The Secret Door
As inhabitants of the earth we live in a sea of gravity in which The Awakening teaches us how to float with grace. The gravitational field of the earth draws us all to its source but The Awakening reveals a secret door that transforms gravity from a force against which we have to constantly struggle and brace ourselves into one that lifts and buoys us up instead. The difference in our ability to relax is immense.
The secret door is the axis of verticality.
While sitting or standing in meditation, if we explore what happens when our body discovers the existence of this door and begins to walk through it, we can let go of the conventional mind and relax in a way and to a degree that is otherwise inaccessible.
The vertical axis is like an imaginary friend that no one can see but when you play with and engage this great friend, you transform your embodiment of meditation from a posture like a stone garden statue of the sitting or standing Buddha into a lightened dance of subtle, spontaneous, upright balancing. The path of The Awakening foregoes frozen stillness as a norm and surrenders to the spontaneous motions that want to keep occurring on the other side of the secret door. Body comes alive as it continues to yield to the currents of motion that a surrendered dance of upright balancing unlocks.
Everyone’s experience of this dance will be unique to them. As body keeps relaxing and letting go while sitting or standing upright, powerful sensations and evolutionary energies that have long lain dormant suddenly come dramatically alive. As you feel them moving through your entire body, they naturally lead you to The Awakening.
Meditators who are not privy to the secret door cannot relax and let go fully. Sitting like an unmoving stone statue virtually guarantees that The Awakening will not occur.
As you fall to the ground, so you need to rise up with the aid of the ground.
—The Kularnava Tantra
A student asked Joshu: “What is meditation?”
The master replied: “Well, it’s not meditation.”
The student was puzzled: “Why is it not meditation?
To which Joshu replied: “Because it’s alive!”
—Joshu, 9th century zen teacher