I have never been here.

[karl]

Funny, but I never noticed this part of the forum until this morning.

For the last few weeks I have ceased meditating completely. This has seemed like my hands were no longer on the rudder of my life and it seemed like drifting. I suppose I finally let go although it never occured to me that I had.

Events have conspired in strange ways. Reading the beautiful poetry in the last post and I really cannot match that, so this is a far more rough description of where I am from my experiences over the last few days.

So,two days ago I went walking in the mountains with friends. It was a completely 'out of the blue' decision to join them and was only possible because events have enfolded that allow the space to do this.

I have always been a keen walker/climber and love the outdoors. This was the very first hard mountain walk I have undertaken for a number of years due to chest problems which have thankfully been resolved.

The walk was pretty tough and the next day I could hardly get out of bed. It was a good feeling of having returned to doing something I loved.

Lying in bed this morning I was struck by something that happened during the walk that seemed so insignificant at the time.

During the walk we had to negotiate a tiny little climb, where hands and feet were needed to scramble down a 5 metre drop. My hands touched the rock in the same way that they have done a million times before, but this time something was different.

I used to rock climb about 25 years ago, but gave it up because my mind would not allow my body to get over the fear to get beyond a certain grade. Each year, after the winter layoff, I would return to the basic practise of bouldering to prepare for the season ahead. Each time would feel like I was back at novice level. The frustration of many years of not being able to achieve the next grade began to annoy me, so I gave up.

Thinking back to the walk I had just completed and the little climb down, it suddenly dawned on me that I had enjoyed putting my hands on the rock again. There was a feeling of immense joy that has not diminished since, a warmth like an electric current between the rock and my body. I realise now that the rock and the climbing are inextricably linked in a new way, like an old friend, the rock that tested me and found me wanting, is no longer the enemy to be overcome, because that was all just a thought. It was just rock and I was just climbing, there was nothing to prove, nothing could be gained or lost, there was just this incredibly sublime moment that seems to stretch to infinity and beyond (borrowed from Buzz Lightyear ).

The significance of this struck me this morning because this is somewhere I have never been before. That things have changed on other levels in a subtle way.

Talking to my friends last night I was fully invested in a political conversation. Before I started meditation I would have been arguing and manouvering to get my way and win over anyone who opposed my ideas and really enjoyed beating the competition(and I was good at it, which meant I often seemed to win).

This time it was different. I could be fully in the conversation, totally immersed but without prejudice, just enjoying the waves going backwards and forwards, again totally in the moment. There was nothing to be won or lost, just the enjoyment of sitting with a group of friends and talking, sheer bliss.

Before I stopped meditating I was dis-interested in joining in any discussion, it was like I was remote and isolated, in my own little cuckoon of beliefs.This allowed me to have a false shield and meant I could be dismissive of everything because it did not matter. But I have realised I was still arguing in my own little way. Meditation had just given me a way to ALWAYS win and I felt invicible.

I remember reading a book a few months ago and a passage stands out in my mind.

The author said he was at a party with friends and was stood looking into a room full of people when he was struck by a thought that made him feel slightly sad.
The thought was that he would never agian be able to feel the way he once did at parties, because he knew the truth. After contemplating this for some time (and that is just meditation) he walked back into the crowd and picked up where he had left off. No one noticed he was any different, he just joined right back in as if he had never been away.

I understand something now on a far deeper level than previously.
Before enlightenment chop sticks after enlightenment chop sticks.

I realise I have always just been, it was only my thoughts that tried to hide that truth from me. Everything is in it's right place and I should just stop messing around trying to change it. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, no rock to climb, no argument to win no enlightenment to achieve, no nirvana, just an endless stream life passing through and beyond me in an ever changing series of sensations and I'm OK with that.

[brunoloff]

Karl, you are absolutely right, except that, technically speaking, there is such a thing as nirvana. This is just an explosion, sort of like an orgasm, in the proper chakra. In tantra it is called the nirvana chakra, and stands just below the sahasrara (cf. the book Layayoga, by Shyam Sundar Goswami).

[brother neil]

I can relate and appreciate brother karl, now where is the humbly bowing smiley?
brother Neil