ALL ONE?

To be All One -

It was a marvellous afternoon, all the corn across the field has turned brown and it was dry and ready for the farmer to combine it off. The sun of the day was warm but the fall air allowed one to sit under the large maple tree with a warm jumper on and enjoy the afternoon. The birds which there were plenty, darted back-and-forth from the feeders and the petunias growing under the mailbox were in full bloom after the rains that drove the heat of summer away. The flower head of the petunias poured themselves out of the plant holder with great abundance and fullness.

How important it is to be alone with oneself, to take the time to sit and be quiet and just observe the things outside of oneself the space you live in and the space around. Then also to be aware of the space within oneself cluttered by the noise of thinking. How important it is to let it be and not identify with the process of thought or the thinker thinking those thoughts. Otherwise one is caught in a whirlwind of one’s perpetual self-interest. Most of us think, and it has been opposed upon us by experts that meditation is something one does for an hour or some favourable time. If we could start by understanding what meditation isn’t, perhaps we could learn what it actually is. Meditation is not crossing your legs breathing deeply and the repetition of sounds or words. This is what the ego self does, as a means to escape the turmoil, conflicts that are unresolvable or not! I do not know what meditation is, but any wilful intent I have to meditate seems to be an action chosen by self to escape the misery of my condition. I have spent long hours meditating and chanting and discovered, they were systems and methods put together by thinking to avoid some desperate situation within. Premeditated meditation is not meditation. I have practiced walking meditation lying down meditation, yoga meditation and they all are directed by self to get out of self. When self doesn’t like what is happening and quickly changes direction! It looks for comfort and wants to meditate. Self creates a ritualized effect by practising it at the same time every day to achieve something. Any ritual or tradition becomes a mechanical movement that will bring comfort but dulls the brain and makes it shallow and superficial. Repeating words or chants aloud first and then silently to one’s self rocks oneself and mind into a state of numbness. To come upon something not put together by thought or invented by the devious thinker one must sit in the unknown and be completely insecure. Very few people are willing to embrace seeing past the movement of thought. To see past all the nationalistic, religious, political, or philosophical content that it has created and all the disconnection in this world is to be rational and put thought in its place. One must be willing to stand alone, and not retreat into one’s passed conditioning when the burden of thinking and one’s thoughts are too much to bare! There is a great unknown force that asks us to stop becoming, comparing, and making an effort to pull ourselves up to some self- imposed greatness, which is not greatness. A rose, a bird, a flower, a small pond is greatness all of them aren’t trying to be anything but what they are. They don’t have their existence in any other being’s affairs. They remain completely alone in themselves. The etymological meaning of the word alone according to Oxford is to be all one!