24 Seven November 2021

A
All of our life experiences have
been trying to teach us a certain grand lesson: Liberation
from our captive condition (whatever that may be in the
moment) cannot come by further deliberating it. We can
see the wisdom in doing nothing toward our own troubled
thoughts and feelings when we realize that the only way
not to be dragged under by these negative states is to stay
out of their life.
In many ways, this kind of watchfulness is a meditation.
It involves our willingness – wherever we are and in
whatever we’re doing, and regardless of what that moment
may be that brings up in us what it does – that to do
nothing in the face of those reactions is the beginning of
a new relationship with them, the beginning of the next
level of meditation.
Because you see, meditation isn’t just sitting someplace
with our eyes closed, quietly contemplating something of
a spiritual nature, or doing whatever discipline we do in
order to make the mind be still. No. That’s not meditation,
at least not the next level that we’re looking at together.
Meditation is a direct relationship with the sum of
ourselves in the moment, where we stand as a witness to
what moves through us instead of becoming its captive
through our reaction to it. In other words, meditation has
nothing whatsoever to do with trying to reconcile some
disturbance in our life. Meditation is our agreement to
allow that disturbance, whatever it may be, to reveal to us
something about ourselves that we don’t know yet. That
revelation is the same as release.
And that is the heart of meditation – being released
moment to moment from a sense of self that doesn’t know
what it’s clinging to.
When it’s time to step back from some reaction that’s
tempting you to jump in and to get out of some jam,
remember to do nothing but watch.
This means whether you’re in your car, at work, at
home, talking to your husband, your wife, be as inwardly
still as you can be toward what you see in front of you.
Why? Because what you see in front of you is always your
reaction to what something in you perceives as being the
source of the disturbance outside of you.
The next level of meditation is to understand the
disturbance is never outside of you, but within a level
of consciousness that is constantly disturbed and then
ceaselessly seeking a solution to its own disturbance.
You don’t need to do anything else. Don’t fall into that
fitfulness that’s pulling you left and right. Don’t accept
the sound and fury of those ten thousand thoughts and
feelings coursing through you as being the proof that
somehow or other you somehow must protect yourself
from them. Just watch it all, and you’ll soon understand
the goodness of that kind of stillness, of that the next level
of meditation.
About The Author
GUY FINLEY
Guy Finley is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher and
bestselling self-help author. He is the founder and director of Life
of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for spiritual self-study
located in Merlin, Oregon. He is the best-selling author of The
Secret of Letting Go and 45 other books and audio programs.
To Learn More Visit:
www.GuyFinley.org