Everything comes and goes. Almost everything. Our body comes and goes in the way that it changes over the years. Your mind comes and goes in the way that it has different thoughts that enter and exit throughout the day. Inanimate objects will come and go eventually. A building undergoes changes and requires repairs and maintenance over the years. If you took a simple chair and put it outside, after years of just sitting there it would eventually decay. The weather changes, we change our opinions and thoughts, our emotions change, almost everything changes.
There is a part of us, however, that never changes. This is the soul, or the spirit of the human being. It doesn’t change. It doesn’t grow and doesn’t shrink. When we meditate, we can attune to this non-changing part of ourselves. Eckert Tolle said that living spiritually means being able to sense this un-changing part of ourselves, always running in the background of our lives. This part of you has always been with you. It was with you when you were a young child, it is the sense of YOU. It is with you now and it will be with you when you are old.
Meditation teaches us to remain connected and in tune with the un-changing part of ourselves to expand our mind, body and emotional stability. It is a technique that allows us to drop into the part of us that is always the same. It is always at peace. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t have good days or bad days. It doesn’t come and go. This part of ourselves is always available to us. It is a very subtle encounter.
As the different states of mind and emotion come and go, this unchanging part of us can be the witness to these coming and going states. The key is to witness these states without identifying with them. Don’t buy into the current state of your mind or circumstance and see it in any type of way. Just witness. Don’t identify with it. Don’t judge it or call it anything. The next time you find that you are in a struggle of some sort, give it a try. Notice the part of you that is embroiled in the turmoil and the part of you that is aware of it. The part of you that is aware is not involved. Hold some attention to the part of you that is witnessing. Notice the witness is only witnessing, it is not a part of it. Notice the witness is at peace and is grounded and unmoved. There is a very real part of the experience that is struggling, notice that part too, but just observe it.
Witnessing is watching something that is happening as if it is happening to someone else. Identifying is when we believe that we are the state or emotion that we are experiencing. Meditation allows us to experience the space created between a momentary suffering and the deep-rooted sense of peace. The distinction is subtle, at first, but the more practice you have separating your true expression from everything that is coming and going, the more connected you become to the natural peace that you are. It becomes more difficult to buy into the coming and going states of mind and emotion that you previously ran with.
The beauty of this truth is that you don’t have to do anything else, other than observe. You don’t have to change or improve yourself. You don’t have to stop or start living a certain way that you think will be better. The mystical part of this is simply that you just must be aware, observe and witness the part of yourself that is not involved in the coming and going parts. There is nothing else to do to move into a more spiritual life. This technique, and the others I describe in my monthly articles for Optimyz Magazine, are the practical path to true freedom. Spiritual seekers often use the expression, “You have to do the work” …. Well, this is the work. You will find you may have some resistance at first, as you will notice another phenomenon, which is the fact that you don’t want to move away from the misery so quickly. There is a part of us that is addicted to struggle. We easily identify with difficulty and there is real fear of it leaving us because we feel we are losing a part of ourselves that we are so comfortable with. I encourage you to feel the fear and do it anyway. Waiting on the other side you will discover a more beautiful you. You are more brilliant, beautiful and better than you can imagine.
