The Miracle That Cannot Be Lost
El milagro que no puede perderse
A meditation on pausing to notice the aliveness already present in your experience — the one that was never lost or damaged.
The Miracle That Cannot Be Lost
Settling in
You can sit comfortably,
and if you're used to meditating with closed eyes,
I suggest you explore leaving them open,
or opening and closing gently.
You can also try keeping a soft gaze,
letting your eyes kind of settle downwards, and your eyelids as well,
so they're partly open, partly closed,
but you're not focused.
There is some visual information,
so you can see a kind of pattern if there's a rug or something just below you.
The eyes might seem closed,
but leaving the eyelids a bit, just resting on their own kind of weight,
keeping a little bit of the visual information coming through.
It's like an in-between, from eyes open and eyes closed.
It's mostly to avoid the patterns of habit that we get into when meditating,
especially for those of us who have more of a practice than not,
to really vary this.
And nothing rigid,
so if your eyes start to feel uncomfortable,
if you prefer to close them, just close them.
Meeting discomfort
And as we sit,
normally and naturally there will be a familiar experience of discomfort.
A familiar experience of something in the body that isn't how we want it to be,
some sensations that we don't want,
some sensations we are missing,
and also the stream of thoughts,
the kinds of thinking and experience of mental tension or contraction.
All of this might come up naturally.
It usually does, part of the exploration of just sitting still for a period of time.
It's to create a bit of intimacy with that which we normally avoid.
We are very good at moving in circles around our current experience.
There's going to be a sense of restlessness,
discomfort,
and the mind will have very familiar narratives and stories.
There'll be a story about loneliness, heartbreak, something missing,
some stress around relationship or work.
That's what the mind does. It's actually happening.
What is right here
There's a certain avoidance, a distraction,
from something much simpler,
something that's right here, right now,
in the space of experience of the body and the mind.
The mystery,
the aliveness,
the intensity,
the vulnerability.
The energetics of life force.
Could be very subtle or not so subtle.
We don't meditate for something to happen.
We meditate to know what is happening,
to have intimacy with whatever is happening.
The infinite complexity
And there is a simplicity in the infinite complexity of experience.
So many colors and shapes and forms,
so many flavors of sensations,
so many worlds of sounds,
all happening at the same time.
And within this infinite, miraculous complexity,
the most divinely beautiful capacity of thought.
The mind,
the dreamer.
The world making,
the visioning of futures,
the remembering of pasts,
all of which happens in thought.
The infinite divine capacity of thought,
the gift that has been given.
Consciousness gifting itself
And what is here: consciousness,
gifting all of this.
Gifting to itself.
There could be only emptiness.
But there is this.
A present, miraculous gift.
Experience.
Sensations, body, space.
Sounds, colors, shapes, forms.
The universe of thoughts, mind.
All that is needed is to see and recognize the absoluteness of that miracle,
this miracle.
The love at the deepest place
And that at the deepest place,
there is love.
That childlike innocence running through a beautiful garden.
Joy and excitement for the experience of what is completely open and in love with experience.
That has never been lost,
that is right here, right now,
at the heart of this creation.
It cannot be forgotten.
It cannot be damaged.
It cannot be lost.
We can only just look away.
That which we remember in ourselves as children, and we recognize it in other children,
it's not childlike.
It is the nature of beingness and consciousness
that the child has not yet pushed aside.
It does not belong to a child.
It belongs to reality.
It belongs to divinity.
The only illusion
The only illusion is to believe that this is not divinity.
Ordinary and not extraordinary.
Creation, out of the void of all possibilities:
there is sounds and sensations,
the body, the world,
miraculous colors and shapes,
beings.
Noticing the temptation to let the mind turn this miracle
into something small and insignificant.
Reduce it to a problem.
There's always a miracle, no matter what is happening.
The source of that, what we call I.
Not I, person. Not I, body. Not I, mind.
The I am, the true reality.
Yes, I am.
It's the source of the miracle.