Drawing a blank...

One of the biggest barriers to realization of Consciousness is the chatter inside our heads. We all have it: that voice in your mind that never shuts up from the moment you wake until way after you fall asleep. The root of this voice is really one thing: fear. People's minds fear that if they shut up they will cease to exist. That is exactly what the ego does. It tries to preserve its existence by constantly reminding itself, "Hello, I'm here!"

Can this voice be stopped? Is there a point to stopping this voice? What can you really expect to do in the Present moment about this?

When I was living with Draja and training as his student, we would spend the days fixing up his house and running errands and the evenings doing exercises. Constant 24/7 training, basically. On one evening we went down into the classroom for our nightly session, and this time we were working on blanking that voice in our heads:

Draja opened up the discussion, "Josh, great power lies with those who can blank their minds for ten minutes. Can you do that?"

"Hellll no." I answered. "I think I can do it for maybe a second or two, and then it comes back no matter how hard I try to keep it away."

He nodded and smiled, "Ah, there's your problem. You are trying. By trying to blank your mind, you are guaranteed NOT to succeed."

I flashed him my usual confused look that I had been giving him for the last decade since that day when he sat me down at age 12.

"There's an old Zen saying. 'You cannot stop your own mind any more than you can look into your own eyes or bite your own teeth.' By trying to stop your mind, you are using your mind, and that takes thought. Therefore, your mind is not stopped. You may just simply be thinking, 'I'm not thinking right now. nyah nyah' To stop your thoughts, you have to observe them. Then after observing them for a while, you gradually realize that you are not the thoughts, but rather you are the thing that is witnessing the thoughts."

I nodded pensively and said, "Kinda like a silent witness, huh?"

He smiled and said, "Yes! That's exactly it. Very good."

Then I got a little bit worried, "But if my mind stops, won't I fall into a big black pit of nothingness or something? Could I cease to exist? Or die even?"

He laughed and shook his head. "No. That's what your ego wants you to think. It really believes that if it stops it will not be there, but actually when it stops you are more you than you usually are. But, talking about this is just more thought. You need to blank your mind, and I'm going to help. Take this..."

Draja then pulled out a small white box, like the kind used for rings or earrings, and he opened it. Inside was a nondescript looking stone. It could have been any stone that was picked up off the street, and was maybe three quarters of an inch long by half an inch wide. He handed me the stone and said, "Hold this in both hands and close your eyes."

Sitting down in a chair, I took the stone and did as he instructed.

Suddenly everything went black... because my eyes were shut! But seriously it was even blacker than that, and moreover, everything suddenly became ultimately quiet. I cannot describe how quiet it was... quieter than the quietest room I had ever been in. Not only was it black and quiet, but there was this feeling of enormous space. The space was more vast than anything I had known, yet I was not scared, and yet the space was also very small at the same time. Man, it was a relief, like taking off a tight shoe. All the crap that I had cared about was just not an issue. It did not exist any longer.

And in that vast blackness of ultimate peace, there came a teeny tiny voice that barely even had any echo, and it said, "Holy shit. I'm still here."

Suddenly again, everything came swarming back to "normal". I realized a few seconds later that it happened because Draja took the stone out of my hands. He smiled at me and asked, "So, how was it?"

I pointed at the stone, "What the hell was THAT??"

In a pedantic tone he responded, "This stone has an interesting ability to teach people how to meditate by blanking their minds. Someone found it and gave it to me a long time ago. I use it to teach people when they are in need. The great thing now is that all you have to do to blank your mind in the future is simply remember the stone and your experience, and your thoughts will zip away."

After thanking him, I asked him a lot of questions. The main one I asked was, "When I was blanked out, there was something STILL THERE. It was a huge presence, yet not so huge. It didn't do anything except watch and hang out there in the background like a big black expanse. What was that?"

He nodded knowingly, "That's the Real you."


More later!