The Magic and Mystery of Now

Do you believe in meditation magic?

I do.

There is a magic to meditation that many practitioners never discover because it is only found when time is eliminated from the equation. You can call this the discovery radical immediacy and it is the central insight of the Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta that I was initiated in.

The secret is knowing that true meditation is not something that happens in time. It happens instantaneously the moment you decide to let go. It doesn’t matter if you sit for twenty minutes or two hours, meditation always occurs in the very first instant. Everything after that is ‘just sitting’ as any Zen master will tell you.

When you sit in meditation you simply let go. You stop trying to control, alter or manipulate your experience in any way, and you let everything be exactly as it is. As the Sufi mystic Rumi put it, “close your eyes and surrender.”

If you are trying to let go, you are actually holding on. Pick up a pen and let it go. If you open your hand slowly it could take an hour, but you weren’t letting go for an hour, you were holding on less and less for an hour.

Without realizing it we tend to approach meditation as an accomplishment to be achieved. We imagine that there is something we will work towards through practice, but by believing we are “not there yet” inadvertently creates our own bondage.

Spiritual freedom is not a goal to attain in the future. It is the truth of our true nature now. Free is what we are. The only thing that keeps us from realizing it is the belief that we aren't.

True meditation doesn't liberate you, because you were never not free. Meditation is the practice of freedom itself. The goal is freedom, the practice is to be free, and free is what you are as long as you don't assume otherwise.

The magic of now begins to flow as soon as we choose to be free by simply allowing everything to be exactly the way it already is. We slip right out of time. We discover that we are free from the relentless march of passing moments.

It is impossible to describe in words, but we are nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. Every thought, every feeling, every sensation arises and passes away but none of it touches you any longer. As you continue to rest in the experience of now beyond time, the passing show of your experience becomes less and less captivating. Gradually you become aware of the infinite expanse of imperceptible space that all experience arises in.

I believe that this trans-sensual perception is what inspires spiritual passages that refer to being blind but seeing everywhere. Practicing meditation in this way initiates us into the mystery of being. Once we taste the invisible infinite that engulfs us, we realize that it is not just empty space. It is a living being – the origin of all wisdom and love in the universe. It is not dead, it is alive and it lives through us.

From this moment on we feel compelled to be an ever more perfect channel for the manifestation of this universal heart and mind. If we are so lucky that our identification with our familiar self yields to the recognition of who we really are, our spiritual orientation will flip on its head. We are no longer interested in trying to get anywhere, we only want to be more of who and what we already are.