Andrew Cohen - N° 29 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

According to the Buddha and according to people like Ramana, the deepest part of reality is eternal, timeless, formless, birthless, and deathless. And that there's no coming and there's no going. That's the eternal ground. So if you focus on that, you start to rest in being very naturally. And if you if you're watching what it rises and falls away all the time, you're just watching phenomena come and go. There's no grabbing. You're just letting go. You're watching the totality of reality from a position of letting go of everything. If you let go of everything and I mean absolutely everything seen and unseen. The ground of your posture is letting go of everything. Not attachment to anything. Just letting go and letting go of everything. You start to rest in that place where there's no attachment to anything. And if you can let go into it, it becomes a spontaneous state of freeall and it becomes effortless. Right? No effort involved. Just just just the only effort is to let go. And the more you let go, you start to experience more and more lightness of being, more and more lightness of being, just more and more joy. And the less you want to do anything at all. You don't want to have coffee. You don't want to have food. You don't want to walk. You don't want to have a conversation, just want to be. So the being itself starts getting louder and louder and louder and more all consuming and it becomes self-absorbing and one gets absorbed in a state of being that is profoundly self-liberating. There's no effort involved. There's just surrender. Surrender and a and a very intense attention. That's the goal. So from my perspective which is my perspective which is relevant. The problem with the Buddhist approach to meditation that you've been describing is people get very good at watching what's coming and going but they don't get so good at the letting go of everything. So they become very good technical meditators but they're not very good at being enlightened. But I know I'm going to go to hell, so I can say things like that anyway. I'm already destined to go to hell. But I I honestly believe what I'm saying is true because uh I spent time with a lot of teachers who were teaching me how to to be a technical meditator. They were very good at the technique. They weren't very good at liberation part. They didn't seem to know even what it was. Even though they spoke about it, they didn't seem to have any direct experience of it. So my guru said to me, Andrew, I'm so glad you found a friend you'll never be able to see. I'm so glad you have found a friend that you will never be able to see. So how do we find a friend we'll never be able to see? By letting go of the friend. This is our best friend, our deepest friend, our closest friend. We have to let go him or her unconditionally, radically, absolutely and completely and inexplicably, paradoxically, that gives us gives rise to spiritual intimacy with the ultimate truth about the nature of life and death. So it's really the enlightenment dimension which I learned from my guru was always only about letting go of the mind not working with it. It's not working with the mind which is a whole different kind of practice. It's letting go of the mind without conditions. That's the difference. That's really very simple. So I'm asking you to do is to not already know what what to do. All you need to know is I have to let go of my mind. Everything flows from that very naturally, mysteriously, organically. You just let go of the mind. These mysterious nondual truths which the rational mind cannot even begin to grasp will begin to self reveal themselves spontaneously to you within yourself. It's not a rational understanding. It's a transrational knowing that it will begin to just and it start opening up inside you and then you look at it and it it'll be gone and you start staring at it like an object. It will disappear. If you relax and just continue to let go, you start to find you're swimming in higher consciousness a lot of the time. It really works. I guarantee it works because it happened to me. But like I am fond of repeating to people to attain enlightened awareness in a way that's stable. It's like winning a gold medal at the Olympics. So if you think about it in that way, you won't mind making an effort. If it's important enough to, you'll be happy to. But it this remedy of transcending the mind and letting go of the mind is so absurdly simple. And the more you do it, the more you realize it is everything. It is everything. It is everything. Sometimes it's easy, some sometimes it's difficult. Doesn't matter. And I have found that the in the unconditional, radical, and absolute letting go of the mind, a lot of the information about the nature of the mind that the Buddhists want to teach us is themsel revealing from that position. that if you if you get good at letting go of your mind, a lot of the information about the nature of mind and how it functions that the Buddhists teach so well become self-revealing as a result of letting go of the mind, not of trying to understand it. Because for example there by the Buddhism they'll teach us a lot about being mindful. I'm sitting down eating my food. I'm aware of the fork lifting the food up to opening m chewing or swallowing. I'm aware of what's happening. I'm paying attention. Some people are very good at this kind of practice of mindful self-awareness. Paying attention. Slowing down. Paying attention. Avoiding nothing. Seeing everything. So after I met my guru, I had a very different experience. I s I started to discover in a miraculous way. Had a much deeper part of me than my ego. Much deeper part than my my ego was always paying attention whether I was even aware of it or not. I found myself having these moments of becoming aware that I'd been paying attention the whole time that I hadn't even been aware of it. And now I was waking up to the fact that this deeper part of me, my true self was always paying attention. So when you realize that the deeper part of yourself is always paying attention, it's miraculous. That doesn't involve any effort. But you, whoever you are, are paying attention all the time at the deepest level. When we enter in these higher states, we realize that with all the information, it's all there. So there's a trans rrational leap that has to happen. There's a transactional leap. Transactional leap beyond the mind. I don't know, but I want to know. Don't already know, but I want to know. And all you're left with then is a big zero. There's nothing there. And then you find everything is there. You can let you can let go of the mind. Everything is always there. It's exploding with beauty, truth, and goodness as you can't even begin to imagine. But we have to continue to let go of the content of the mind. So, it's ridiculously simple, but I've been doing this for 35 years now, and it's as fresh and new to me as it was when I first discovered it. It's like the first time. It's like always being a virgin, having the first experience. Let go of the mind. It's all you've got to do. I say, "How do I do it?" And just do it. So I I told you probably about eight times in the last 10 minutes. And you you still your part of your substance doesn't think I gave you the answer yet. So that shows you what we're playing with here. It's very big and very deep. The presence of thought is not a problem. It's your relationship to them. So having no relationship to the mind doesn't mean that the mind has to disappear. Doesn't mean that the mind won't disappear. The mind might disappear, but it doesn't have to disappear to attain enlightenment. So you say, well, for the next hour or the next day, I'm not going to have any relationship with my mind. So whether the mind appears or disappears, it doesn't matter to you because you're not going to have any relationship with it. So meditation is about having no relationship to the mind. All you have to do is be serious about having no relationship with your mind. You don't have to focus your attention in any particular place on your body or your chant any particular mantra. Focus on anything particular except no relationship. Relationship involves how many? Two. No relationship involves how many? Zero. There is no other. I am that. So I can you can either focus on zero, focus on nothing or focus on no relationship. I think no relationship is very helpful as a way to think about this. No relationship with time, no relationship with body, no relationship with mind, no relationship with world, no relationship with the cosmos, no relationship. So that means time and the passing of time can still be present. Body and the movements of the body can still be present. mind and personality can still be present. All universe can still be present. But you can choose to have no relationship with any of it. So the the mere presence of all of these objects doesn't mean anything. So you'll find at a certain point that no relationship is the experience of freedom and the presence of the body and the presence of the mind, the presence of the personality, the presence of time, presence of the universe. There's no obstruction to that because you're practicing no relationship. If someone awakens in a very profound, deep and lasting way, a portal opens in their soul and the light of the true self shines through that portal into this world into this world of time and space. That's the light of the true self is shining through that portal. Someone has a profound transformation that that's permanent. There's a a portal has opened up in their soul and the light of the true self shines through and that's the best kind of initiation because it's a direct transmission of the goal.