Why Meditation is So Important

Leunig

Isn't it true, that we experience almost all of our lives as a series of ups and downs?

We are like surfboard riders on a vast ocean of experience. Sometimes we can ride the waves, while at others we are buffeted and bullied about by the endless ebb and flow. We get so caught up in the 'drama' that we seldom, if ever, take note of the screen upon which it is all being played out.

No screen, no drama. Yet who notices the 'screen'?

If only we knew how near and how unspeakably simple the greatest truths of life really are. How much more peaceful and joyful our lives would be. How quickly we would uncomplicate things to give ourselves and others ease.

Meditation, in its truest form, helps us to re connect with who and what we really are. It helps us to become aware of the 'screen.' 

In its purest form, meditation is effortless, formless and completely un-contrived.

Are You Bored or Distracted?

The Life you Lead, Leunig

“As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being.  

If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. 

Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable? 

But suppose you could answer, “It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what’s happening now.” 

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies—how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?”

~ Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

It is quite likely that few who read these words really understand what they mean... It's not that this is hard to understand; its incredibly easy, but the mind has a way of circumventing simplicity. It has a way of bypassing the present moment to seek out and constantly engage in either a projected future or a remembered past.

It is amazing just how much of our lives are held to ransom bypassing emotional 'infatuations.'

'Life' slips by, unnoticed, because we are so continuously mentally and emotionally busy with the things that appear to be happening to us and around us; to say nothing of our private mental preoccupations.

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