Day Five

Freedom is a position, not an experience

Another sparkling clear day in Montserrat. Although in the middle of the day there are many tourists and pilgrims making there way up the mountain here, the place manages to somehow remain essentially pristine and serene. By early evening the ancient monastery is enveloped in silence again. I go to meditate in the Basilica, which being permeated with almost 1000 years of devotional practice, has a tremendous silence.

Finally the subject of meditation comes up today, and Andrew spends most of the morning meeting just answering questions on meditation. Meditation can occur spontaneously as is happening on this retreat, or you can decide to consciously practice it.
A woman relates how she can’t stop her thinking and feels as if in prison. Andrew replies that being in prison or not depends on the conclusions you draw about the experience you are having and does not depend on the experience itself.
The key point he makes is that Freedom is a position, not an experience. When we practice meditation, what is important is the inner position we take – inwardly assuming the posture of freedom – and not what we may happen to experience e.g. whether our mind is agitated or not.
At one point he said an amazing thing which he said that he didn’t understand either!

“The part of you that is free is not the part that is having the experiences.”

I find it very hard to do justice to the multidimensional nature of this retreat. I’m writing little snatches of this or that, because to try to encompass what happens each day would be well near impossible, and also it would be far too much to read.
Superficially, the formal sessions take the form of people asking Andrew questions and him responding. But in doing so, he manages to always widen out the answer so that it is a universal answer for everybody and so that gradually all the many facets and dimensions of evolutionary enlightenment are revealed and clarified.

The Authentic Self – an Ecstatic Compulsion to Create the Future

In the afternoon, a number of people asked what I thought were very profound questions on the nature of the authentic self, and Andrew gave a thrilling, full, searing account of its nature which had me floored. This is his favourite subject and also what is specifically new about this teaching. The authentic self is a new expression of Enlightenment.
The authentic self is the evolutionary impulse becoming aware of itself at the level of consciousness as a compulsion to evolve. It’s not, “It would be nice to evolve or I should evolve.” It’s, “I must evolve.” The authentic self is the ecstatic compulsion to create the future. If you reach for it, it will appear.

And it’s true in my experience today. Merely listening to him with interest, I can feel this force, this passion arise in an undeniable way in myself in response. The authentic self is definitely evoked by anyone else’s expression of it. It’s strange: It really does have a motive and agenda of its own that is utterly impersonal, and is not anything to do with my personal wants or needs –

“Consciousness has to transform, evolve, now, now! It has to happen, has to happen, has to happen!”

– is the best way I can try to put into words, the urgent drive which seems to erupt out of nowhere in my awareness. That really is the sentiment, like some sort of mantra welling up from deep within that is insistent and it is completely impersonal – it’s a concern for the whole process of life to go forward, it’s not about me or even about other people.
At the same time, it feels that this compulsion is totally my own very deepest concern too, and not something foreign. This passion wants perpetual development and is only interested in that which has not yet occurred. It’s a very different part of myself than the ego which only wants to be left alone and hates change and insists on affirmation. The authentic self is fierce and uncompromising and I find myself saying things that I didn’t know that I knew with a confidence and doubtlessness that make me sometimes wonder, “Where on earth did that come from?!”
And it inherently is purposeful in the biggest possible way, and is only interested in where we need to head for.