True Meditation Begins with Resting in the Natural State

In True Meditation, we start from the foundation of letting everything be as it is. In True Meditation we are not moving toward the natural state, or trying to create the natural state; we actually start at the natural state from the very beginning. This is what I discovered all those years ago when I started to let go of the meditator, the controller, when I sat down and simply allowed everything to be as it was. What I realized very quickly was that the peace and stillness I was trying to attain were already there. All I had to do was stop trying to attain them. All I had to do was to sit down and allow my experience to be as it was.

Like most people, when I sat I sometimes felt good and peaceful. Other times I would be agitated, upset, or anxious. Sometimes I would be sad, and sometimes I would be happy. I felt all the various human emotions while I was sitting. What I realized was that when I allowed my experience to be as it was, and made no effort to change it, an underlying natural state of being started to rise into consciousness. An uncontaminated, unmanufactured state of consciousness would start to arise, very simply and very naturally. I would call it a very innocent state of consciousness, because it wasn't derived from effort or discipline. I discovered that the natural state, our natural state of being, is not an altered state of consciousness. So many people associate meditation with altered states of consciousness. Yet this is a profound misunderstanding about the potential of meditation. The potential I'm talking about is spiritual awakening, awakening to the realization of what you and everything actually is, the oneness of all. We are taught, or we assume, that to perceive everything as one and to perceive yourself as not separate is to enter an altered state of consciousness. And yet, as it turns out, the truth is just the opposite. To perceive everything as one is not an altered state of consciousness. It's an unaltered state of consciousness; it's the natural state of consciousness. By comparison, everything else is an altered state.

When we think of meditation we need to let go of the idea that enlightenment is an altered state of consciousness that we can somehow attain. Practiced meditators know that if you meditate hard enough and long enough, you will occasionally enter into altered states of consciousness. There are all sorts of them. Happiness is an altered state of consciousness. Sadness is an altered state of consciousness. Depression is an altered state of consciousness. Then, of course, there are all the mystical states of consciousness: merging with the cosmos is an altered state of consciousness; feeling your consciousness expand is an altered state of consciousness. There are many varieties of altered states of consciousness. Most people think enlightenment is some altered state of consciousness. This is a profound misunderstanding. Enlightenment is the natural state of consciousness, the innocent state of consciousness, that state which is uncontaminated by the movement of thought, uncontaminated by control or manipulation of mind. This is really what enlightenment is all about. We cannot come upon this truth of our nature through manipulation. We cannot move beyond what I call the false identity, the egoic identity, by trying to change. We can only start to allow consciousness to wake up from its identification with thought and feeling, with body and mind and personality, by allowing ourselves to rest in the natural state from the very beginning.