Humility

So you watch the little waves, they blow with life changes. Wind is like emotions and changing conditions and sometimes it’s turbulent and sometimes it’s calm and these little waves just blow like little victims from one side of the ocean to the other, then they crash on the beach and die. Yet the ocean never changed. The volume of the ocean never changed, the depth never changed, the whole ocean is the same, untouched, uninvolved, but completely there and present in the experience of the wave. So this is how in yoga they explain that is like the individualized spirit that is identified as a separate reality, the ego. And if it would just relax! You know how they say – the bigger they are, the harder they fall. The more we’re identified with this “I”-ness, if it’s in the wrong way, the more we suffer with ups and downs, like really big wins and then really terrible losses, because it’s all about “me” and because we’re like these waves that are crashing right? One approach to meditation is to see it as we watch the breath or we concentrate on other things that are happening inwardly, as a way to take us away from our identity as something that’s unique, separate and limited and merge our awareness, reconnect with our ultimate potential as something much greater and much more permanent than a human body and the current personality and thought processes that we experience as our own.

This is a talk from our Free Monday Meditation Series. Recorded at Meditation Unlimited in Torrance, CA on April 10, 2017