Today I was reading a book on meditation - "True Meditation" by Adyashanti. I would love to be very dramatic about it, but to me it is a big thing. And then it isn't. It absolutely isn't. It's perfectly normal. Let me explain.

Adyashanti explains that true meditation happens, when you do not control your experience. The moment you relinquish "your" control on the mind, the mind is in meditation. Meditation is not created, it is the state the mind is in when control ceases. Meditation happens. Meditation is. Not you are meditating, meditation just happens.

You read it, and the mind yells "How!?!". What technique? No technique. Technique is control. Meditation is no control. He explains further that people meditate for purposes - health and emotional well-being, being able to concentrate, wanting to be happy, experiencing bliss. And he says there are techniques for that, and perhaps this is what you want. But he says that to enlighten to spirit, to being, to emptiness, you have to do one thing - do nothing. Be aware. Do not be aware of anything specific. Do not strive. Meditation is not an achievement. Meditation does not require control. Let go. Let it be.

As I read how he unfolded his teaching my mind was struggling. "How!?!" - "Why is that never happening to me?" - it does. It did. The two experiences I think of again and again as the most profound spiritual moments yet were precise examples of what he says:

When I had the experience of being the observer of my ego, thoughts and emotions, before that happened I was not actively trying to "do meditation". I was exhausted. I could not go on. I had nothing more to hold on. I could just plunge into this and relinquish control. I was panicking - what happens now? And an inner voice answered, a thought, something not quite describable "Just let go". Without any alternative, I did. Thoughts started racing by. My awareness was like "stuck in place" and the things of my mind were just racing by. Thought does not need much involvement it seems. It does perfectly alright without me. Everything "whooshed" by and then it came to a stop. I found myself in this state where I could "look at" or "feel" the contents of my mind as things.

The other case was when I was riding a train, thinking about something. I lost myself in thought, the thoughts went on without me paying attention - I had just forgot to pay attention to my own thoughts and my awareness was - feeling good? Can't say. Suddenly I was receiving insight into how my "future self" helps manifesting stuff in the now by selecting options from the future and sending me clues what to do to bring them into being. And I was somehow this self telling me. And I was me. It was knowledge? What was that?

Reading Adyashanti's remarks on meditation, on letting go, on surrendering control reminded me of these two things. In the moments control rested, meditation happened. It was never far away. It is not to be mastered. It is so close you never look for it. It is here. It is now. It is lurking behind every thought. WE SUPPRESS IT.

This kind of meditation is not absence of thought through mind control. You cannot will the mind to be still like if you were wacking it into obedience. You let go of control, and everything arises on its own. I'm not only not my thoughts, I'm not even the thinker!! The thoughts go on and on and don't need me at all. If I don't give them energy by considering them important they would cease when they run out of steam. They roll on by because they have awareness momentum. They got my awareness. Every time I give them my awareness I keep them going. Every time I attach importance to them, thoughts happen. But even if I don't assign importance to them they go on. It thinks. I am.

Thinking back to both of these experiences with meditation I must say it took no effort I am aware of. No effort to enter them. No effort to be in them. "Let go" is sadly something active in our language, because all our verbs are actions in nature. Is it a process? I cannot say. It is a change. It should be a no-verb, a non-activity, something we cannot express. Being still, as if the two words were separate and together. Being. Still. Being still.

I can see how if you never surrender to this you can sit a lifetime. You force your experience. You "do meditation". You don't meditate in this sense. I cannot say why it is so hard to comprehend, maybe because our minds in their current form only exist as long as they are on steam, have momentum. Maybe that's why they cannot understand this. In essence this is true nothing, true emptiness.

Some say the mind is afraid of this, afraid of losing control. Adyashanti says, the mind is afraid of what happens when control is relinquished. I was afraid of it. Truly great things happened when I did. I was wearing myself down with an enormous amount of control. Less control brought more life. Two moments of no-control went so deep so quickly it is just "Wow!". I always wondered - "Why did this happen? I am no good meditator. I have no experience. I can not will myself still. I cannot get my mind to meditate." Adyashanti says, he was a lousy Zen meditator. Until he gave up on control.

Oliver