Daily Quote, Thursday August 20, 2009.
Good morning everyone,
Much cooler this morning! Hope you are well and slept deeply!
Here is today's quote:
Meditation is inquiry into the very being of the meditator.
As human beings we are all capable of inquiry, of discovery, and this whole process is meditation. Meditation is inquiry into the very being of the meditator. You cannot meditate without self-knowledge, without being aware of the ways of your own mind, from the superficial responses to the most complex subtleties of thought. I am sure it is not really difficult to know, to be aware of oneself, but it is difficult for most of us because we are so afraid to inquire, to grope, to search out. Our fear is not of the unknown, but of letting go of the known. It is only when the mind allows the known to fade away that there is complete freedom from the known, and only then is it possible for the new impulse to come into being.
The Collected Works, Vol. X - 255
Here are my reflections.
Patanjali makes a similar commect in the Yoga Sutras, that our problem is not fear of the unknown but fear of letting go of the known. We are not afraid of what we don't know or can't know, but we are afraid of losing what we know. It's our reference point. Because of this we don't meditate, we don'y go into the question of knowing the self, we don't take the risk of being without beingness. This beingness of the self is what we are most afraid of losing. If we let it go, we might find that the unknown cannot be known and that there is a different quality to being than there is to being the self. But this is surely the point: that freedom - the new and the creative - can have no foundation; it cannot come for the known. To continue Nicole's point from her comment yesterday, it cannot come from accummulation, from gathering more knowledge.
Best wishes
Robert
Is there a significance to our constant referencing? Energy has a reference point and maybe we are relating to that energy. And can we avoid being held in the past if we allow ourselves to have a reference point?
ReplyDeleteI think the 'self' is the significance, as the referencing is used to create and maintain our self-image. I am this only in reference to that, etc.
ReplyDeleteI think the past and the reference point are the same thing, so that as long as we have reference point we are in the past. Even a future reference point is going to be projected from the past: a dislike to avoid or a pleasure to repeat. I would like to be this in relationship to that; it's always past related.
Can you say more about energy as a reference point?
Is it energy that has a centre or that has no centre?