Excerpt from KALLARA 7-DAY RETREAT, AUSTRALIA
Monday, 29th February, 2016
So, it’s always now but now is always changing. It’s never the same. It’s not a fixed point. What you think you’re looking for is this fixed point, this fixed state. But now is not fixed. As soon as you try and attach to it, it’s gone. So instead of trying to look for this fixed point, to attach to something and hold it, what you need to do is keep letting go of whatever you’re trying to attach to. And that’s what now is.
And it’s incredibly, incredibly fast. It’s so fast that eventually it’s still. Stillness is a highly energetic state. It’s not a fixed state. You can’t become attached to real stillness. It’s faster than anything that the mind can create. It’s faster than the speed of light, faster than anything in this world. It’s so fast it’s beyond this world.
So, don’t resist change. You’re here because you want to change something in your life, but by doing this everything changes. And that’s what you see – everything is always changing. Nothing stays the same. The only constant is change.
Instead of resisting change, try and keep up with it, try and be open with it. And to really be open to change, you need to be incredibly alert and here and present.
Keep your body as still as possible, so that you can see that movement away from here, from now, which at first seems like a very fast movement, but eventually you see that compared to now, it’s actually very cumbersome and slow.
In now there is no relatively, but it contains relativity. There’s no you or I. There’s no subject or object. Everything merges together. But this absolute state contains the relative world. Don’t try and think about this. It’s so far beyond the mind there’s no point.
Your only security lies in the fact, in the acceptance that everything changes – not in some fixed state. So allow yourself to go in and out of whatever is happening right now and use your body as an anchor to anchor yourself in that change.
You’re here right now. That’s all there is to it. It’s as simple as that. It’s not going to get any better than this right now. And that’s what you have to accept. There’s no future. There’s no past. There’s only now.
And when you’re practising the walking meditation, don’t be tempted to look around and see what’s happening. Just use your vision to see where you’re going. And you’re not really going anywhere.
Really watch the momentum in your body, the feeling that you’re getting somewhere. It can be just as much of the practice as sitting still. You can feel just as still in your body when you’re moving as when you’re sitting.
So breathe, be aware of your feet touching the ground, lifting, touching.
You don’t need to think about it.