Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Jeddah Mali teachings Embracing Freedom

Hi WaterBird!

Glad to hear you are moving ahead.

I realized as soon as I listened to the “Meaning” meditation again this weekend that I had butted heads with this exact quandary, not during the times I have done this meditation, but during an exercise we did in Jeddah’s retreat.

When I originally did this meditation, the area I brought up was one that matters a lot to me, but that I quickly recognized had an incredible amount of baggage connected with it. As I sat with the initial thought and gradually released all the layers of meaning that had built up around it, I had an incredible shift when I recognized that even the perceived “imperfections” were all perfect despite the meanings I had attributed to them. I went from the place of this is “impossible” to one of anything and everything is possible. So for me, it was a very strong experiential realization because of the subject I choose to work on.

This was definitely NOT the case during the Jeddah retreat. We were asked to identify elements of our personality that we felt were intrinsic to who we are and then release them. I was amazingly attached to a couple of the traits I identified and felt the meaning was so altruistic that I didn’t want to release them anyway! I have revisited this exercise multiple times and have gradually been shifting my outlook as I have come to the following realizations – some of them prompted by Jeddah and some from self reflection:

We are becoming that which we are, not what we imagine we should be. You are already a spiritual being and part of a spiritual community and no amount of walking or not walking that path will change it. Paradoxically, when I assume that I need to maintain my altruistic traits I am reinforcing the belief that they were ever absent, just as you are giving power to the thought that you could ever be a none spiritual person. In fact, when we realize this we open to the possibility of even more spirituality or altruism than we now experience because we are knocking down the walls of the box in which we have contained these meanings. It’s as if the curtain between the quantity/quality that we were comfortable with (the meaning we had assumed) has been removed and we have access to the infinite supply that is evident now we can see beyond the limited frame of reference we had before.

When we perceive good/bad, virtue/sin, black/white we are assuming that there are two fundamental realities rather than one. Duality comes from the meanings we attribute to the various aspects of our life. We know and have experienced that we are all sourced from the same energy.

As we release the effort to maintain the identity, the story or the meaning, we more and more consistently place our attention in the present moment, where everything we seek already resides anyway. All we release opens more space for infinite possibility and potential.

The mind’s interpretation of what goes on in our lives creates meaning and assumptions that are intended to protect our ego and identity. These can take us on a very circuitous route of highs and lows and existential angst. The mind is not and never will be the tool with which to experience the truth. The present moment awareness we experience through meditation will lead us there.

As we continue to access expansive states of consciousness, our old perception of self will naturally atrophy. We just need to have the willingness to undergo continual shifts in our perception, learn to recognize mind activity at subtle levels and discern what is expansive and what is not.

For a lot of us, I think Jeddah’s work is about learning to trust ourselves and the process we are going through. There is no right or wrong way to do this and it is all part of a process that is leading us on an upward spiral. She exposes us to concepts we can experiment with and there is no pass/fail. Work with what comes up and move on. As we continue to evolve, what is obscure now will become clearer and each time we revisit these meditations, we will be coming from a more spacious and expansive perspective.

Trust the process!

With love,
Wendy