8 min read
Usually we experience everything very closely, very much attached to what’s happening, to the drama. What happened today, what this person said to me, how the other one reacted, how this made me feel, my worries and my troubles. Research says we think about approximately fifty to seventy thousand thoughts a day. Whatever the number is, our brain is usually a very occupied place. Everything seems so tight and so close that we very rarely get a chance for perspective. Sometimes meditation gives us that perspective. It is when we start to feel the gaps between thoughts and to feel how much silence there actually is in between them. The more we give our attention to this silence the more this silence expands. You realize how much space there is in between your familiar patterns, ways of reaction, worries and fears. You also realize how limited it actually feels when you get too close to these thoughts. How they immediately create this little thinking box which you used to identify with as yourself.
Realize that all around this little box, though, there is space. If you can stay with it it feels as if your head is literally opening up. A vast space that doesn’t have real barriers; that doesn’t have an end. If in this space you get attached to even one tiny thought, you will immediately experience a contraction that pulls you back into the box. That makes it your choice. Because from this space you realize that the next thought is the only thing that can keep you limited. And it can do that only if you pay special attention. Feel instead how much space there is. Does it end in the walls of this room, in the ceiling, does it really have a limit? This is the real meaning of the term “an open mind.” So let’s keep our minds open, literally. And feel how from this point we usually call our head, our minds stretch all the way to who knows where. Who are you in this space? It is thought that is the limit. Try to keep this sense of wideness and openness. You don’t have to contract immediately down to the little box that keeps narrating your personal story. That sense of openness and space is available anytime.
We can feel that deep inside we are inherently free.
It’s actually not that difficult. Our origin, our true nature is always only one thought away. Only one thought to remove. Why isn’t it difficult? It is because this space is where we come from. It is not where we come from in the sense of a physical place, like you live in New Zealand and then you come to visit Berlin; so then if you come from one place and you visit another, you have a physical distance. In meditation what we learn is that there is no such distance. We constantly come from this space. We constantly come from limitlessness. It’s just a matter of a few thoughts that create a shape, a definition to our mind. And as soon as they are removed – because they are just thoughts, not real limitations – the mind immediately breaks open. And it is so close that whenever we get in touch with it again, we don´t understand what we have been doing in between. How could we have forgotten our beautiful “New Zealand”?
At any given moment we can reconnect with that space, and on the other hand, our daily life, our experience as a human being is full of limitations. Everything we can think of is limited. To have pains in the body immediately evokes in us the sense of limitation. We can’t feel broad and free. We have physical dangers. We have the limitations of our individual psychological structure; we have some tendencies that we can´t change just like that. We have a certain cultural conditioning that shapes our reactions to a degree that we don’t really want to admit to. Many perspectives we are proud of are actually cultural conditioning. Our values, and so on. We have so many limitations. If you want to achieve something along the way you are going to meet obstacles. There is resistance from life because not everything is happening according to how you want it. Human life can slap you in the face easily. Our thinking always struggles with that reality because it can´t stand this limitation.
It has a certain vision of how things should be. But why do we have this vision, why do we sometimes have that feeling that nothing should be impossible? Why do we sometimes have these fantasies and imaginings? It is because we come from a place of non-limitation. We can feel that deep inside we are inherently free. When we get in touch with meditation and exploring consciousness, that gets validated completely. That is why we experience such a release when we really deeply meditate. We can feel that all the sense of contraction and limitation of being stuck within a tiny box is suddenly dissolving. That’s so healthy and wonderful and actually indispensable.
The unlimited, though, however unlimited you experience yourself to be, collides with physical reality and human life. If we are unlimited consciousness stuck in a body, this can’t be a mistake, an error. If there is a divine will and if this will is apparent in the universe, it wants us to experience limitation. It drove us to be limited, to experience this box, a well-defined personality, specific obstacles, what we can do, what we can´t do, our disappointments, the death of a dear one, and so on and so on. When you begin to accept and to go deeply into this experience, that we have a tremendously broad and free consciousness and on the other hand we are confronted with so many limitations and difficulties, you find out something really amazing. You find out that this is actually meaningful. That this experience of being limited and being unlimited at the same time creates a rare opportunity that you as an unlimited consciousness can’t have otherwise.
These qualities come from our unlimited nature that knows it can be bigger than human life.
You realize that you are here in this life to learn to grow beyond limitations, to break through limits and recognize your true nature even in the most adverse circumstances. Facing and overcoming fears, challenges, the wish to escape, to give up. We overcome negative emotions, disappointments. It is one full-time job: growing, overcoming, expanding. Sometimes we need to overcome ourselves, sometimes external obstacles. It doesn’t matter. We start to see the beauty and the meaning of it, we begin to love it and enjoy it. We realize that there is a certain wonderful experience in the way that we are constantly nourished by our unlimited nature, that we derive inspiration and empowerment from. The sense that we are bigger than human life and our own limitations. From that space we return to overcome. It is so meaningful because in that way we are constantly manifesting our inner reality of limitless consciousness. Whenever we overcome, we realize it. When I am in fear, that makes me so small. But if I can return to my center and overcome fear, the universe to a certain degree changes. Because I managed to bring this inner power to transform my limitations. That is why the moment in which we feel people can be so beautiful is when they overcome a big blockage or crisis. When they cry their hearts out and stand up like new-borns shining with confidence and humility.
Luckily we are equipped with a tremendous gift from our consciousness and it is called our “heart.” With our heart we have this capacity and willingness and passion to overcome, through all the great qualities that come from our nature which are courage, love, truth, beauty, forgiveness, generosity, and all of these beautiful powers. They cannot come from our limitations. Why would we be generous, fearless, and loving in such a world full of limitations? These qualities come from our unlimited nature that knows it can be bigger than human life, it knows that it can transcend the most immediate instincts of escape and withdrawal. And this keeps pushing us, doesn’t let us escape when we want to give up, when we want to remain small or even to disappear. There is something in us that wants to return home, to that feeling of our origin, to the non-limitation. It is like, “Ahh, enough with this” – wherever we walk and we stumble, we need to push again – so much heavy material. We have this fantasy to just relax and forget about everything. As soon as we begin to find out how meaningful that is, how beautiful – this is why we are here – then we find a lot of joy in these moments of overcoming. They are no longer a struggle but an opportunity. Go back to your nature to recharge, to know who you are and to know that you can overcome. Even when your body and your thinking mind and emotions tell you, you can´t – you can!
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