If you try to bring mindful awareness to your life and if you meditate, you will be familiar with the different states of your mind: how it changes, moment to moment and day to day. Some days your attention rests easily in the present moment; you are aware of thoughts arising and releasing them is easy. There are also days when the mind is more active and to maintain concentration is more difficult as the mind is shouting for attention like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum. In these moments simply sitting still can feel uncomfortable. The practice of mindful meditation is a great teacher of patience and humility.
Then there are those moments of transcendence, when the mind is completely silent; ego disappears and you experience connection and yourself just being. You will know that finding the words to describe this experience is difficult. To try and put it into language feels pathetically inadequate. There is a glorious sense of limitless joy, a simultaneous sense of smallness and vastness, of love, of connection; a sense of wonder and of gratitude. There is a brightness and intensity to the colours of the flowers, trees, sky and an overwhelming sense of wonder.
These moments leave me with two very clear sensations:
This sense of connection, this sense of joy is always in the moment and it is with me always. I simply don’t notice because I am too distracted in the bubble of my “me centred universe”. My practices, my meditations are simply about learning how to get out of my own way.
These are also the moments when I feel most certain that consciousness is timeless, and is the underlying fundamental basis of everything. Ego clearly is not timeless; this “ego that is Geoffrey” is made up of a flow of ever-changing thoughts in an ever-changing body. However, my consciousness, my attention is there always − simply observing, aware, knowing.
I wish you love, peace and happiness.
