Stepping Into the Flow of Life
By Rodney Groves
The meditation teacher Eknath Easwaran, while teaching a meditation class at Berkeley College once said,
“You are not your bodies.”
He paused for a couple of moments and continued, “And thanks God you are not your minds either.”
The first time I heard this I was listening to a cassette tape entitled “Meditation” that I had just purchased from a local bookstore.
Hearing this simple sentence changed my life forever. I began to contemplate this statement by this simple, quiet and gentle man and in the process I renewed my disciplined practice of meditation, letting these words sink deeper and deeper into my subconscious, until one day I saw and felt the true reality of what he was saying.
Indeed, I was not my body or my mind. I was something more, much more.
Meditation truly is a discipline, something that must be practiced daily to get the full value of. It is often a lengthy process to awakening but, from what I have seen, it is the only path to awakening to the reality of who we really are. It is a lengthy process because there is so much that must be dealt with in order to find that place within us that is pure and unspoiled, and even when we find it we have to continue to rediscover it because it is elusive and the ego bound mind is crafty in keeping us from it. There is much conditioning that needs to be unraveled, many fears that need to be faced and many concepts that need to be demolished.
The journey to awakening is not an easy one, but it is very worthwhile. It is life changing. Where once we tried to control every little aspect of life, when we live meditatively we allow life to happen as it will and we find that it is happening just as it needs to happen. When we live meditatively we step into the “flow of Life” and we begin living life more kindly, more gently, with more compassion, empathy and respect toward other humans and all living things in general. We start living more fully present, seeing the little miracles around us and within us. We start noticing that our lives are a series of little miracles and that we flow from one to the next.
The world is filled with billions of personalities, each one struggling to find their place on the train called happiness. When we live meditatively we find that inner joy that is at a deeper level than personality, at a deeper level than happiness. When we find that joyful place we see ourselves as contributors to the evolution of the human race and an integral part of it. That is where the deepest meaning to life resides, in that quiet place of infinite stillness within where our deepest intuitive understandings are awakened that come to us in subtle feelings, those feelings that can only be experienced when we are awake to them by calming the inner turmoil of our minds.
Barbara Dossey once said, “Healing is a lifelong journey into wholeness. Becoming healed involves learning to trust life.” As I see it our life long journey is to heal ourselves, and in the process we help to heal others. It all begins with being in the present moment, living our lives meditatively and mindfully taking each day, each hour, each moment as it comes and learning to trust life with the knowing that we are growing and becoming more, realizing our true nature and allowing life to teach us.
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Author’s Bio
Rodney Groves’ deep love of the natural world extends from his childhood where his quest for deeper wisdom began. As a young man, his travels have taken him to Europe and then to Asia where he discovered the simplicity of a mindful lifestyle in the mountains of Korea. He has been an avid student of Zen and the Tao Te Ching. Rodney has worked as a volunteer moderator with parents of emotionally challenged adolescents in clinical workshops, as well as a meditation teacher and music instructor. He has reached out to the world with his website www.JoyfulSelf.com to teach the value and power of meditation. Rodney is also the co-administrator of Buddhist Travelers website roulette404.multiply.com/.
