On The Path

 Reaching Your Rock Bottom

I didn’t want to give a talk right now. The idea had not entered my mind, but then I got a message asking me to speak to you all. During one of the meditations I heard a voice whispering, ”Michael, please say something!” Perhaps it only came from one person, and if that’s the case, then everybody else doesn’t have to listen. I’m just talking to the person who sent me a message through the nothingness.

In the last month or two I’ve stopped speaking during groups, except in the last session, when we traditionally have questions and answers. Nobody has complained about that. It seems to me that the Energy Work we do together is more eloquent than anything I might say about it, but sometimes that’s not true for everybody.

All the time I’m trying to draw people out of their structures, because people’s structures suck up all their energy. By ‘structures’ I mean when your behaviour is just following a pattern, and the things you do or say are already decided before the action. Even when the situation is new, and you can’t follow a previous pattern, you can just modify one of the old ones. That’s how we get through life; to never be taken by surprise, and to always have some response ready for whatever might arise. This means the engine is running constantly, so every time you fill up the petrol tank it immediately gets sucked dry. The result of this is that you don’t have any energy left to make the movement towards your true nature. You’re constantly on the go, and even when you’re not you’re preparing for whatever you have to do next.

Doing this makes life a continuity of one thing after another. However, the true position is that you are still, and connected to all of nature, including your own nature. At each instant you can come from that place of deep relaxation, because it is always present in you. From there you can respond, and stay in your nature, yet when that is over everything inside you is quiet, peaceful and serene.

When you have found this you don’t need to act in order to taste your own presence and reality; you don’t need to do anything in order to feel that you exist; you’re absolutely sure that you exist as yourself, without depending on any self-expressions, or any awareness from other people. As I’ve come to see it, this is the final and ultimate goal for everybody; to be at rest in your self. When you are at rest in your self – by which I mean your true nature – then you are at rest in reality. Then it doesn’t matter whether you do anything or not; you’re totally content just to be. To attain that relationship with the One, and find your true nature, requires letting go of all the things that are sucking your energy into repetitive actions and thoughts.

In the session we just had, I could see that some people were getting a taste of what I’m now talking about; a feeling of starting from the instant, as if no previous instances were relevant to you.

Nothing that has happened before is relevant. It doesn’t matter what took place yesterday, last year, or even an instant before; each moment is pure.

Quite a few of you got a glimpse of that. For a while you let go of the regularity, continuity, and perpetuity of your life, and were able to say, ”A-ha. This moment is not just the next part of a continuity; it is unique, now, and here.”

So you got a taste of that, and then you said, ”A-ha, that was nice,” but the one that says, ”That was nice,” is the one that’s in the continuity, and this means the continuity goes on. That can happen ten-thousand times, but it’s still part of the continuity.

If you fall into this space, which is not part of the continuity, and you want to stay there, then you have to give up your association and attachment to that continuity of movement and action. Being able to do that takes great energy; it’s a heroic step, and if you make it, you gain everything. You feel totally at home. That’s not to say you won’t have any problems anymore – you will, but you won’t get lost in them. You will be like a juggler, throwing and catching balls, but your feet will be on the ground, and if the balls fall all over your head and onto the floor, it won’t matter anyway, because you can just get up and start again.

What I’m talking about is a kind of grounded-ness. Not just the kind that means you’re in your body and not floating around in the clouds – which is the normal view of grounded-ness – but that you are grounded in that which supports material reality, and from out of which material reality came. To be grounded in that is far deeper and more total than being grounded physically on this planet.

When you are grounded in the basis of reality it doesn’t matter if you repeat yourself, because in every instant you are being spontaneous. Like a fresh water spring, with each moment the flow is new. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already said what you’re saying, or done what you’re doing, ten-thousand times before, because it will still feel like the first time. Actually, that’s wrong; it won’t feel like the first time, because you won’t be counting! It would just be what’s happening, and there wouldn’t be any other way that you could be without distorting your truth. Details can change, but the essential expression of your Being cannot be altered, because that is just how it is.

When you find that you will realise that it’s always been there. You were not always moving from there, but it was always there. Previously you were not taking any notice of it because the movie was so fascinating; you were spell bound. That’s how we are, we are absolutely fascinated by our movies. We are not only lost in the movie, but in the belief that the movie is who we are.

I was just thinking, in the break, about how, when the Wall Street Financial Crash happened in the thirties, hundreds of people jumped out of skyscraper windows to their deaths. Why did they do this? Because they lost their money. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about; they had no money, and so they thought that life was not worth living.

How many times do things happen to you that make you think that life is not worth living? The next time that happens, remember it’s just like money. You’ve got money in one pocket, and your movie in the other. It’s just stuff happening.

You’re capable, in this moment, not just to hear my words and understand them, but to be where my words are coming from. This is possible, because we’re all the same, so there’s a resonance.

If you can get the feeling that you’ve sunk so deeply into yourself that you’ve hit the bottom, then when you look around from where you’ve hit, you see that everywhere is connected to that place, so you are at the bottom of everything. Perhaps up on the surface something goes wrong; you lose your job, your lover leaves you, or somebody close to you dies. These are all big things, which will shake you, but how are those huge and powerful events going to affect you if you are at the rock bottom of your Being? You will be affected – you may weep – but you will still have the basis of your existence, and when the sweep of the experience has past, then there you are again. Not lost, and not longing for the return of your job, partner, or friend, but beyond all the upheaval. You feel, ”Yes, that really hit me, but here I am, rock bottom inside myself again.”

It’s not that you’re indifferent, it’s that you’re in a place which is beyond all the ups, downs, and traumatic happenings. That place is beyond even birth and death.

When you’re in that place you feel that you’re never going to disappear completely, but you also don’t mind if you do. That’s the big joke, that when you’re in that place you think, ”There’s no such thing as death, because I feel eternal, but if I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter anyway.” That’s a nice comforting place to be, because then you can laugh at anything.

I don’t really expect a great deal to come out of talking. I don’t expect much profit or gain for the people listening to me, but maybe, when we work again tomorrow, your mind will go a little bit quiet and say, ”Maybe this will help me to reach the space that Michael was talking about yesterday evening.”

It’s hard to fall out of the captivity of the movie. In a way, anything you do to achieve that is just another structure. Even meditation is a structure, but it’s the elite of structures. It’s elite because it is possible, through meditation, to see the truth of what I’m saying and so go beyond all the structures.

There’s a difference between meditating and being in a meditative space. A meditative space is what you will find at your root energy. Out of that you can make great action – you can dance, go crazy, and make love, yet the meditative space is still there.

It’s not a case of ‘action in the world’ versus ‘spiritually meditative’. It may seem like that at first, but once you reach the basis, then you find that it’s not only the foundation of your meditative space, but of all your action in the world.

A strange thought just came into my mind. I just imagined what I would say if, when I die – which is not going to be just yet – God said to me, ”Before you go, as a reward for all the great work you’ve done in the world, I will make one city, of your choice, an enlightened city.” I was born in London, I live in Freiberg, and my favourite city in the world is Zurich, but my answer would still be Berlin. There would be no question, I wouldn’t even debate it.

Berlin: the first enlightened city. Wouldn’t you be lucky?

Talk, Berlin, 28th April 2007