29 Apr Transcend the Body Transcend the Thoughts – April 30 2019
As long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, you seem short-lived and vulnerable, and of course you will feel anxious to survive. But when you know yourself to be beyond space and time you will be afraid no longer.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
One of the great gifts of meditation is the twice-daily experience of knowing ourselves as something other than the mind and other than the body. We sit in meditation and transcend all the small self ideas of what we are. We dive into the place that is beyond thought and we begin to know ourselves in a new way, as the transcendent space itself. As unboundedness. We begin to loosen our grip on the many limiting ideas of self we generally live with:
I am a woman, a man, an American, an Indian, straight, gay, fat, thin, old, young, smart, dumb, successful, a failure, etc.
We are a process, not a product. We are context, rather than content. To know this is to know freedom. Each idea of self we hold on to is a positionality. By insisting we are this idea, we put ourselves in opposition to some other idea. Opposition moves us away from love, from unity. It puts us into competition – with ourselves, with others, with nature.
When we let go of this opposition, we are able to see the world, rather than how the world is not matching our expectations. We are able to find acceptance: of the moment, of the people in our life, of ourselves.
We are able to see the perfection of each moment, each breath, each encounter. We are able to know ourselves as spirit, offering ourselves to the spirit of the world.
The end of suffering is available now. The door is open. All we need do is step through.
Today I will step back from thoughts and feelings to ask who am I? I will ask for help from Higher Self to be free from the old, limiting ideas of what I am. I will trust that it is safe to let go of these old ideas, that I may discover the freedom that lies just the other side of them.
