The Myth of Spiritual Healing Meditation and the Silence of What You Already Are

We have spent so much time looking for the donkey while we are already riding it. It is a funny image, isn't it? We run around asking where the beast is, checking the maps, following the tracks, and all the while, the very thing we are looking for is what is carrying us. This is the comedy of the seeker. We think there is a distance to cover, a gap between who we are now and some enlightened version of ourselves that we might find through a specific practice or a certain state of mind. But who is it that is trying to bridge this gap? Who is the one convinced that they are separate from the totality? When we talk about spiritual healing meditation, we often treat it like a medicine for a sick "me." We hope that if we sit long enough, or if we follow the right guide, we will eventually reach a state of permanent peace. But let’s be frank: meditation maintains what it promises only on a horizontal level. If you want to lower your heart rate, if you want to feel a bit more relaxed, or if you want to sharpen your focus like a glowing steel wire in a void, meditation can do that. It is a natural transformation of the body-mind. It is like eating when you are hungry or taking an aspirin for a headache. It’s fine. It’s functional. But it is not a ladder to the absolute. The absolute is not a result. How can you reach what you already are? The separate self is a master of distraction. We are so used to moving, acting, and thinking just to avoid feeling the raw pulse of life. We act so that we don’t have to feel. We walk up and down the room waiting for someone who is late, not because it makes them arrive faster, but to discharge the anxiety we don’t want to face. When we are forced to be still—whether by a pandemic, a loss, or simply sitting in silence—all that restlessness bubbles up. It isn’t that the silence created the agitation; the agitation was always there, hidden by our constant doing. Spiritual healing meditation often becomes just another "doing," another way to try and fix a self that we believe is broken. But what if there is no one to fix? Consider the wave and the ocean. Does the wave need to practice being water? Does it need to undergo a process of purification to become the sea? The wave is already the ocean, even when it is crashing, even when it is small, even when it is disappearing. Our life, with all its messiness, its grief, and its joys, is the perfect expression of the absolute. Liberation is not the liberation *of* the separate self; it is liberation *from* the separate self. It is the realization that the "I" who thinks it is choosing to meditate or not meditate is just another appearance in the totality. Things happen by themselves. The sun rises, the heart beats, and the body-mind sits on a cushion. There is no CEO inside your head making these decisions. We often get caught in the trap of wanting to improve.