On Tuesday evening we continued with our weekly inquiry into the relationship between meditation and enlightenment with Patrick Bryson. This time we were inquiring into the nature of Mind, a very interesting subject and key to understanding and developing one’s meditation. (On previous weeks we learnt how to meditate and explored the qualities that are found).

The evening began with a short audio from a recent retreat with Andrew Cohen in dialogue with a woman about meditation. In Evolutionary Enlightenment, the goal in meditation is ‘to have no relationship to the content of consciousness’, or to the movement of the mind. The woman explained how difficult it is to have no relationship to the content of consciousness. Andrew agreed with her and said that it was difficult if we haven’t discovered for ourselves that the true nature of mind is – very simply – a mechanical process.

Following this illuminating exchange, we meditated for 20 minutes and afterward each person discussed what they found in their experience. Initially we found that most of us are unquestionably identified with the movement of our minds, that it IS really difficult (and takes practice) to learn how to leave it all alone. Through the course of inquiring into our experience with Patrick, and being fully engaged and interested in what was happening, a deeper interest in what lies beyond the mind was activated and people started speaking in different ways about their discoveries of freedom, a sense of limitlessness, and the dissolution of any restricted or small sense of self – leaving behind the often mechanically conditioned ways we tend to think about ourselves. This was an active inquiry, coming from the source of meditation itself, and not from the mind, and there was a profound and ever-deepening discovery of unity and non-separation between us as we went further and further into the always fascinating terrain of the nature of enlightened awareness.

I’m really looking forward to next week when we will explore: The Primary Freedom that is discovered through meditation and how important this is as a new foundation for life.