Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 4
One who understands correctly sees inaction in action, and action in inaction, and is wise among all of humanity. Such a person performs all actions endowed with Wisdom.
You are sitting and trying to meditate, and your mind starts wandering around. You try to stop it. This works for a while but off it goes again, and this time it’s all over the place, zooming to one thing and another. So you cleverly imagine in your mind, a huge blackboard and stare at it, and slowly your mind starts to calm down.
Things are going pretty well when you notice a pain in your leg. You ignore it and continue staring at the blackboard, but the pain gets worse and worse until you feel like you have to move and adjust your position. But you have been told that moving the body is a no-no because if you move the body, the prana will move, and when the prana moves, the mind moves. So you just sit there enduring the pain, only to find that you are no longer looking at the blackboard but are trying to make the pain go away. You give up on meditation thinking that you are doing something wrong and that you don’t have the ability to meditate because you can’t still your mind.
Where the attention goes, the energy flows
(and visa versa).
The pain was trying to get your attention on your leg. Next time just let it go there and see what happens.
Trying to stop action is an action.
Persons undertaking yoga meditation generally begin with learning how to sit correctly so that keeping the body from moving around becomes possible without discomfort. Once one achieves this skill, it is possible to begin to learn another skill: how to stop the mind from moving around. This begins with controlling the attention by putting it on one thing and keeping it there. Because the attention is on only one thing, it isn’t doing anything else and the mind calms down.
Meditation is a steady flow of attention
to one thing.
All of this is work, action, but within this action, there can be a relatively inactive mind. But it is not completely inactive because you are holding it still, which is an action, so the mind is still active. However, eventually, if you persevere, you may one day enter a state in which something else takes over and causes the stillness to last.
At first, this is only murcha, the black nothingness of yogic swoon—unconsciousness. Now, with no knowledge or guidance, you are either disenchanted because of this unconscious state, or you think you have had samadhi and land yourself in the midst of self-deception. But you continue plugging away at meditation anyway, and one day you reach a different kind of stillness that takes you into an early stage of samadhi. But because there are things going on in this state, you think you have made a mistake and just cannot meditate correctly. You have not realized that surrender has inadvertently crept in to produce this state, for it cannot be had with the efforting will engaged.
Trying to stop action is doing something.
It is at this moment that technique changes to non-technique; willful action ceases. Technique (using the will) is one way to get there, but there is a more direct way: forget about stilling your mind, surrender yourself to God from the very beginning knowing that, in the hands of Perfection, success is inevitable.
In Surrender Meditation, one experiences inaction in action, and action in inaction, as Shakti, the life force in the body, with Her infinite intelligence manages all actions, leaving you free of effort and ego. It is a journey of wondrous experiences on the way to freedom.
Will – Doing something deliberately for a purpose; executing a desire.
The agent of action is ego.
Surrender – The cessation of forcing and resisting; entrusting yourself to God, Truth.
The agent of action is God, Truth.
A child stands inside a doorframe, arms rigid, the backs of his hands pressing for all he’s worth against the doorframe to beat his buddy at how long he can hold this position. He presses and presses until he can’t bear it any more and, without thinking, he steps away from the door and his hands and arms rise effortlessly upward, proving themselves immune to gravity.
Try it sometime.
Namaste (I bow to the Divine One that You really are),
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