Bliss of the Anointed One

I started out tonight thinking I was going to write about jumping back on the meditation horse.  You see, I've taken a sort of hiatus from it on account of losing weight and all.  For the past six-ish years, I've had an almost daily meditation practice, some days five minutes, some days thirty, until the last few months, where I've eschewed sitting in favor of reading Twitter and Huff Post in the morning.  Anyway, I wanted to tell the story of how at first, it didn't really feel like anything was missing or different, until months later when I suddenly noticed how snappish I'd become, how much more ADD I'd become, how I'd forgotten the art of listening altogether.

But then in lovely irony, while sitting down to type I opened the new issue of The Sun, read the writers' bios, two short stories, and then happened upon the column, The Dog-Eared Page, where this month's article was written (decades ago) by some guy named Abhishiktananda.  I rolled my eyes.  Please.  No one names their baby Abhishiktananda.

I continued.  "It is the worst possible illusion to imagine that we have to struggle to find liberation or mukti..." he writes. Yawn.  I skimmed a sentence from each paragraph then skipped to the last line.  I found myself thinking that I couldn't bear to read another article, another book, listen to another speech, whatever, about finding the Self and that there really is no finding, 'cause duh, it's inside of us all along.

And then it hit me -- well, when did this happen?  I've read countless texts on actualization, the meaning of the Self, and finding freedom.  I've devoured allegories and philosophies and whole schools of thought on these subjects.  I wanted to write my own brilliant guide for crissakes.  That's interest.

Yet somewhere between then and now I developed an aversion for the thing I once loved to read about.  [Aside:  See, there are times when ending in a preposition just makes sense.]  Upon recoiling from Abhishiketc's article, I immediately had the sense that at least for right now, reading about awakening can only be a (really boring) academic exercise.  That the act of reading about realizing your own mukti-ness is not entirely different from struggling to find it.  And I don't want to.

Instead, I'd rather keep doing things that are fun, like reading fiction or Twitter (yeah, it's both), dreaming of super cute outfits, practicing guitar, and running, and getting reacquainted with meditation.  Which, come to think of it, is probably A's point.