"OASIS" of Being, Teacher Training Meditation
When I reflect on my life with all its twists and turns what has had the single most significant impact has been the influence of the spiritual teachers that have been instrumental in my awakening.
I have been so blessed to have had 5 prominent teachers in my life that have planted the seeds that have guided the direction my life has taken.
My love affair with mediation began when I was 15. When I discovered that by sitting still and repeating a mantra that I could find peace from the chaos of my hormonally driven mind and emotions it was as if I’d been given the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
At 15 the spiritual teacher who my Mom was devoted to began giving weekly meditations at our house on Tuesday nights. I began attending these meditations and the more I was in the atmosphere of these Spiritual teachings I felt bathed by the Sacred Silence that was present. What began stirring within me was a Love of the Divine and a recognition that I was so much more that my tumultuous mind. I began to sense that the truth of my Being was rooted in something vast, something mysterious and at the same time something deeply close and intimate.
The deep devotion and love I felt for my teacher grew as I sensed he was opening me to the greater possibility of my life.
When I was 18 I left for college and within 6 months I and returned to my teacher because I felt that what I was learning from him was of much greater value than what I was learning in college. Something had been ignited within me, something intangible that I couldn’t explain. This was the beginning of a life devoted to the spiritual path.
I went on to have several other teachers along the way. And although I experienced some devastating fractures in my trust and devotion to two of them due to sexual misconduct, and lost two spiritual communities, what they had awakened within me was vibrantly alive. What I had been given was a WAY to Open to the Divine Presence through meditation. They held the door open for me to enter into a Mysterious Reality that existed beyond my personal self into an unseen dimension of myself.
Without their guidance on the path I don’t know where my life would have ended up. The teachings that were instilled within me at age 15 shaped the course of my life.
So, when I reflect on why I took this training, and Jeff asked us what our deeper motive was, it is that I have so much love and deep gratitude for these teachers and the surrendered life they live in order to show people like me the Way.....
I feel if I could, in some small way, be this Light that touches another, that would be enough.
Shortly after we began our Teacher Training I was sitting in deep meditation one morning and a word dropped into my consciousness. The word was OASIS.
As I sat pondering the meaning of the word each letter became an acronym which unfolded itself like pedals of a flower. So for months now I’ve been following the OASIS meditation and teaching it to others and it continues to reveal its depth.
What my teachers had offered me, each in their own way, was access to an “OASIS of Being”.....an opening into a consciousness that was free of mental conflict and tyranny. This is what I want to pass on to others in honor of the lineage of my teachers, to honor them by keeping alive the lineage of the teachings that are so precious to me.
Now, normally when I share this OASIS meditation I work with one letter for the entire meditation. But since we have only this short time I’m going to give you the entire thing in it’s simplist form so that you can have a taste of the whole of it. It’s like having a 5 course meal from which you’ll have one bite from each course.
The definition of OASIS is:
-a place in the desert where water comes up to the surface from deep
underground.
-an open fertile space that provides Rest, Refuge, and Peace -a haven which serves as a place of safety or sanctuary.
The OASIS of Being is not a place...it is who We ARE. It’s the Being-ness that I AM.
As far as I can tell the entire spiritual quest, all the books and all the teachings all come down to this one simple word.....the word “I”.
Ramana directed people again and again to ask the question “Who am I?”
The Bible says this “I” is “Closer than breathing...nearer than hands and feet.”
We cannot know this I with our mind. This “I” that we are has no history, no name, no birthday, no concepts...
There is Only One Being, One Awareness sitting here....One I sitting in the chair of Laura, sitting in the chair of Judtih,.....One Being Shining through the eyes of Leslie.....shining through the eyes of Marilyn. There is only One Awareness, Only One “I ” having the human experience of Abe, of Christiana, Chris. One I, One Self, One Heart, One Life, One Awareness having the experience of ItSelf in each one of us.
I once asked my teacher how I could experience this One I because I really wanted to have a direct experience of it. He told me “It’s simple, you just slip beneath the appearance of form into the essence behind it.” I had no idea how to do that so I forgot about it until one day I happened to see from my dining room a deep purple flower on a bush outside my window the light was hitting it in such a way that it’s luminosity completely captured my attention. I recalled the words of my teacher saying “just slip right through” and so I did.....What happened after that felt like Alice going through the looking glass and experiencing myself as the “One I” of Everything. I looked at a red tomato on my window sill and I was that. I picked up a knife and I was that. There was an exhilarating thrill of BEING everything... and I gazed in wonder at what had been familiar objects, like chairs and tables, and felt the miracle of BEING all of it with no separation....the One Formless I experiencing itself through form.
So, coming back to the OASIS of BEING....
The first letter “O” of the word OASIS stands for OPENING.
Close your eyes....allow the body to get comfortable.... Allow the breath to come in and out through the nose...With each breath let the body soften...softening into the gentle rhythm of the breath...Filling and emptying....allowing the body to Breathe and Open....jaw slightly open....shoulders drop.
There’s nothing to do....simply relaxing...the body relaxes and softens....allow the mind opens and becomes spacious.......allow the soft, gentle breath to OPEN the heart as if the warmth of the sunlight was OPENING the deeper center of Being.
OPENING into THIS....THIS moment, This breath, This heart... We OPEN to receive the Divine.... Offering ourselves to the Beloved...OPENING into this “I” which is Closer than breathing...nearer than hands and feet.”
A stands for Allowing
Awareness Allows everything to be exactly as it is. Allowing ....is a Relaxed, Open, Embracing of all that comes and goes within experience.
I invite you to REST in this OPEN EMBRACE.... and ALLOW whatever experience you’re having to be. There’s never an exception...every thought, feeling and sensation is ALREADY included and ALLOWED, nothing is a problem........Allowing everything....Doing Nothing. RESTING in Open, Easeful Contentment.... Allowing yourself to be.
S stands for Surrender:
Surrender is not something we DO. It’s a Letting Go. We’re letting go of the struggle to influence our experience, to change how we feel, to improve our meditation. We’re letting our experience just happen....Surrendering to the totality of life exactly the way it is, letting go of control. There’s nothing other than the Infinity of “I” here. Let us Surrender to that. Surrender and let yourself and be carried by the Divine into the Unknown.
I: stands for Into
S stands for Stillness
Stillness is our Essence, who we are in our Innocence and our Nakedness...unpolluted,
untouched, untarnished by life. Stillness is the dimension of our Being is always and has always been free, and is the source of true Peace.
Let us listen with every cell in our body to that which does not make a sound as we drink from the eternal Spring of Stillness here in the OASIS of Being.
Death Came
(by the More of Lisa Cary August 21, 2011)
Death came and stripped away my non-essential self.
What remained was only my Breath and my Gaze into Love
From innocent eyes of watery darkness....
Emptiness gave birth to Silence,
It’s magnetic pull drawing me into Itself,
An inner current beaconing me to surrender deeper into pure nothingness.
I followed it’s golden thread toward the center
Letting go, Letting go, Letting go into its deep, unfathomable stillness.
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