Unlearning the Mind

 

Photo Credit: The Minds Journal

Unlearning the Mind

Is meditation something which can be taught? Meditation starts happening only once the mind becomes quiet – so, the challenge is the mind. Unlearning the mind is the beginning of meditation. Unlearning the mind is learning meditation; when the mind has been completely unlearned one has learned meditation. One cannot go directly into learning meditation. All that is needed is to remove the mind.

The mind is like a block. The river is there but blocked, it can’t flow. It is covered with rocks; those rocks don’t allow it any outlet. It is surging within us, it is longing for the ocean, it wants to get out of this prison. That’s why everybody feels so restless. This restlessness is nothing but our consciousness longing to meet with the ultimate. The river wants to reach the ocean. The seed wants to sprout, but it is covered, blocked by a big rock. That rock is of our mind. And it is a big rock because we have been accumulating it for many lives. Our meditation is simply crushed underneath it.

We cannot reach meditation directly, but we can remove this rock chunk by chunk. We can take a chisel and a hammer and go on hammering on the rock. Slowly, gradually the rock will disappear. The day the rock disappears, suddenly a flow, a fresh flow of water, will start running towards the ocean. That is meditation.

Meditation cannot be learned. It cannot be practiced because all practicing is of the mind. All practices strengthen the mind, make it stronger. And the mind has to be made weaker; its power has to be destroyed. It has to be put in its right place: it is not the master; it has only become the master. Stop cooperating with it, stop giving more and more nourishment to it.

When meditation has happened, love is its aroma, its perfume. A meditative person is naturally loving. A loving person is naturally meditative. If a man thinks he is meditative and is not loving, then his meditation is nothing but a mind practice, something false, pseudo. Something which is not meditation is masquerading as meditation. He has been deceived by his mind.

Meditation brings love naturally – it is its aroma, its fragrance. And love exists only around the flower called meditation, never otherwise. They are together. Either search for love or for meditation. If we can find one, the other is found without any effort on our part. Either find love or find meditation and the other will follow it like a shadow.

If one wants to learn meditation, one will have to unlearn the ways of the mind. If one wants to learn love, one will have to unlearn the unloving ways that have become very ingrained within. Anger, possessiveness, jealousy – these will have to be unlearned.

Meditation is our innermost nature. Yes, it is a grace, a gift, but it is not going to happen in the future, it has already happened. We have never been without it; we CAN’T be without it. Love and meditation constitute our real, essential core.