Meditation is a journey from mystery to knowing. It happens through many iterations of continual unveiling.
Each unveiling itself is a little jaunt from mystery to knowing.
Suppose you practice looking using Process #1:
“Look around in your mind and spot something that is trying to grab your attention.”
And suppose you are faced with a barrage of items. You start noticing and recognizing them one by one. Most of them may fade into the background, but some may continue to linger on.
It is some mystery attached to an item that makes it linger.
True mystery is that which must for ever remain a mystery. One can never find what lies behind a true mystery. But for a mystery to be a mystery there does not have to be anything mysterious underlying it. All that is needed is a belief that nothing can be found out about it, and sticking to that belief.
Thus, there is no future postulated where a mystery is concerned. The moment you accept this non-judgmentally without resistance an interesting journey begins. Suddenly, there is hope that you can understand this item that has been lingering in your consciousness; there is possibly a future here.
A string of considerations, such as the following, might occur:
- What gains might be there by understanding this!
- This understanding is necessary for my well being.
- Let me figure out what it is!
- Let me just feel it and then I’ll know.
- Won’t it be just wonderful to know it!
- Alright,why not I simply look and see what it is.
Then, boom, any distance between you and that understanding would suddenly vanish, and you would know in your very being what that thing was that had been trying to grab your attention all these days, months or years.
The above is just a crude approximation of the journey from mystery to knowing. It may happen differently for different people.
But it surely will happen when one simply accepts non-judgmentally whatever comes up, and does not resist it.
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Glossary
Mystery
Origin: “secret rites, to initiate.” A mystery is anything unexplained or unknown. It is basically an inconsistency of a gap. It is an unknown consideration.
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Comments
These are very good points. Good examples are inspired medical or scientific researchers who seeing a damaging inconsistency in human health, dedicate their efforts together with hope that they will one day solve the problem of a disease.
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The basic principles are just very few. They simply have to be expressed in many different ways.
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It is interesting to note that one goes through various considerations before one decides to simply look at something.
There is a wide gulf between saying “I must look at this,” and simply looking at that thing. That gulf is filled with various considerations (including logic and emotional euphoria), which prevent one from simply looking.
But one can overcome those considerations by recognizing them one by one. And then, one may finally be able to look.
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