23: Starting and Stopping the Journey
Meditation is a destructive process. It is the process of attacking your ego, your concepts of self and others–your map of the world. Somehow you know that destroying this will leave you mapless–lost! you fear–in a hostile world. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you are very close to reaching this space of nothingness and openness, a tremendous fear can develop. As if you will be swallowed up. Your own destruction! However, it is simply the destruction of the ‘monkey mind’ that has caused so much suffering in your life…and perhaps lives! You have nothing to lose but this falseness. There is nothing to find but your true self. The surrender will help you preserver past this point and to attain. Do not trust the mind at this point. Remember what it has brought you and surrender into the grace of attainment.  |
“And many go back; then they never turn within again. As I see it, every one of you have tried in some life or other some meditative technique. You have been near to the nothingness, and then fear gripped you and you escaped. And deep in your past memories, that memory is there; that becomes the hindrance. Whenever you again think of trying meditation, that past memory deep down in your unconscious mind again disturbs you and says, “Go on thinking; do not do it. You have done it once.” – Osho