Given the opportunity to practice the effortless and graceful technique of transcendental meditation, many spiritual seekers try it and reject it, not because it fails to work, but because it works so well.
We are tempted to reject TM because it is too impersonal. By this, we really mean that we do not want to transcend our mind completely. We are afraid to transcend all thinking. We wish to settle down into a comfortable rest, but at the same time hold on to our most delicious thoughts.
Yet
it is the total transcendence of all thought that opens our awareness
to the Infinite Being. If we hold onto even the most delicate tissue of thought, the floodgate of Being will not open, and we will still remain
attached to the relative. We won't surrender and plunge into the Absolute.
Other
meditation practices cling to some faint thought, some remnant of relative mind.
It may be the thought of one's Guru, the feeling of devotion, the
name and form of our favorite deity, or simply the sense that I am
meditating, I am becoming peaceful. At the quietest level of mental
activity, thought can be radiant and lovely. Yet it is
precisely this subtle contemplative thought or feeling that we must let go if we are to transcend. Otherwise, our awareness is still
bound. And bondage in soft threads of gold is just as bound as bondage in
iron chains.
Why cling to artificial pearls when you can have the
priceless diamond of God's boundless absolute Being? But for this, we must give up even the
faintest thought of God, for God is not an idol of thought created by the mind. We must let go the faintest feeling of devotion, even
the faintest sense of relationship to the master. For the true master is not relationship, but pure Presence.
When all
relationship, even to the master, dissolves into the grace of Being, only then does the drop
become the ocean, and the ocean become the drop.
There is a cost for everything in this life. Nothing is free, not even grace. The price of grace is surrender.
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