Security of thought

I just want to note a special thing that happened with me the other day.

For 9 months now I have been working in the non-occupation they call security. I chose this job for the time being as a experiment in meditation. Of course, you can make an occupation out of anything, but security is one job where this becomes rather silly in the end, because, as I have found out, the task of "securing" a place is most effective when you are simply a presence there, aware and alert. Otherwise a "security presence" can never really achieve peace and even creates an underlying feeling of insecurity. The mind is restless and always needs an insecure world, with which it can then occupy itself, trying to make it secure. I began to see how futile this was. In this attitude, the only thing my mind was securing was itself ...Ah-hah! so security is a game...then why not play it?

So instead of working, I'm watching. With my eyes, of course - but also with my awareness or consciousness. Instead of constantly calculating with my mind and thinking what to do? I am simply observing, inside and out (and I have found that they are both the same thing; while I am calculating and thinking of what to do next, I am not seeing what is really going on on the outside, with people, because I am only concerned with securing my mind or ego - "me" as a separate individual. And this is what security has come to mean: 'guarding people's separateness.' But because people are not separate in reality, security really means guarding people's illusions or sleep. Ultimately, of course, it is about securing life against death. But life no longer means life, and death has come to mean only what is in reality a natural part of life. In the terms of our society, life has come to mean the ego, the separate "thing" we value the most.


So, that experience... For months my mind was reacting to not having enough occupation. After work, and sometimes during it, I would find myself becoming overly occupied with something completely trivial. Strange as it may seem - with all the relaxation - I was finding myself tired and fatigued at the end of my work shift. Shouldn't I be feeling refreshed? For months, instead of giving in to this tiredness and going with it, for some reason I would find myself fighting it. Deep down perhaps I was afraid of letting go, so my mind told me not to. Get a grip!! But no, I wanted to see what happens when I relax - but I was purposefully postponing something from happening. It took me a while to realise this fully, and to become tired of the same routine gripping me over and over. But finally I did become tired of it. And I let go.

It wasn't any special effort, and I didn't think much about it. I just did it out of mere frustration. I got in from work one evening at about 8pm and went to bed and slept!! It was just the body's natural way of taking me, once I gave into it! I woke up at 12.30am and didn't get back to sleep until about 7am!! I woke up again about 3.30 in the afternoon - just in time to get myself ready and go to work again! But this time, work was feeling so much different. There was none of the usual drag. I was feeling immensely blissful, rejuvenated. I was breathing. I am breath...Breathing is me? I am not. Only breathing is. Shut up, mind!

But mind is shut up. Secure.

I have to let it go. Free.