Awaken and Teach

 

Awaken Space

This time around, we're not here to focus on life's content. We're here to focus on life itself. Whatever forms may come and go in the space of life, it is not the content but the container, the space itself, that is our treasure.

In the past, our thoughts were the foreground. The spacious sky of awareness was the background, so buried that we weren't aware of it! Now the silent background becomes the foreground. We become aware of awareness. This is the shift that defines our age.

To guide a person's attention from the heaviness of objects to the weightless expanse of pure space - from the heaviness of thoughts to the weightless expanse of pure consciousness - what greater service can you perform? To liberate the sky from the non-existent boundary of clouds - what greater freedom can you share?

You may be one of those who are called to this work, but until now you felt useless on our planet. Your task was Being, and everyone else seemed obsessed with Doing. You pretended to be interested in the content of daily experience, but your interest just wouldn't stay fixed on money, sex, war, and politics. You had a hidden yearning, yet it seemed so amorphous it was nothing at all: because in truth it was no-thing! Your concern was not the things you could be conscious of, but the clarity of consciousness itself.

To explore the nature of awareness: this was your secret passion. You were drawn to the mirror and not what it reflected. But this endeavor wasn't recognized by your society as a valid pursuit. Nobody gave you encouragement. You couldn't speak about this inner work because your education gave you no vocabulary for it. Your teachers, your friends, your parents, called you "a dreamer." Perhaps a doctor even diagnosed you with attention "deficit." But in truth, your mind abounded in attention, pressed out and overflowing!

I tell you, Master of the Dream, your time has come...

Jesus had the same problem. They wanted him to fix the content of their lives: their religion, their poverty, their political situation. But he came to glorify the container, not to fix the content. He came to reveal the Kingdom of Awareness itself.

Jesus didn't give them a better concept of god: he shattered every concept, freeing the space around all gods. He said, "The space within you, the space of awareness itself, is God."

"My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus taught. They thought he was pointing toward a higher world, or a place you go when you die. But he wasn't pointing to any place at all. He was awakening pure space.

Jesus said, I am not here to replace the stuff in your mind with new stuff. I am here to empty you. I am not interested in stuffing. I don't impart any religious doctrines at all. I remove every idea, until all that remains of you is what I Am.

Those who heard him weren't ready for this teaching, so they crucified him. But now, many more are ready to hear. And when we awaken the space of Christ-Consciousness in enough of them, it will be the Second Coming.

Yes, many are ready. Many are weary with political, economic, and technological promises that don't solve the problems of humanity. Many are weary of religion and all its content, its stuffing of belief. Many are ripe for the foreground-background shift, which is the shift of attention from thoughts to the space in which thoughts arise.

Humans are ready to become aware of awareness. This is the great evolutionary step we are taking.

Teach Meditation

In Milton's words, "They also serve who stand and wait." You have been waiting, and by waiting, serving. Now your time has come. Time to speak the simple truth: the utterly transparent message of pure awareness.

They will ask, "How can simply being aware solve our problems?" And you will answer, "Find out for yourself. Become aware of awareness."

"How do we become aware of awareness?" they will ask. Then you will teach them to meditate.

Teach them to discover the kingdom inside, deeper than thought. Awaken the space that is silent, limitless, self-clarifying, eternal, free from past and future, overflowing with the nectar of joy. That space is neither doing nor thinking, but Being. It is the source of creation.

Don't hesitate to tell them clearly what all the great prophets have declared: God is consciousness, and all of creation is made out of consciousness. This simple fact dispels the materialist delusions that have crippled our civilization. It is not a belief or a philosophy, but a direct experience. That experience of pure consciousness brings peace to the restless soul.

Awakening spacious clarity in ourselves will awaken that clarity in every atom of the earth, in trees and mountains, moth wings and plum blossoms. And awakening space in ourselves will awaken other human beings as well. This is your work: reanimate the world with wonder.

Humanity is sound asleep. Sleep walking humans tread heavily on the earth, stumbling on its delicate greenery. And we trample each other too. But as we awaken the beauty within us, we bow to that beauty in nature around us. As we honor the space of awareness, we honor the environment. And as we love our own Self, we love our neighbor as our Self. This is the ecology of meditation.

Do not dilute the work of meditation with any political, economic, or religious message. That is all just content. Simply help people polish their mirrors: it is their business what to reflect. Teach meditation to East and West, artist and executive, believer and non-believer, pacifist and warrior. Do not teach Buddhist meditation, Yoga meditation, Christian meditation, Goddess meditation, or Metaphysical meditation. These labels are just more stuffing. If your meditation has a label, it is not meditation.

Remember that the world's problem is not war, injustice, pollution, racism or poverty. These are only symptoms of the problem. The problem is that we are asleep. Our mirror is clouded by thoughts. Our presence is clouded by images of the past and future. Our awareness does not know itself. And our mental disorder throws all our actions into disorder.

Give both friend and enemy the one solution to all problems. Teach them to cleanse the mirror, so that they may reflect the real world, which is luminous and divine.

The world doesn't need our busy-ness, it needs our consciousness.