The Ultimate Act of Faith

Spiritual awakening does not come about through any sort of intellectual understanding. We cannot arrive at our true nature through words, through concepts, through ideas, or through theology. None of those means reveal our true nature. It's extraordinarily important to realize that when the mind is trying to understand, when the mind is trying to grasp an intellectual comprehension of ultimate reality, the mind is simply trying to remain in control. It's an intellectual form of mind control, and it needs to be let go of as well. Which isn't to say that the mind plays no part in spiritual awakening; this is also a common misunderstanding of spirituality. The mind plays a vital role. Thought itself plays an important role. Later I will talk about how we use the mind in the form of spiritual inquiry. In spiritual inquiry we are actually engaging the mind, in order to go beyond the mind.

So I am not suggesting that mind and thought are ultimately a problem. It's our attachment to mind that is a problem. It is an illusory pursuit to look to concepts and ideas in order to find truth, to find peace, to find that which will liberate us. When we let go of the thinking mind, we become open to insight—to what in spirituality we might call revelation, or the spontaneous arising of a deep wisdom or a deep knowing. It arises in the mind but does not derive from the mind. It is an 'Aha' experience—an instantaneous understanding. When you think, 'Aha! I understand that,' it's not a matter of logical thought. It's something that just registers in the mind, and in the body, and has the nature of a revelation. And so again, to get access to this level of insight, we start by letting go of control, even control of the mind. We enter into a natural state of being. In a sense, True Meditation is the ultimate act of faith. Because to sit down and let everything be as it already is—to let go of control, to let go of manipulation—is itself a very deep act of faith. It's also a deep act of investigation.

What happens when we actually let go of this control? What happens when we allow everything to be exactly as it is? This question is the foundation of all spirituality. Until we can allow everything to be as it is, in the deepest possible way, in the most profound way, we are still involved in control. In true spirituality and in True Meditation we are letting go of this control from the beginning. We are not pumping energy into the ego, into the mind, into the controller, into the manipulator. We are actually letting go of effort, which is a revolutionary idea to most people—that we can meditate in such a way that we are not making an effort. This does not mean we are being lazy or going to sleep.

But letting go of control, letting everything be as it is, is a means of letting go of effort. So when I say that we let go of control, that we let everything be as it is, it is the same as saying we let go of making an effort. We find out what happens in our consciousness when we let go of effort, when we let go of discipline. And we can start to see in our own experience that there's a certain vitality that comes into consciousness. It's almost like a light gets turned on within, simply because we let go of effort and control. Something that is innocent and beautiful and uncontaminated starts to arise in consciousness; it starts to arise all on its own and all by itself. And this is quite different from what most of us have been taught. We've been taught that to enter a natural state of consciousness we must learn to control and discipline ourselves; what I am saying is that it's just the opposite. You come into the natural state by letting go of control by letting go of effort and resting in a state of vividness. It's very simple. It couldn't be simpler. Sit down; let everything be as it already is. You can even ask yourself a very simple question, right from the very beginning: 'Is it not true that the peace and the stillness I am trying to attain through meditation are already here, right now?' Then look for yourself. When we look for ourselves, we come to see that yes, indeed, peace and stillness are totally natural states, and they are already happening. At that point all you have to do is notice it and then give yourself to it. Find out what happens when you give yourself to the peace that already is, to the stillness that already is. This is the investigation.