I sit in the meditation chamber. I agree to wait. I am not waiting for anything, just waiting. I am content with whatever happens. I am content with whatever will happen. It is enough to wait.
Since I am waiting and there is nothing in particular to do, I ask to be alert. Can I be alert? Alert but not tense, alert but also relaxed.
While I am in this state of waiting, not for anything in particular, just waiting, I invoke attention. Attention engages sensation as I wait. I summon a field of attention which surrounds me. I ask that attention penetrate my heart. I sit with this. There is no move to make. I can wait, not moving on.
Energy arises. My body is intensely sensitized. Can I awaken now, physically, mentally, all that I am? Can I simply be?
* * *
The awakened state can be discovered in meditation. It does not require special efforts.
What awakens? The parts of me that sleep. Which parts are sleeping? My physical organism, my mind and heart. They stumble about in confused darkness, enmeshed in dream-fragments, unable to gather the energy to awaken. Presence is always able to participate, waiting, willing to enter when called to take its place as vice-regent of the city of my being. But presence cannot enter when my city is sleeping and the dominion of presence is denied by my identification with other roles and aims.
What is awakening? Lighting up the city with the correct energetic charge, harmonizing its different departments and stopping up the leaks. Who is to accomplish this work? Voluntary, impartial attention. It arouses energy and activates the heart, unifying the city, enabling presence to enter. The city awakens.
But, before the desirable can be accomplished, the undesirable must be relinquished.
Can the usual efforts to do something be abandoned?
Can ordinary thinking be released?
Can involuntary attention on habit-formed boundaries be withdrawn?
Removing limits opens the way to a real encounter with the miracle of being.
The city’s defenses fall away and sleep is overwhelmed.
The secret is in the asking.
