Andrew Cohen - Meditation - N° 1 - Radical Honesty

When we sit very quietly with ourself and start paying attention to the experience that we're having in a deeper and much more focused way, we have an opportunity to bear witness to ourselves to look very honestly courageously with focused attention at the nature of our own self, the nature of our own being. And it takes courage and spiritual integrity to look honestly at ourselves. So one part of the meditative process, especially if the meditative process is engaged in the context of a profound aspiration for transformation and it becomes a time not only to transcend the mind, not only to make the effort to transcend the mind, which is obviously a big part of what the meditative process is all about. But it's not only about transcending the mind, it's also about bearing [snorts] witness Silently bearing witness to the truth of ourselves trying to see everything and avoid nothing. Honestly, stoically, fearlessly and courageously. There's so much about ourselves and so much about life and reality itself that we consciously and unconsciously try to avoid because it's just too much to deal with. An important part of the meditative process should be the practice of bearing witness which means looking with naked attention at the truth about ourselves. Not trying to hide from anything. Not trying to avoid anything. Not trying to change anything. Not trying to improve anything. Not trying to escape from anything, just merely wanting to see the truth and know the truth and understand the truth. Why? Because it's the truth. And the beautiful thing about the meditative process is usually we're sitting by ourselves. We're we're sitting quietly alone and paying attention to our own experience of self-reflective awareness. And so much can be revealed in that process and so much will be revealed and is revealed if we are fearless and wholehearted about the process we're involved in. But it takes courage to see the truth. And the truth of course comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be too beautiful to bear or too horrible to face. too petty or too grandiose. But there's so much to see and there's so much to understand. It's overwhelming. So if we want to know the the truth with a capital T what the truth is the absolute truth and we simultaneously want to understand the truth about ourselves small T we have to be committed to paying attention and finding out what's actually going on because I continually ly discover and rediscover and rediscover and rediscover that there's so much that I'm unaware of. A big part of waking up and seeing more clearly is the shocking and at times humiliating recognition of how much we're not seeing and how much is not as it appears to be. So much is simply not as it appears to be. self. If we're going to become sovereign souls, which is a big part of what spiritual liberation is all about, if we're going to become sovereign souls, that sovereign that's that sovereignty needs to be earned. It's not a given. Each human life affords us the opportunity for to become sovereign souls, but it's definitely not a given. And in almost every case that I know of, to become sovereign, we need to work for it. And how do we work for it? By wanting to know the truth and by paying attention. Wanting to know the truth and by making the effort to pay attention and look again and look again and look again and look again. The closer we pay attention and the more deeply we see the process of human consciousness and human cognition. It becomes apparent to us in in gross and subtle ways how so much of our experience is so deeply conditioned. So much of our experience is so deeply conditioned. So much of it is unconscious. So to to get to the point when when we can even begin to come to terms with this truth, it requires a dedicated continuous perpetual aspiration to want to see more, want to know more and want to understand more. It means we really have to pay attention and want to know the truth. The absolute truth which is the source of liberation is ungraspable, undefinable, infinite and beyond any sense of limitation. So as much as we awaken to it, become conscious of it, realize it, and become liberated by it. We can still never get our arms around it. Never. So it's something we can never fully know, fully know, fully understand. The absolute truth can never be fully known or fully understood. There's never a moment that can come we can say now I get it fully. It's not possible. So this requires a kind of eternal humility and the infinite renewal of our aspiration to want to be enlightened. And relative truth is an infinitely complex web of an interrelatedness and interreationship. So if you begin to even begin to conceive of it, begin to think about the nature of an infinite web of relatedness. We're looking at infinite complexity in a context of an infinite continuity. We can never know all of it. Can never see all of it. Never understand all of it. But we can see and know and understand more. We can always see and know and understand more. We can always see and know and understand more. So relative truth and coming to terms with relative truth and relative reality is something we need to constantly stay busy with. Trying to understand more, trying to see more, trying to know more. Trying to make more sense out of the complexity, the infinite complexity of relative reality. So any time you take to sit quietly and to pay attention. Also bear witness to yourself and how much integrity you bring into the process of waking up. The new truth, speaking relatively, the new truth about human spiritual development and about the evolution of enlightened awareness. That there's no such thing as a final attainment. Spiritual attainment unfolds as part of as part of a progression. There's greater and lesser depth, greater and lesser clarity, greater and lesser cognition, greater and lesser knowing, greater and lesser freedom, greater and lesser truth. The process of waking up is part of a continuum. And because in reality there's no such thing as a final attainment or final resting place. From that perspective, no matter how far we get, no matter how profound our attainment might be at this point, we still have infinite progress to make. So when you're sitting quietly paying attention and doing the best you can to let go of your mind and your condition identification with the thought stream and the narrative of the small self. Pay attention to your own integrity. to the purity of your own motivation and try and take it a little farther forward. Ask yourself, do you live the courage of your convictions? But are you willing to be an expression of the highest truth that you've realized? Are you more concerned with what you know to be true and you're concerned with what other people think or you're more concerned with what other people think and your own interest in what's ultimately true in a developmental context which is the context of evolutionary enlightenment. In a developmental context things can always change for the better. That's the good news. Change and emerge. Higher potentials are always present and and potentially can be actualized. Reality is an unfolding process. There no fixed outcomes. We look at the reality of the unfolding of consciousness and cognition in a context in which we understand there's no fixed outcomes. The implications are profound beyond measure for you and for me in this life in this moment right now. That's where the good news is always to be found in the immediacy of the unmanifest potential inherent in the present moment. So the meditative process and this and the state or experience of enlightened awareness are one in the same thing. So the way we do it is very simple. The state of enlightened awareness has three facets or sides or dimensions. The first is trust. This only works if you trust in the experience of life and the fact of existence itself. So this can only work which means lead to liberation which is a very specific and explicit experience. You can only have the experience of liberation for yourself within yourself within your own being. Absolutely and unequivocally. If you trust in the fact of existence, trust is the foundation of everything. So if you're sitting by yourself, you have nothing to fear. There's no reason you can't trust radically, absolutely, unconditionally. And with abandon in life itself, when you're sitting alone by yourself, there's nothing to fear at all except the fear of freedom. So the experience of liberation begins with trust. No excuses, no ifs, ands, buts, or may. It's simply a big yes. Yes, I can. Yes, I do. Yes, I will. Trust. The second facet is the practice of attention which we've been speaking about. It means now I'm going to make the effort to to pay closer attention to everything that's happening. I'm really going to pay attention. When you start to make the effort to pay attention, you become aware of how little effort we have been, one has been making to pay attention. Most of the time, we've just been swimming around in a sea of unexamined thoughts and feelings, fears, desires, memories, beliefs, opinions, worldviews, most of which have not been clearly thought through. So the second facet of this State of consciousness is the practice of attention. Are you paying attention? Are you really paying attention? Are you using all of your effort to pay attention? So the second facet is the practice of attention. We can always pay more attention. Always. And the third facet in this journey of awakening, the third facet of this jewel is the practice of surrender or letting go. And the meditative context in the pursuit of the enlightened awareness is the one and only context in which we can choose to unconditionally let go of absolutely everything in every moment. If you're sitting by yourself alone, you have nothing to fear. So you can let go with abandon. You're in now. You want to find out what it's like to be free. So when we let go of everything, it means we're holding on to nothing. If we're holding on to nothing, nothing can be accumulated. Everything is being dropped again and again and again and again and again. Everything's falling away from the source of the self. And when everything falls away, there's only freedom. So the way to do this is to trust, to pay attention, and to let go. That's how it's done. That's what enlightenment is. And that's how you do it. And it'll either happen by itself or it'll take effort. And it really doesn't matter one way or the other. Whether it happens by itself or whether it takes effort. What matters is that you have the experience of inner freedom that's unconditional. You need to have that experience of inner freedom that's unconditional to develop faith and conviction in your own potential for enlightenment. So you need to have the experience. You need to have the experience. And this is how you do it. How? By trusting, paying attention, and letting go. Letting go of what? letting go of everything again and again and again and again. Never trying to figure out where you are. Never thinking that you could even make sense out of where you are. Just trust without questions. Pay attention to everything and hold on to nothing. Just continue to do all three. Just continuously at a certain point it will become spontaneous, natural, and effortless. Just trust, pay attention, and let go. Trust, pay attention to let go. Trust, pay attention to let go.