Spiritual egos make a distinction between "beginner's techniques" and "advanced techniques." Their intellect wants something difficult to do, a sense of accomplishment. That is why so many new age teachers speak of their spiritual "work." Do they ever speak of their spiritual "play"?
Ease is the cure for dis-ease. The deepest, most healing spiritual practice, we ease into. In fact, we do not practice. We let go of practice. Only the absolute innocence of the beginner, starting over again each moment, can experience the end of the journey, the goal. For the goal is always already attained by Grace.
The goal is never an achievement done by "advanced" practice, but the dissolution of the do-er. It is known by un-knowing and done by un-doing. This can only happen to the effortless. The most powerful meditation is the simplest, the most natural.
When you really look at people who carry a bag of "advanced" techniques, you often see a weariness behind the stiff mask of their perpetual smile. Or they look tentative, because they are always taking the next step, and never completely here. Only the beginner dwells in eternal freshness, the greening power of the heart. The beginner is never advanced because she is present.
In the deepest and most natural meditation, you never have to leave your body. Every atom of your body is already woven out of swirling stars, and rooted in mycelia for a hundred subterranean miles in every direction. No wind can uproot the beginner. No wound can puncture the intergalactic stillness in the Beginner's core.
Transcending your body is not an advanced practice. It is a practice of disconnection. That is why, in the Anapanasati Sutra, the Buddha said, "Awareness of body in the body." He did not say just "Awareness of body." He did not say, "Look down on your body from above." Nor did he say, "Transcend the body. Ascend and go to heaven." He said to grok the body from within the body, for consciousness and matter are one energy, every cell and photon trembling with the sap of awareness.
When you meditate, be a beginner. Always feel the freshness of the first day of creation, "in the beginning," when God and his breath, the Goddess, create the universe again. Now is the beginning. Now is the end of time. How could now be advanced?
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