From The Transparency of Things, by Rupert Spira
Pages 34-36
Meditation is not an activity. It is the cessation of an activity. . .
However, in order to understand that meditation is not an activity, we first come to the understanding that it is the cessation of an activity.
This understanding is a very efficient tool for undermining the belief that meditation is something that we do.
Once we have fully understood that meditation is not an activity, the activity that we previously considered to be meditation will naturally come to an end. At that point, the understanding that meditation is not an activity has fulfilled its purpose and can also be abandoned. . .
In order to understand that meditation is not an activity, we can use the example of a clenched fist. If we take our open hand and slowly close it tightly, an effort is required both to clench the hand, and to maintain it in that contracted gesture.
If we maintain the hand in this contracted gesture for some time, the muscles will become accustomed to this new position, and we will soon cease to be aware that a subtle effort is continually being applied in order to maintain it.
If someone were now to ask us to open our hand, we would feel that the opening of the hand requires some effort. At some stage, as we open our hand, we will become aware of the fact that we are not applying a new effort in order to open the hand, but rather that we are relaxing a previous effort, of which we were no longer even aware.
The apparent effort to open the hand turns out to be the relaxation of the original effort to contract the hand. What appeared to be the initiation of an effort turns out to the cessation of an effort.
Meditation works in a similar way. Our true nature is open, unlimited, free, conscious, self-luminous, and self-evident. This is our moment by moment experience, although we may not be aware of it.
This open, free, unlimited Consciousness has contracted upon itself. It has seemingly shrunk itself into the narrow frame of a body and a mind, and limited itself to a tiny location in a vast space into a brief moment in an endless expanse of time.
This is primary self-contraction [similar to the metaphor of clenching the fist] that open, free, unlimited Consciousness chooses from moment to moment of its own free will.
It draws a line within the seamless totality of its experience and says to itself, “I am this and not that,” “I am here and not there,” “I am me and not other.”
Feeling itself isolated and therefore vulnerable and afraid, this open, free, unlimited Consciousness now sets about supporting and protecting its new self-imposed identity as a fragment.
To effect this it reinforces its boundaries with layer upon layer of contraction. At the level of the mind, these contractions are made out of desires and addictions on the one hand, and resistances, fears and rejections on the other. These are the many faces of our likes and dislikes, the “I want” and the “I don’t want.”
At the level of the body these contractions are made out of bodily sensations with which Consciousness identifies itself. They are the apparent location of “I” inside the body.
With each new layer of contraction this open, free, unlimited Consciousness forgets its own unlimited nature more and more profoundly, and in doing so throws a veil over itself. It hides itself from itself.
In spite of this there are frequent intrusions into its own self-generated isolation which remind itself of its real nature… the smile of a stranger, the cry of an infant, an unbearable grief, a brief desireless moment upon the fulfillment of a desire, a moment of humor, the peace of deep sleep, a pause in the thinking process, a memory of childhood, the transition between dreaming and waking, the recognition of beauty, the love of a friend, a glimpse of understanding.
These are moments that are offered to this now veiled presence of Consciousness, innumerable tastes of its own Freedom and Happiness, which remind it briefly of itself, before it is eclipsed again by the efficiency of the defences within which it has apparently confined itself.
In the way, with layer upon layer of self-contraction, Consciousness has reduced itself to a well-fortified, separate and vulnerable entity.
This is not an activity that took place sometime in the past and which is now irrevocably cast in stone. It is an activity that is taking place now, in this moment.
This open, free, unlimited Consciousness is, without knowing it, doing this very activity of separation [much like the hand is clenching into a fist in the fist metaphor]. This activity defines the ‘person’, the ‘separate entity.’
The separate entity is something we, as Consciousness, do. It is not something we are.
Pages 41-43
Consciouness projects this current experience out of itself. It then loses itself in this projection, in the mind/body/world that it has projected from within itself, and identifies itself with a part of it. It is as if it says to itself, “I am no longer this open, free, unlimited Consciousness. Rather I am this limited fragment that I have just created within myself. I am a body.”…
Meditation is simply the liberation of this projection from the burden of separation. It is the unwinding of the self-contraction, the unthreading of this web of confusion.
Instead of focusing its attention on the limited fragment, on the separate entity it has taken itself to be, Consciousness gives its own attention back to itself as it truly is. It returns to itself. It remembers itself.
And instead of projecting the world outside of itself, Consciousness reclaims it, takes it back inside itself.
Consciousness is so accustomed to thinking of itself as a limited entity and [so accustomed] to the concomitant projection of the world outside of itself, that it seems to begin with, that remembering itself, returning to itself, is a counter activity, something that Consciousness needs to do in order to find itself.
Like the opening of the hand, the unwinding of the self-contraction appears, to begin with, to be an activity.
However, each time Consciousness returns to itself, each time it relaxes its fixation on a separate entity, each time it opens itself without choice or preference to the full spectrum of whatever experience is appearing within itself, it is, without knowing it, undermining the habit of self-avoidance, the habit of avoiding its own Reality.
In this way, Consciousness becomes more and more accustomed to remaining in itself, as itself, to no longer pretending to be something else, something other than itself.
The impulse to contract into the separate entity is progressively undermined. Consciousness stays at home.
The impulses to search, to seek, to avoid, to pretend, to contract, keep appearing, but Consciousness is no longer compelled by them. It recognizes the impulses, but no longer acts on them. And, as a result, the frequency and ferocity of these impulses begin to subside…
[There comes a moment when] Consciousness realizes that the separate entity that it previously took itself to be, is in fact simply an activity that it does, from time to time.
And by the same token, it realizes that the activity that it seemed to do from time to time, the activity that we call meditation, is in fact what it always is.
It realizes that meditation is not a state that comes and goes, but that it is that in which all states come and go.
Meditation is simply the natural presence of Consciousness, ever present, all-embracing, unchanging, unending, unlimited, Self-luminous, Self-knowing, Self-evident.
From the point of view of the limited, separate entity, all descriptions of meditation appear as something to be done by that separate entity. As soon as it is clearly seen that the separate entity is none other than a belief and a feeling that Consciousness entertains about itself, then the very words that previously seemed to describe a process or an activity called ‘meditation,’ that seemed to be an injunction to do something, are now understood to be simply a description of how things are.
From the point of view of ignorance, the ‘person’ is what we are and ‘meditation’ is something that we do from time to time. From the point of understanding, ‘meditation’ is what we are and the ‘person’ is something that we do from time to time.
Meditation is not something that we do. Whether we know it or not, it is what we are.
Nonduality Book Study Group
Rupert Spira writes some good stuff! Which is why I’ve devoted the next year to hosting a study group on Monday evenings (on a drop-in basis) to studying his book, along with a few related videos and passages from other teachers. The goal for this group is to really discuss, understand, and truly realize what is being talked about – not just learn a bunch of interesting ideas. Sound interesting to you?
Learn more about the study group or register to attend.
