Reflections: Meditations

When you start meditating, meditating on who is the watcher is a good start.
Who is the observer?
Who is the one who is noticing?
This is an entry point to the awareness, but it is only the beginning of meditation.

When you have more experience, you can ask,
"Who is observing the observer?"
"Who is noticing the noticing?"

During meditation, you can notice many things.
Do I feel stupid, standing there, looking like I am trying to meditate?
Do I feel prideful, standing there, looking like I am trying to meditate?

What does the stupid one feel like?
Who is the one noticing the stupid one?
Is there another there?
Is there another part that feels powerful?
What does the powerful one feel like?
Who is noticing the powerful one? What does that one feel like?

What does it feel like when other people are looking at you?
What does it feel like? Who is the one that they are watching?
What does this one feel? What does that feel like?

Is it an insecure ego? Who is the one watching this insecure ego? What is this one like? Is it insecure? What are its characteristics?

One of my favorite verses from the Tao is verse 38:

"The Master doesn’t try to be powerful;
thus he is truly powerful.
The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;
thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,
yet something remains undone.
The just man does something,
and leaves many things to be done.
The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go."

This verse always reminds me of verse 78:

"Therefore the Master remains
serene in the midst of sorrow.
Evil cannot enter his heart."

This verse always reminds me of Self-Reliance,

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

I merge these.

The Master keeps with perfect serenity the independence of solitude.

One of my most powerful meditations now is,
"Who is The Master?"

but this will not just work for anyone.
I have an association to it, a reference point to it.
The Master I am referring to has Serenity.

I am not asking, "Who is God?"
If I asked who is God, I would have many associations and concepts and ideas that I believe.

I'm not asking that.
I am asking, who is this Serene one?

I am not asking, "Who is God?"
I am asking,
"Who is the Creator?
Who is the same Creator in all of these humans?
Who is the one who created these skies and this nature?"

"Who is the unchanging one?
Who is the one who has always been here, and who will always be here?"

I think about the sun, or the moon.
I consider that this is the sun that Adam saw, and it will be the sun the last human sees.
Then I ask, "Who am I in my history?"
Then I look from the start of my life and imagine to the end.
Then I ask, "What is this history?"
And I scan from the beginning of history to the end.

Then I consider the sky, and I do just not look at the sky in front of me, I consider the sky 360 degrees around me,
to the edge of the horizon in all directions.
Then I image what is beyond the edge of those horizons.
Then I also imagine what is beyond the sky.

Today, when I looked at the sky, I imagined the imaginations of the Greeks, imagining all these Gods and Goddesses fighting in the sky,
their intense colors and powers, the epicness of their stories.

And I thought, "The Creator created all of those personalities. He created epic personalities. He created epic stories."

When you have expanded to this state of contemplation,
you can consider who you are across time.
Who is the ever-present, unchanging, constant you across the span of your existence?
What does it mean to connect to that?
You will realize that you become what you focus on,
and that the longer you focus on that one,
the more it becomes you.

Then you look at the people going by, and you recognize the contrast.
They are in their heads, thinking about themselves.
There's a contrast.
There's a difference.

You ask, what's the difference?
The difference is you aren't thinking about yourself.
You aren't thinking about your story.
You aren't thinking about your problems and your desires.

What are you thinking about then?
You're thinking the One, the constant, the One outside of time and place.

The contrast is they are looking at time and place.
You have stepped outside.

And then you ask, is there something different about me then?
And you realize the answer is no. There's nothing different.
Because, every one of them could step outside too,
and they would all be thinking about the same One.

And you realize that this is the way to live,
the way you want to live,
they way you've been wanting to live.

It's why you've been saying you want a break from your phone.
It's why you've been saying you want to figure out how to stop chasing the next thing every moment.

You see that it is the way to live because you have your focus, you have the ability to control what you do,
you have the ability to keep perspective of what matters to you and what you want to do with your life.

It is the break that you've been looking for from the ragdoll experience of life, that you feel this way, and then that way,
and then you have one focus, but then another part of you pulls you to another focus and you feel stuck in the same place,
always trying to feel better, always looking for the thing that will satiate your discontentment.

The constant, unchanging you, Is.

When you are the constant, unchanging one,
you are the supporter of the one who is changing, who does have all these feelings and experiences and problems and struggles.
But you feel the Path.

Much of our distress comes from the feeling that we cannot sense the Path.