- We carry out our meditation with an attitude of control and manipulation, and that is the very reason our meditation leads us to what feels like a dead end. (Location 136)
- But when we control our minds in order to obtain a certain state of peace or tranquility, it’s very much like getting someone to be quiet by taping their mouth shut. You’ve succeeded in getting that person to be quiet, but you’ve done it through a very manipulative technique. What good will come of getting that person to be quiet by taping their mouth shut? As soon as you take the tape off they are going to have a few things to say, aren’t they? (Location 162)
- We experience a type of meditative quietness through control, but as soon as we let go of control the mind is off and running again. Everything reverts to the way it was before. Most meditators are all too familiar with this dilemma. We may achieve a certain state of peace when we are meditating, but when we stop meditating the peace eludes us once again. (Location 168)
- I say to the group that to engage these techniques at the beginning of a meditation session is fine. These are perfectly appropriate ways of bringing the mind into the present. They allow you to gather the psychic energy and the resources of the active mind and to pool them into right here and right now. And yet what I suggest is that, in any given period of meditation, we also take time to let go of whatever technique we’re using. (Location 209)
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- Note: I think Goldstein makes a similar argument: we should interweave times of open awareness.
- But once our attention is in the present, then the invitation is to let go of these techniques and to start to investigate our natural state of being. (Location 214)
- But in the end spirituality is not about watching the breath. It’s about waking up from the dream of separateness to the truth of unity. That’s what it’s about, and this can get forgotten if we adhere too closely to technique. (Location 217)
- Enlightenment is the natural state of consciousness, the innocent state of consciousness, that state which is uncontaminated by the movement of thought, uncontaminated by control or manipulation of mind. (Location 246)
- It’s extraordinarily important to realize that when the mind is trying to understand, when the mind is trying to grasp an intellectual comprehension of ultimate reality, the mind is simply trying to remain in control. (Location 254)
- True Meditation is the ultimate act of faith. Because to sit down and let everything be as it already is—to let go of control, to let go of manipulation—is itself a very deep act of faith. It’s also a deep act of investigation. (Location 265)
- What happens when we actually let go of this control? What happens when we allow everything to be exactly as it is? This question is the foundation of all spirituality. (Location 267)
- Effortless doesn’t mean no effort; effortless means just enough effort to be vivid, to be present, to be here, to be now. To be bright. My teacher used to call this “effortless effort.” We each need to find out for ourselves what this means. Too much effort and we get too tight; too little effort and we get dreamy. Somewhere in the middle is a state of vividness and clarity and inner brightness. This is what I mean when I suggest that people not make too much effort. You must find out for yourself how much that is. (Location 316)
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- Note: As the Buddha said to the musician.
- The point is not to learn how to suppress yourself so that you feel better. It’s how to wake up to the reality of your being, and we wake up to the reality of our being by relating with our human nature, not by avoiding it. (Location 351)
- It’s easy to use meditative techniques to suppress our human experiences, to suppress things that we don’t want to feel. But what is called for is just the opposite. True Meditation is the space in which everything gets revealed, everything gets seen, everything gets experienced. And as such, it lets go of itself. We don’t even let go. It lets go of itself. (Location 355)
- True Meditation is getting out of our minds and into our senses, actually feeling what it is we are feeling. We hear what is happening around us rather than just hearing our thoughts. We see what’s in front of us rather than being totally occupied by the little movies in our minds. In True Meditation, we’re in the body as a means to transcend it. It is paradoxical that the greatest doorway to the transcendence of form is through form itself. (Location 373)
- What if the foundation of your life, and not just the foundation of your time spent in meditation, became allowing everything to be as it is? (Location 420)
- This means allowing everything to be as it was, and as it is now, and as it might be. What if the foundation of your life itself, all those other hours in the day when you aren’t sitting in silence, were occupied by allowing everything to be as it is? (Location 422)
- If we just left meditation at allowing everything to be as it is in a deep way, as profound as that is and as freeing as that can be, that approach on its own could lead us into a state of spiritual dryness or inner disengagement. Inquiry is a way in which we use the energy of our natural curiosity, the energy of spiritual yearning itself, to cultivate radical insight into the nature of our own being. (Location 449)
- In spirituality, the most important thing initially, is to ask yourself, what is the most important thing? What is spirituality about for you? What is the question that’s in your deepest heart? Not the question that someone tells you should be there, not what you’ve learned it should be. But what is the question for you? If you meditate, why are you doing it? What question are you trying to answer? (Location 506)
- Even when we have spiritual questions, they are often focused outside of ourselves. What is God? What is the meaning of life? Why am I here? These are questions that may be relevant to the personality, but they are still not the most intimate question. (Location 517)
- The great twentieth-century Indian sage Ramana Maharshi had a saying, “Let what comes come; let what goes go. Find out what remains.” Meditative self-inquiry is a way of finding out what remains, what has always been. (Location 680)
- And it’s amazing what happens as soon as you tell somebody, “You can do what you want, you can want what you want, go ahead, I don’t care, God doesn’t care, nothing thinks you’re wrong, nothing in all of the universe except a thought thinks you’re wrong for wanting what you want. Now go ahead.” It’s amazing how sometimes when you give someone total permission, how something deeper comes out. (Location 845)
- Don’t be afraid to question. Look at yourself and see what hasn’t worked. And have the courage to change, to move on if something’s not working. Look with innocent eyes, very innocent, very open. That innocence is always there. It’s a sense of wonder. (Location 890)