The Silent Presence: Why Healing Meditation for Sickness is Already Here

We often find ourselves searching for the donkey while we are already sitting on its back. It is a funny image, isn't it? We spend years looking for a way out, a way up, or a way through, yet the very ground we stand on is the totality we claim to be seeking. There is a common misunderstanding that we must do something to become what we already are. We think that if we just find the right healing meditation for sickness, or the perfect technique to silence the mind, we will finally arrive at a state of liberation. But who is the one arriving? And where would they go? The separate self is always looking for a result. It wants to improve, to heal, to reach a state of impassibility where nothing can touch it. When the body-mind faces the contraction of illness or the heavy clouds of grief, the separate self immediately begins to judge. It tells us we aren't "spiritual" enough because we feel pain, or that we should be more relaxed. But let’s be frank: there is no such thing as being "good" at being. A liberated person dies exactly like anyone else—they die how they die. One might die in great pain, another in peace, but neither state is more or less an expression of the absolute. The absolute doesn't choose between the healthy body and the sick one; it is the screen upon which both films are projected. In our daily lives, we might find that meditation appears. It isn't a ladder to enlightenment because there is no this moment. Enlightenment is not a destination. However, the body-mind can certainly benefit from the relaxation that occurs when we stop fighting what is. We could say that healing meditation for sickness is a functional tool at the horizontal level of life. When the body relaxes, the blood vessels carry more oxygen, the immune system finds its rhythm, and chronic tensions we didn't even know we had begin to melt. This is wonderful for the unit we call the body-mind, but it doesn't make you "more" enlightened. You cannot be more of what you already are. The absolute is present in the most stressful contraction just as much as it is in the deepest state of meditative quiet. We often talk about the "I am" as if it were a starting point, but even that can be a bit of a trap. We feel certain that "I am," but this "I" is often just a relational function of the body-mind, a way of organizing experience. The true aware presence is prior to that. It is like the silence that underlies noise. Silence and noise exist simultaneously; you don't need to destroy the noise to find the silence. If you try to fight noise to find peace, you are just fighting for peace—which is an absurdity. You only end up more stressed. Instead, there is a seed of peace already there, even in the middle of a storm. It isn't something you create; it’s something that is noticed when the seeker momentarily tires of the search. When we face a lutto—a great loss—or a physical collapse, the impulse is to push it away. We want to return to a "better" version of ourselves.