Meditation

An excerpt from a Guided meditation, "Allow Everything to Be As It Is"

	Quote:
	So what happens when we allow things, when we allow everything to be as it is? This is the question we're living with in meditation. This is our investigation - not in our minds, but in our bodies, our senses, in our own experience. It's a question without a conclusion, without an answer... We are actually living the answer.

If you allow *everything* to be as it is, that includes the mind, right? I mean, it includes the *universe* (which includes the mind).

So, I don't get what he's saying. Cuz he says not in our minds, but in our bodies.

Huh? Do you get it?

	Dobro wrote:
	If you allow everything to be as it is, that includes the mind, right?

Yes. From what I see, you've got it, Dobro.

I hear the quote asking, what happens when we accept what is? The watching to see what happens is constant. And if mind tries to come up with an answer to the question or understand conceptually, accept this and listen with the whole body, through the senses, and see what happens when we accept what is. In this case, it is the mind trying to solve the question but it can be anything.

I quoted this part of the meditation because my sense is that he is describing an in-the-moment observing that lies beyond the mental boundaries of labels and beliefs and I like the way he did it big grin

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Last edited by cheshirecat on Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:30 am; edited 1 time in total

I'm loving the forum again so much already. Well it never stopped, but now it's just welling up more.

* high 5 *

	dobro wrote:
	If you allow everything to be as it is, that includes the mind, right? I mean, it includes the universe (which includes the mind). So, I don't get what he's saying. Cuz he says not in our minds, but in our bodies. Huh? Do you get it?

"Sitting quietly reveals the mind to be nothing but conditioned thinking spontaneously arising within awareness."

- Adyashanti

(http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=writings_inner&writingid=35)

Sitting quietly reveals the mind to be nothing but thinking and emotion spontaneously arising in awareness.

That's my experience, anyway. I'm sure he's right about the 'conditioned' part. But there's nothing about the thoughts that spontaneously arise in my mind that reveals them to be conditioned. I like sitting quietly and watching the content of awareness, though. I like it even more when all content subsides.

_________________
friendly with the inevitable

	dobro wrote:
	I'm sure he's right about the 'conditioned' part. But there's nothing about the thoughts that spontaneously arise in my mind that reveals them to be conditioned.

What if you equated the term "conditioned" with "learned"?

If that connection is made, then conditioned thinking might be seen as concepts and reactions learned in the past.

Are the thoughts of which you are aware totally unfamiliar - things you have never been exposed to before?

If they appear to spring out of something familiar, something molded by any previous experience, they are learned. If they influence present perception, then present perception is "conditioned" by the past.

Which brings me back to the quote which started this thread and, what is for me, its lovely pointer, "living the answer" - where the freshness of form is perceived in the absence of conditioned thinking; where there is no lack, and no need for an answer.

	dobro wrote:
	I like sitting quietly and watching the content of awareness, though. I like it even more when all content subsides.

cheshirecat wrote:

	dobro wrote:
	I'm sure he's right about the 'conditioned' part. But there's nothing about the thoughts that spontaneously arise in my mind that reveals them to be conditioned.

Are the thoughts of which you are aware totally unfamiliar - things you have never been exposed to before?

They are new combinations of things I've been exposed to before, reworkings of things I've been exposed to before. They're like a new soup made out of ingredients stored in the fridge and the cupboard.

	cheshirecat wrote:
	If they appear to spring out of something familiar, something molded by any previous experience, they are learned. If they influence present perception, then present perception is "conditioned" by the past.

Thoughts that arise in awareness don't influence present perception; they *are* present perception, or perhaps more accurately, are not separate from present perception.

_________________
friendly with the inevitable

	dobro wrote:
	They are new combinations of things I've been exposed to before, reworkings of things I've been exposed to before. They're like a new soup made out of ingredients stored in the fridge and the cupboard.

That actually sounds tastey lol

	Quote:
	Thoughts that arise in awareness don't influence present perception; they are present perception,

This is really interesting, Dobro. I sat with this for awhile... I've recently been in touch with a friend from highschool who has become a Catholic. When he found out that a mutual friend of ours doesn't believe in God, a friend upon whom he previously lavished praises, his whole perception of her changed - just like that. He now sees evil where before he saw loveliness. She hasn't changed. Only his perception has.

So what is perceived, in this case thoughts, can be said to be current perception.

I was looking at it in another way....more like what I understand you to say here.

	Quote:
	or perhaps more accurately, are not separate from present perception.

Nothing is separate from perception, eh?

I am also looking at what perceives and see thought as a symbol that is incapable of perception.

As it is, the Catholic friend sees thoughts and mistakes them for athiestic x-friend. If he were to perceive the same x-friend through stillness, the learned ideas of good and evil and what comprises them would not be mistaken for who the person is.

Seeing learned ideas and mistaking them for reality is what I mean when talking about perception being conditioned by the past. Perhaps my choice of these words was not helpful in conveying that.