Meditating in the Moment
Speaking to the Highgate Meditation Group, London, 5 August 1981.
Meditation is purely being in the body in a continuous state of surrender, the surrender of yourself. Starting with the body, we might see it as a well and we are inside it, holding on to the sides of the well with grim determination, evidenced by the strain or tension in the body. As a rule we are not aware of this tension unless we have a pain or headache. Because we don’t look inwardly, we depend on pain to tell us we are holding on; or depend on some other manifestation of our clinging to the body. But as we start to meditate we look inside to see where we’re holding on and then remember to surrender.
This surrender has to be done now. The only time that it can ever be done is now. But the self, or emotion or past, sweeps over you and removes you from that moment of surrender; and it takes time to get to the state of purely being in the body, in the senses, self-surrendered. So the idea is to gradually reduce the intervals between each moment of being the awareness of now.
We have to get into our senses. That doesn’t mean that to be really alive we have to run around being super-sensitive, which is the impression I got from the Gurdjieff teaching. That’s admirable at the stage of getting your attention into your body so that you are aware of your existence without slipping away from the now. But to get back into your senses you only have to remember to self-surrender.
You surrender in the now but to be self-surrendered is be in the moment. To get into this moment, which is more present than ‘the now’, is to know you are self-surrendered. Being in 'the now’ is being in the senses, able to see yourself walking up the road or doing anything. To be in the moment the mind has to become stiller than that.
In right meditation you are endeavouring to reach the pure sensation of yourself in the moment. And in that moment the sensation of yourself moves at the same speed as the mind until they are one, a 360 degree unity. You are then surrendered without any conscious effort whatsoever. You are just consciousness.
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