On the Other Side of the Resistance is the Flow

Full Transcript:

Jon: Namita asks, "What is the relationship between attention and energy? There are days when I feel a lack of energy for reasons beyond my understanding. Also, why do you call meditation 'medication'? Doesn't meditation help bring about stillness?"
 
Guy: So do drugs. First question first: "What's the relationship between attention and energy? There are days I feel a lack of energy for reasons beyond my understanding." What's wrong with having a lack of energy? I guarantee you have never asked yourself that question. What's wrong with, "I just don't have energy today"? "But you gotta go, you gotta meditate, you need energy to do this, get up and go, do something, do something! You can't afford to be passive!" You can't find a creature on this planet that doesn't rotate through active and passive, including the seasons in which that activity and passivity is recognized and realized. Every passive moment is already connected to a new form of activity that's intended to flow into that, but it never does because we make false activity in our fear of being passive and lost, and unable to produce. On the other hand - and not contrary to what I just said - why don't you find out what is the nature of this weakness? Here I am, and I don't want to do anything today. I don't want to move. I don't want to think. I want nothing to do with anything. Just leave me alone. No energy. You all have known that, too, haven't you? Well, what's that all about? I don't know because it becomes my "cause." Meaning that I begin to resist that, and then I'm captured by this feeling that I shouldn't be like that, or I have to somehow power my way through. Both of those solutions are as empty as the results. On the other side of the resistance is the flow. Write it down. On the other side of the resistance is the flow. What does that mean? If I will sit and live with this resistance, and not resist it, then I will understand something of the conditions that produced it, and I won't be a captive of the condition, I'll be the observer of it. I'll be anchored properly in this understanding, this new I that's capable of seeing this recalcitrant I, this I that just wants to go to sleep, this I that just doesn't want to be bothered. These are not you, but they become you when you identify with them. 
 
And the second part: Why do I call meditation "medication"? Because most of what people do in meditation is to escape the awareness of themselves. Not to go into it, but to escape it. Anything we do to escape the awareness of ourselves, or even to produce - and this is definitive... see, what happens is a person starts meditating - believe me, I know what I'm talking about, you have no idea, I spent seven years alone in a cave, doing nothing but breathing in meditation for like twelve hours a day, I promise you I know what I'm talking about - the meditation becomes the medication. I become identified and fall in love with the endorphins that that produces inside of me, and then believe that my mellow state proves that I have become a true, conscious human being - and I'm conscious and mellow as long as I don't leave my meditation room. The minute someone walks in and disturbs my meditation, I realize it was medication because it didn't change me. Real meditation is inseparable from your awareness of the moment. That's what real meditation is, which means I can meditate 24/7 if I have the attention to do it. But I don't have the attention to do it, because my attention is always on some distraction of the moment and the cause that it presents to me.