be one's own, and the growing trust in what is already here.
Meditation, Willpower, and Discovering What Is Already Here
A student reflects on the felt sense of presence that arises in the company of a teacher, and asks about the role of meditation and willpower on the path. The conversation turns to how practice evolves, how presence is discovered to be one's own, and the growing trust in what is already here.
You mentioned at the beginning that your teacher was very particular about certain things. Is there anything else you would care to share about what you received from him, both as a teacher and through your relationship with him?
There is so much. Nothing specific comes up right now beyond what I already said: he was very emphatic about meditation, effort, and willpower. He would say, "Use all your willpower toward that discipline." Is there anything that comes up for you?
Well, maybe I'll ask more about meditation and will. Intuitively it makes sense: you put all of yourself into this, and what could be more focused than meditation? Maybe the real question is, what is meditation? But I'd love to hear more about that.
The changing relationship with meditation
Speaking to that wouldn't be anything specifically from my teacher, but I experience, and I think it is common, that the whole relationship with meditation changes. It starts as a practice, a thing you do, with somebody doing it and the thing being done. At that level, the practice and the willpower are very important, because there is also the experience of resistance. There is the experience of an independent will that is "my own." And then there is an experience of a world, and a whole inner world, that I am resisting as well. There is resistance to the outside world and resistance to the inside world.
At that level of experience, practice is really important because it is the way we face what is happening and break the barriers of identification, which is where we become truly contracted. You could also say it raises the energy and opens up to something deeper, to what you experience as presence.
Presence is your own
When you say that I say some words and it moves you, you feel it. That, for example, used to happen to me. I felt my teacher's presence, and then it happened with other teachers as well, and then I realized I was actually feeling myself.
He's in me, of course. That's the magnet and the iron. At some point they are one and the same. I understand.
Yes. And you start to refine it. But it is important to begin looking at that which you feel, which seems to depend on the words or the presence of another person. You can start to refine: where is that which I feel, which I love, which is beautiful, which we could call presence? Where is it really? You could associate it with these words or this proximity, as though it were a consequence of them. But it is actually you.
Right. And I feel like, when you talk about growing up and waking up, that is what it brought up for me: how these two are merging in my life. The more I grow up, the more I find I am expanding. I can look inside and find the inspiration or the excitement, and vice versa. It is magical because it has this natural balance. It is amazing, actually. How did I know how to do that? Where did that come from?
I don't consider myself awake, but I feel the awakening happening, and there is less of this conditioning, or whatever you want to call it. If it is there, there is a distance from it. There is less identification, I guess that is the word.
You are describing it beautifully. That is really, really good to hear.
Nowhere to go
The more I hear you, the more I feel like there really is nowhere to go. I would love to wake up, and yet: I am here. This is it. Now let's see what happens. Will I fall flat on my face? Will something clever come out? Who knows what magic. And it keeps happening more and more. So there is this basic trust in this, whatever it is.
At a retreat this year, someone asked a very simple question: "Is it important to wake up in this life?" And the teacher said, "No." Just, "No." That was it. And then she said, "Nothing's important." And I thought, "I got what I came for." All the rest was gravy.
Nice. I find myself saying: take all the lives you need or want. No rush.
Enjoy all the climbing and struggling, the screaming and kicking. Go for it. That is what I am here for.