Cutting the Knot in Meditation – 09.04.12

Excerpt: “Meditation is simply an opportunity to drop the illusion that you are a separate ego; to let the identification of mind and body fall away; and more importantly to let go of the identification of Self with mind. The Self is not the mind. You were not born with the mind; you were born with consciousness, awareness. Awareness that in its natural state is free: free of thoughts, free of images, free of desires, free of fear. But once the ego mind is created through the incorporation of language, with the desires, fantasies, fears imposed by the parents, family, society, larger global culture, then a knot is formed that keeps your awareness identified with mind. And the mind feeling [in] a state of lack, a state in which something is missing to make you feel contentment and wholeness and joy. And we mistakenly think we can find what we are looking for by thinking our way to it; and so we think furiously, constantly, chattering about what we want, what we don’t want, rehearsing how we’re going to deal with some future situation, hating some past situation, never in the present, and ever deepening the hole of lack. But there is no lack; the lack is only created by the illusory identification with a separate bodily entity.” Recorded in the afternoon of Tuesday, September 4, 2012.