We frequently encourage everyone at Satsang to treat all of life as meditation. This is not to discourage silent sitting, but rather to bring the attitude of meditation to all aspects of living.
What do we mean by the attitude of meditation? In silent sitting, we encourage letting everything be as it is. Noticing Awareness prior to, or shedding light on, thoughts, emotions, etc. When we find we are off on a thought, we treat that recognition as Grace, allowing an apparent choice to again rest as Awareness. There is gratefulness, an openness, when we recognize we are off on a thought, because, again, prior to that recognition we have no choice but to ride the flow of the mind. Once we recognize we are off on a thought, we can fall back into Silent Emptiness.
In Satsang, we all come to the direct experience as Awareness. Simply letting go of all we are not brings us to the immediate recognition as our Eternal Essence. This goes by many names: Awareness, Emptiness, Nothingness, Space, Silence, Freedom, Serenity, and many, many more. There are lots of names because no word or concept can convey that which is beyond concepts, so we use words that seem to approximate the fragrance of This.
Once we have noticed This that never changes, has no boundaries, is prior to concepts, it is like noticing the movie screen behind the movie. It was always there but never noticed. Once This is “seen,” This can never be fully unseen.
Our teacher, Sharon Landrith, often encouraged us to, “Come home.” This encouragement is just another way of saying to live all of life as meditation. Whenever we find ourselves identified with a thought, emotion, belief, or sensation, we treat that recognition the same way we would treat a thought, emotion, belief, sensation in silent sitting. We feel grateful because this recognition allows an apparent choice to let go of that identification and come home as changeless Awareness. An Awareness that births from an apparent eternal, burgeoning Emptiness. Adyashanti described it beautifully when he referred to this apparent state of recognition as, “Emptiness dancing.”
This approach may sound like a “doing,” and some might feel it strengthens the idea of a doer rather than the recognition as This, which is beyond doing and doer. To us, it is akin to the effortless vigilance of a parent’s love for a child. It is a much greater spontaneous flow of love than any doing. Holding identification with thoughts, emotions, beliefs, or sensations is actually the doing. It takes effort to hold a rock in our hand, it takes no effort to let it fall. We are forever grateful, when by no individual effort or specialness, we are graced with the recognition we have grabbed hold of an identification and have the apparent freedom to allow the identification to fall away, as we fall back into, and as, Eternity.
Enjoy, Steve and Bec