From Inner Freedom to Deep Presence

Starting from Inner Freedom
Something happens when you rest for hours over the course of a few days in the silence of meditation. We do sometimes have powerful breakthrough experiences on retreat, but these experiences, as wonderful and thrilling as they are, are not the only source of transformation.

In the past I have often emphasized that meditation is not ultimately about generating big experiences. It is really about what happens when you sit for extended periods of time in radical acceptance of the way things are.

From this point of view, it doesn’t really matter if in meditation you are slightly bored watching thoughts roll through your mind. It doesn’t matter if you feel disappointed about what is happening. And it doesn’t matter if you are thrilled by the experience you are having.

If you practice this way, over time you find yourself drifting in and out of practice, and in and out of thoughts and feelings. Drifting here and there freely without concern. Nothing dramatic is happening, but you feel an easy and peaceful sense of calm.

After hours or even days of meditation you may feel that nothing actually happened, and yet if you were truly content with that, you will also know that somehow everything is different.

You no longer feel like the same person you were before. There is a floating sense of freedom as you move through your life. You don’t need a dramatic experience. If you consistently rest calmly in stillness, the magic will happen.

For the past ten years I have emphasized this perspective by saying that meditation is not about the experience you have, it is about the inner freedom you discover by leaving your experience alone.

Deepening into Presence
At this point my own meditation practice is shifting. Inner freedom is still the foundation and I never want to become discontent with anything that I do or do not experience in meditation. But now I find myself being called toward a much more intensely focused sense of presence.

What I realize about myself is that resting in conscious contentment has become easy and almost habitual. I don’t even have to pay attention when I practice that way. After all, I can even be content with the fact that I’m not paying attention.

Now something more is calling me. It is not about deliberately generating any particular experience, but about discovering what happens when I rest in the original source of my awareness before it becomes distracted by any experience.

When we practice conscious contentment, we allow ourselves to be content with all the wandering of the mind. Thoughts come and go, feelings arise and pass away, our attention is captivated and then released again, and we remain content to allow these normal movements of mind to continue without becoming involved.

This is conscious contentment and it leads to inner freedom. It is important, and it is the essential ground for any further spiritual work. And yet beyond meditating in conscious contentment, there is also the possibility of meditating in deep presence.

If conscious contentment is about relaxing with a meandering mind, deep presence is about resting in the awareness that never wandered in the first place.

Our awareness does not begin entangled in thought, even though it often seems that it does.

Awareness arises in each and every moment from a witness consciousness that is already free and at ease. For most of us it takes only a fraction of an instant for our attention to be swept into the maelstrom of mind. Practicing conscious contentment is how we develop ease around this very normal human condition and discover an abiding sense of inner peace.

What is calling me now is the possibility of resting in that original witness consciousness before attention is captivated by anything else. That deep primordial consciousness is the source of my personal awareness, and it is directly connected to the source of all awareness in the cosmos.

My experience is that resting in that original source of awareness, prior to becoming lost in the mind, begins to generate a powerful awakening in the body that connects us to an ancient dimension of our being that can guide us into deeper awakening. This is what I am feeling called toward in my practice now.