Here’s a question I received at a recent online event:
Q: When there’s a consistent practice but still a sense of not quite getting there, what might be overlooked about the nature of realization?
A: Practices can give us insight, or they can give us an experience. If we take meditation, for instance, there can be the experience of silence, or of expansion, or of euphoria. These experiences are known by awareness—they are known by one’s infinite nature.
The nature of these practices is, in a way, a kind of game of hide and seek. For most of us, we’re initially engaged in the world, seeking conventional human experiences. Then that often shifts into spiritual seeking. The dualistic realm quite likes spiritual seeking because it keeps us energetically engaged—we’re still looking for something.
Practices like meditation, while they can offer deeper experiences, can also perpetuate duality. We may feel that an experience we had on a retreat was somehow closer to realization, so we continue seeking—through retreats, books, or different practices. But effortless being is there before we even begin.
In some meditation practices, there’s a short period of time before we begin the mindfulness, mantra, or whatever method we’re using. In that space—before we introduce any form—there is already effortless, impersonal being. The slightly comical aspect is that we are already in our true infinite nature. We’re playing a game of distraction, pretending we’re trying to get back to something we never actually left.
This is what tends to be overlooked. Practices can act as an intermediary between conventional experience and the clarity of ever-present realization, which is that you are already in your true infinite nature. This nature is the awareness within which all forms appear. It isn’t dependent on any form.
Experiences may vary—they can be silence, expansion, or bliss, or more ordinary states. It doesn’t really matter. What is important is recognizing that awareness itself is effortless being, already fully present.
Whether the experience is restfulness or tiredness, health or illness, the content is always changing. But the awareness that knows these experiences is unchanging, and it is already fully present.
If you’d like to discuss this or anything else with me, join us for our next live event…
With love,
David Bingham
