The Now of Sabbath Rest

No need to maintain any state of mind. Simply cease to grasp the concept held at this moment, and the mind springs back into its natural buoyancy, an explosion of silence.

Many seekers try to hold onto awareness. But awareness cannot be held or grasped. Awareness is not a "state," and the very effort to maintain it only generates the chatter of more thinking. Who is the maintainer and what is being maintained? This duality of the do-er and the object of doing simply re-creates the endless cycle of samsara.

Eternity has no duration; it is the instantaneous pulsation of the boundless. Freedom is gained this instant, moment by moment, not by maintaining awareness but by releasing the effort to think any concept.

What happens when we unclasp a thought? Awareness returns to awareness in a blast of Self-recognition. The energy that was bound up in the thought becomes available as bliss: pure consciousness devoid of concepts. This instant of eternity cannot be maintained over time. Any effort to perpetuate it as a "state," is ego.

In release of thought, awareness spontaneously reveals the always-already-enlightened condition of unlimited space. The space of our own awareness envelopes the universe, as the sky envelopes a floating dust mote. The spacious now of Sabbath rest, repeated often throughout the day, expands until it pervades the hours, the seasons. And this expanded awareness, the groundless background of all experience, gradually moves into the foreground. It is not a practice in time, but a timeless gift of grace.

Simply look into the nearest eye, caressing your infinite Self with light through the gaze of the other. Or learn from a fading blossom at your window sill, from the purple in a passing evening cloud, from the sound of raindrops and the silence between them, how to crystalize the diamond of awareness, how to embrace the mist-like impermanence of the world.

Every creature is a trembling gesture of breath on the pool of your own unfathomable Being. Whether filled with joy or sorrow, your fleeting day is just a poem that silence inscribes in the air with your heartbeat.