Mimi Malfitano
Garab Dorje (FL 55CE), is the first Dzogchen (Great Perfection) teacher who is credited for introducing three principals of Being:
Direct Introduction into one's own nature
Not remaining in doubt concerning this unique state
Continuing to remain in this state
Mind's nature is and always has been Buddha (one who is awake)
It has neither birth nor cessation, like space.
When you realize the real meaning of the equal nature of all beings,
To remain in that state without searching is meditation.
To experience the Phenomenological qualities of Being, one must meet and go through the habituated preoccupations of the body, mind & senses to enter into the subtle qualities of conscious awareness. The view, or way of Being, beckons one to shift perspective from sensing through the inside out (like looking through a window, or a barrier) to a broader direct experiencing from inside to inside, or from wholeness to wholeness or opening to opening or potentiating to potential. This broader view is direct and intensely experienced through the body. When this view is experienced with awareness embodied, it is known and recognized. This recognition and knowing without a doubt cuts through old beliefs and habituated thinking and feeling to new pathways of Being.
In entering into a new view, it's important to open to potential space without expectation, judgment or concrete thinking. Relaxing the mind and body into the natural state is the practice of meditation.
The engagement of the mind, senses and awareness into meditative play is not fixed on one point of what one is experiencing in awareness in any one moment of who or what is in view or felt. This experience is none other than the view recognizing that which is already present - the IS coming into Being with the openness of the mind, senses and awareness embodied.
The ease with which one enters into meditation directly correlates (and goes beyond the bounds of correlates) to the place of the view or beyond view of mind and body. One can enter through limitations in many ways; stepping, leaping, and through meeting extreme circumstances to offer a few examples. The vehicle one chooses may depend on the person's comfort with the intensity of experience. This awareness of awareness can be quite stunning and overwhelming when one goes from concreteness to openness in an instant. This is where teachings, practices and the role of the teacher is helpful and important.
The teacher is none other than a student who has consistent practice and has a desire to hold space, without judgment, to allow awareness to arise or present, and be recognized in any individual or circumstance. The teacher must first know this presenting or arising of awareness within one's self without a doubt with compassion. To be aware of awareness embodied - using all of the gifts of humanness; the mind, the body, and awareness as the vehicle to recognizing that which is already available to be recognized. There is no separation of the meditator and what is meditated upon - the mirror mirroring, reflecting the continuity of a Being Being. The teacher also knows when one is not in awareness, when one stops this continuity of Being. So, the teacher is also a student, one who loves knowing the Being and Becoming of this play of the field embodied as one's self and experiencing this in other sentient Beings and life in the world. This playing in the field of consciousness is the relational recognizing of the Being and Becoming of Beings embodied in time and beyond time all of the time! How wonderful and amazing!
Where do we begin?
Meditation is the active Being with Becoming without doing anything other than focusing on the Being of Becoming. Sit. Sit with all that is appearing and disappearing. Sit with what you see, hear, feel, smell, taste, touch appearing and disappearing. Sit with the thoughts appearing and disappearing. Have compassion for the thoughts that you think appearing and disappearing. Sit with the disappearing of the thinking of your thoughts. Sit in the thought free opening of your mind. Everyone can be here because there is no there there. Sit with the holding of your breath and the letting go of your breath. Breathe into the place between the breaths - open up this space more. Meet what is presencing. Notice what happens when the meeting occurs without effort or doing anything. This is the natural state. Every affect, physical or psychological, dissolves into no thing. Natural phenomenological qualities arise when we let go of holding or controlling. This is easy, we think it is not easy. This is not doing.
Favorite Methods
Sometimes we feel the need to leave where we are (because it's so filled with fear and anxiety) to get back to where we can recognize our natural state. In reality, we have never left - we just think we've disconnected because we are in lack of recognition of our true Being. This Being is not static, it's continuous and constant, we just forget where we are - especially when we loose the seeing or felt sense or knowing of our Being. We loose focus on the recognizing our Being of Being. So, some of the methods used in meditation contain visualization and imagination so that one can step through a gateway to relaxation before one can enter into deeper levels of sitting with the intensity of experience. For example, sometimes one needs the visual of sitting in a warm spring in Costa Rica with the warm water flowing over and through the body just to down regulate the nervous system to be able to relax enough to sit still to recognize Being through the anxiety. For others, they may need to focus on specific breathing techniques to focus on something other then their fidgeting body and thoughts. And others need to gaze at the sky as a visual opening into the felt sense of spaciousness.
Sensory Experience
Once one feels more relaxed, then one can experience the more subtle or “secret hidden” qualities of Being. Arising heat in the body from the base of the spine can spread throughout the body to transform thoughts, feelings and stuckness. If one can stay with the intensity, one can experience a dissolving of the grossness of thoughts, emotions and physical sensations to a more liberated, open, and free sense of embodiment. During meditation the felt sense of extreme cold spreading throughout the body can lead to deep cellular and central nervous system recalibration of the body after severe trauma. One can feel the felt sense of vortices spinning both within and around the body shifting internal and external subtle energies into balance. Another quality is seeing light - bright white, yellow, purple, blue, green, pink, red, mixtures of colors - even colors one has never seen before. This is a beautiful display of the subtle qualities of the field of consciousness - how one experiences this is up to the experiencer to Be and know. Some meditator’s meet masters through meditation and receive direct teachings…these teachings are not dream states. These teachings have a clarity, lucidity, directness, a ‘without a doubt’ knowing quality to them. Sometimes words or phrases from unknown languages emerge - taking the student into a knowing discovery. Another quality is deep darkness, deep dark blue black with specks of light - this has a feeling of vastness embodied beyond the bounds of the body vastness. Others enter into charnel grounds and become qualities of the grossness of the 3D world. The qualities of the field of consciousness are inexhaustible.
These experiences are none other than the Being of Being…in all her forms in formlessness. This is where engaging the mind and the body in meditation is important - to be able to experience and recognize ALL aspects of human Beingness without judgment. This recognition is the great compassion. When we can know humanness in ourselves, we can know it in another. There is no difference and yet there is difference. A difference without the need to differentiate. We don’t have to leave our bodies or our minds to experience this knowing. We just need to stay, we need to sit, we need to meet whatever is presencing within and without. Just as we are.
Mimi M. Malfitano