Читать книгу The Book of Rest - James Reeves - Страница 27

There is no getting away from the fact that your attention loves ‘stuff’. It loves objects that appear in its consciousness. This is one of the most confounding factors for anyone formally approaching meditation. They realise that their attention is constantly fixated on everything that passes by. From noticing sensations in their body, and then the images that might arise from them, or noticing the smell of dinner cooking and then the thought about what tomorrow might bring or the memory of what happened today at work. It goes on and on, and it seems never-ending.

Regardless of how much effort you put into calming your mind, your mind is never going to stop being your mind and doing what it wants to do: namely, controlling everything and working everything out. And even though your mind knows that its attempts to figure out how to make tomorrow’s meeting go smoothly, for example, can only be a game (it knows it is impossible to foresee all factors involved in the situation at the time), it will continue to look for ways to control the situation and secure a pleasing outcome.

Your mind is just doing its job. It is the most loyal employee you’re ever going to have, and rather than get frustrated with it for being so incredibly duty bound or chastising it for being in the way of you getting what you want (a moment’s peace), you can take a step back and leave it to get on with things. When we do this, we allow for the possibility that while there is all this stuff going on ‘in our heads’, there is also something else that is not darting about, not planning, not worrying about anything and not even doing anything at all – it is just allowing. There is something beyond our thinking; something that is never distracted, and never bored. Something that has been here all your life.

It’s here now, as you read these words. Aware, quiet, at peace, still and in need of absolutely nothing.

Therefore, if you find yourself declaring, ‘I just can’t switch off my mind,’ (or, ‘I had a stressful day off!’) you might wish to remind yourself that this is an inconsequential observation and that you are by no means any further than anyone else from connecting with the quiet essence of awareness that lies beneath (and above and all around) all other aspects of your experience.

The trap might be in your trying to find it, but you never will, because your awareness isn’t another object to find. It’s not a thing, but that in which all things appear. It’s not a place to get to or an experience to be created. Like trying to grab a handful of fine sand, the more you tighten your grip, the more it will slip from your fingers.

It cannot be found and it cannot be lost. It is always here.

— If rest is the ultimate act of doing nothing, then it has to involve doing nothing about the fact that your mind is not doing nothing.

It’s our hope that this is at once confounding and relaxing, and that as you read these words you feel relief from knowing that there’s nothing you can do to get to this place of awareness – to that part of your experience that, regardless of what your mind and body are getting up to, is always OK. Your inner knowing, your deepest, wisest, most at-peace self is always there, and grappling over how you can find it (it’s never lost) or complaining that you can’t find it (it’s always there) will only take you further away from realising that you are already it. You are always being.

However, we do appreciate that. . .