Nothing Was Ever Missing
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A meditation inviting you to pause the search for what feels missing and notice that things are already just as they are.
Nothing Was Ever Missing
All the words are always, in many ways, confusing and misleading.
Nothing that is said can be taken to be true.
You might have heard that a million times, but it needs to be repeated.
The words might be useful if they clash with some pre-existing belief,
so as to question it or challenge it.
And some might be useful because they mysteriously induce.
Might be just the right word at the right time that points to something that is tasted directly by you.
The word is not what is valuable.
What is tasted is what matters.
Letting go of time
What we say we're looking for is here and now.
That's ultimately not true,
but it might help with the pre-existing sense or function that we need something and we need to get to it,
and that it's going to be found tomorrow, in time.
So the illusion of that needs to be seen.
But then "what you're looking for is here and now" can become a problem,
as you look for something here
and find nothing but empty kaleidoscope: sensation, sound, sight, images, thoughts, color, shapes, forms,
a sense of I,
all of it just unsatisfying.
At least now we're looking in the right place,
which is not in time,
not in thoughts,
not in sensations.
But yet you will not find anything.
You don't find it in time. That's good.
You don't find it in thoughts. That's good.
If you see there's nothing really here, that's even better.
What you can find here now is that there is nothing to find,
nothing to get.
Things were always just as they are.
Nothing was ever missing.
Putting down the search
You can drop that search just for a second
and let yourself be.
Let this be, just as it is.
And in that direction of allowing,
that invitation of putting down the struggle,
putting down the honorable search,
the honorable fight,
you might notice a restlessness,
a contrary voice saying, "That's not it, keep fighting, keep searching."
The invitation is to postpone that.
Meditation is to give yourself a moment to taste the ending of that search,
the ending of a fight.
And once you taste that for yourself,
once you know it as always here,
not conditioned on any meeting, session, meditation, no experience,
that sense of what is real will flip upside down
and all will be revealed.
The beauty of what's always right in front of you,
the reality of what this always is and always has been.
Noticing restlessness
Notice that restlessness bubbling up,
a sense of an urgent contraction,
of something needed,
something grasping
for an experience or for an understanding or for a taste.
That is the veil appearing.
It's covering up what is already here.
It's an emptiness, a voidness of fullness.
No color, no taste, no substance.
But it is peaceful.
Tasting what is here
Just trust one thing.
You can taste this here and now,
no matter what is happening.
It does not come from the words.
It's not in the absence of pain.
It may at first seem faint or strange to the mind.
It may seem like nothing.
Give yourself that moment right now to pause the search.
Then you can go back to the search if you'd like.
Taste that contrast.