Most of us have spent a lifetime fixating our desires on external objects.
But if we learn to really trace them back, we discover that they are the voice of loving
awareness calling us home.
[bells]
So I want to read you one of my favorite quotes from Sri Nisargadatta, he says, “All you
need is already within you.
Only must approach yourself with reverence and love.
Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.
Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself.
All I plead with you is this: make love of yourself perfect.
Deny yourself nothing.
Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them, you are beyond.”
This is not about indulging ourselves.
This is about withdrawing our fixations on substitutes and really sensing what is it
we really long for, what is it we really long for, and discovering in that longing
the love and the awareness that is already here.
So in that spirit I’d like to invite you to do a brief meditation together bringing
RAIN to the wanting mind.
And like any applied meditation for us to bring mindfulness and compassion of RAIN to
some of the waves inside you, you need to be in your body so I’d like to invite you
to begin this meditation by briefly scanning through your body and sensing if you’re here.
You might let the shoulders drop away from the neck, relaxing back and down, just feel
inside the shoulders and soften a little, relax a bit
and let your hands soften so that if you feel from the inside out you can feel the tingling
and vibrating there.
And let your chest be open.
And see if you can soften your belly taking a few full breaths deep into the torso.
Soft belly.
And again I invite you to scan your life and sense where wanting mind is in some way
a kind of prison, where you know you get caught, makes you smaller in some way, some attachment to,
it could be another’s approval, attachment to having a certain relationship that’s romantic
attachment to somebody changing, attachment to some recognition at work,
something to do with health, body.
Where do you get caught?
And take some moments to Recognize just that it’s wanting, whatever the fixation is.
Sense the story and the images that come up in your mind of what you are wanting.
And Allow it to be there.
With wanting it helps me often just to say “This belongs, this is part of
human nature, part of all nature, to want, just an energy.”
Let it belong.
Let it help you to pause.
Give some space.
And it will also give you the possibility of making that U-turn so you can begin to Investigate some.
Sense the feeling of wanting in your body.
You might sense if you’re getting what you want – imagine if you’re getting what you want
– what is it you get to feel?
What does it really give you?
This is tracing back desire.
Whatever you are wanting, what does it give you if you get it?
Is it relief?
Is it a sense of no longer alone?
Is it a sense that then you can feel okay about yourself?
Is it a temporary pleasure that makes you feel more alive?
What does it give you if you get what you’re wanting?
And see if you can feel in your body what it gives you.
What is that wanting mind really wanting to feel?
That’s what you’re trying to find out.
And deepen the inquiry: Well if you have that feeling, what does that give you?
What does it really give you?
Let’s say you feel relieved or you don’t feel bad about yourself anymore
or you don’t feel alone - what does that really give you, then?
And keep investigating.
Go under it.
What is it you are really wanting to feel?
And keep asking that question: What does that give me?
And what is the deepest gift of getting what I want?
What’s truly this longing longing for?
Whatever the gift, whatever you’re really longing for, feel it in your body:
what’s it like to experience that?
And isn’t it true that what you are longing for is already here?
You wouldn’t be able to even touch into it if it wasn’t already here.
Perhaps you discover as you trace back there’s a longing for belonging and the feeling of
belonging is warmth and openness and tenderness, it’s here.
Rilke writes, “You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything.
The darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up.
You have not grown old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.”
For these last few moments even in a completely fresh way, you might ask your heart:
what is it I really long for?
What do I most long for?
And imagine experiencing what you’re most longing for, what’s the experience of it?
Let go into what you imagine.
Just be that experience.
“You have not grown old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.”
Namaste and thank you for your attention.
[bells]