Beyond the Seeker: Why Mindful Meditation Healing is Already Here

We often find ourselves looking for the donkey while we are already sitting on its back. It is a strange comedy, this spiritual search, where the separate self tries to find a way to reach the very ground it stands upon. We talk about mindful meditation healing as if it were a bridge to some far-off land of enlightenment, but where could we possibly go? There is no distance between you and the absolute. There is no path to what is already the case. We are like characters in a film trying to find the screen. The protagonist may climb mountains, cross rivers, and overcome great obstacles in the plot, but he never moves an inch closer to the screen because he is already made of it. Many of us feel a sense of isolation in this realization. We look at our families or our social circles and see a world obsessed with becoming something else, with horizontal progress and the constant noise of self-improvement. We might feel lonely because the language of the separate self no longer resonates, yet we still find ourselves caught in the trap of wanting to "know" or "attain" a deeper state. But who is it that wants to know? The body-mind has its functions, its pains, and its joys, but the aware presence that allows all of this to appear is not a person. It is not an achievement. It is the silence that underlies the noise, existing simultaneously with every sound. When we speak of mindful meditation healing, we must be frank. If we are looking for physical benefits, the body-mind responds beautifully to relaxation. We know that chronic tension can melt away when we simply notice it. We see that stress levels drop, the immune system finds its footing, and the breath becomes a form of nourishment rather than a mechanical necessity. This is all wonderful at the level of the "dream." If the character in the dream is suffering from a headache, finding a cure within the dream is a valid and kind action. Meditation can bring comfort now, and it can certainly harmonize the way the body-mind relates to its environment. But we must not confuse the comfort of the character with the liberation of the dreamer. Liberation is not for the separate self; it is from the separate self. It is the realization that there is no one at the center of the experience making choices or choosing to meditate. Meditation happens, or it doesn't happen. Both are perfect expressions of the totality. Whether one is sitting in deep silence or Hitler is committing atrocities, from the perspective of the absolute, it is all the dance of the totality. This is a hard truth for the mind to swallow because the mind lives in the world of opposites—good and bad, progress and failure. But the vertical dimension, the dimension of what we already are, is not subject to time. It is not a journey from point A to point B. It is the screen that remains unchanged whether the movie is a tragedy or a comedy. We often get lost in the "how-to" of spirituality.