"Unbidden Meditation"

Bruce: I could not "avoid meditation" any more than I could avoid breathing, it is an ongoing reality here and no longer a practice.

Michael: Hey, this is the most interesting sentence you have written in some time.

Bruce: It's a joy to have arrested your attention.

Michael: Would you like to expound and elaborate a little more on that?

Bruce: About three decades ago I was graced with a glimpse of the truly sacred, it was a very powerful and transformational event that I was not ready for, I did not understand its significance fully. A couple of years later, I came to read Ram Dass' Book "Be Here Now." It hinted at least somewhat at my experience and pointed me toward a simple, silent meditation practice that immediately opened into some clear understanding of what I had experienced. Very soon there was another opening, far more sustained than anything that had previously happened.

I continued to read in an attempt to obtain some context for this utterly remarkable and indescribable state, first Alan Watts' last book (on Taoism) and then the words of J. Krishnamurti -- it was K's words that spoke directly to the state that kept occuring in my simple, unconditioned practice, it was uncanny!

For reasons I to this day cannot explain, I stopped my formal practice and was simply watchful of "my" conscousness, thought processes, and sensory environment -- and the remarkable state soon began to occur completely unbidden, with no practice at all involved. It was clear that the practice and the state were not really related causally.

The years since then have been an ongoing revelation and gradual integration of this ever-deepening meditative state into my day-to-day, "ordinary" existence on this physical plane that has been given to our species as its primary perceptual focus, it is a constant surrender in what is, to what you might call the divine will. On occasion there have been meditative forays into what may be called extraordinary "planes," "levels," or "realms," with analogs of visable light and vibrational effects that could be called sound, but all these are also surrendered, offered up into the divine presence that is the essence of the unitary, limitless, and utterly formless state of pure love and constant gratitude.

Please forgive the miserable inadequacy of my words, they come nowhere near evoking or describing the in-the-moment reality that inspires them, the very best they can do is perhaps to point toward the immeasurable source of all.

Michael: I might have to start addressing you as Sri Guru, again!

Bruce: I am grateful that you continue to address me at all! :-)