Live in the Same Way You Meditate

Sitting meditation is a beautiful thing for people to do. In my experience, most people would do well to spend some time sitting in silence every day, whether it's twenty minutes or forty-five minutes. If you are drawn to more, then do more. You may be drawn to an hour a day; you may be drawn to two hours a day. Again, it's really connecting with what you're drawn to do. Not what your mind is drawn to do, but what your heart is drawn to do.

But when I talk about meditation, I am not simply talking about something we do when we're sitting down in a formal way. Meditation also has to do with life and living. If we only learn how to meditate well when we are sitting down, as profound as that may be, it doesn't go far enough. Even if you sit three hours a day, that still leaves twenty-one hours a day when you are not sitting. And if you sit for two minutes a day, that leaves an awful lot of time when you are not sitting.

What I have found over the years is that even really good meditators leave their meditation behind when they get off the cushion. While they're meditating, they can let go of their ideas, their beliefs, their opinions, and their judgments. They can let it all go, and they can meditate very well. But once they are off the cushion, they somehow feel like they need to pick it all back up again. True Meditation is something that actually lives with us. We can do it anytime, anyplace, and anywhere. You can be driving down the street in your car and allowing everything to be as it is. You can have the practice of allowing the traffic to be as it is. You can have the practice of letting yourself feel as you feel. You can let the weather be as it is. Or the next time you meet your friend or your lover, you can investigate the experience. What is it like to meet this person when I allow them to be as they are completely? What is it like when I allow me to be as I am completely? What happens? How do we engage? How does it change? So True Meditation can be a very active meditation, a very engaged meditation.

In fact, it's important that meditation is not seen as something that only happens when you are seated in a quiet place. Otherwise spirituality and our daily life become two separate things. That's the primary illusion—that there is something called 'my spiritual life,' and something called 'my daily life.' When we wake up to reality, we find they are all one thing. It's all one seamless expression of spirit.

What if the foundation of your life, and not just the foundation of your time spent in meditation, became allowing everything to be as it is? This would be a revolutionary foundation for most people's lives. It is revolutionary to have the foundation of your existence, the bottom line of your existence, be allowing everything to be as it already is. This means allowing everything to be as it was, and as it is now, and as it might be. What if the foundation of your life itself, all those other hours in the day when you aren't sitting in silence, were occupied by allowing everything to be as it is?

If you did this, your life might become quite interesting. Because meditation is safe. You go onto your little cushion, you sit on your little chair or your little bench, you curl up in whatever posture you like. Right? It's safe; it's like going back into the womb. Which is wonderful because it is nice to discover a safe place, a place within yourself that is entirely dependable, a place within yourself that nothing and nobody can take away. That's really nice. But when we start to open up and think of meditation not simply as being in a safe place but as an approach to life itself, it gets very interesting, doesn't it? We begin to come out of resistance to experience. And when we start to come out of resistance to experience, we start to discover something that is very potent and very powerful.

We begin to discover the most essential thing, which is the truth of our being. We begin to discover that our essential nature as consciousness is always allowing everything to be as it is. That's why we meditate in this way, because that's what consciousness is already doing—it's allowing everything to be as it is. Consciousness itself is not in resistance. Consciousness is not in opposition to what is. Have you noticed this? Consciousness, or your true nature, is allowing everything to be as it is. If you are having a good day, your true nature allows you to have a good day. And if you are having a rotten day, your true nature doesn't get in the way of you having a rotten day either. Right? It allows it to be as it is. That's not the only thing our consciousness is doing, but it's the foundation.

I have found that one of the keys to really being free is to live in the same way as you meditate. When we really allow everything to be as it is, in that inner atmosphere, in that inner attitude of non-grasping, that's a very fertile space—a very potent state of consciousness. In those moments of surrender, something creative can come to you. That is the space in which insight arises, in which revelation arises. So it's not that we just let everything be as it is as a goal, as an endpoint. If you make it a goal, you miss the point. The point isn't simply to allow everything to be as it is; that's just the base, the underlying attitude. From that underlying attitude, lots of things become possible. That's the space in which wisdom arises, in which 'Ahas' arise. It's the space in which we are gifted with what we need to see. It's the space in which we can be informed by the wholeness of consciousness, not just by a little speck of consciousness in our mind. And ultimately, it is the space in which realization arises. It is the space in which we realize ourselves to be consciousness itself, the unmanifest fabric of being.