THE VEDANTIST: MORNING MEDITATION

There was a lot going on in the outside world, in the world of the senses, in the forest, but it was peaceful and calm there in the center, in the clearing that was the Atman, who was Brahman.

This was the portal through which the Atman awakened in him eight years earlier and again that year.  He prayed to the Atman that it would grow ever more present in him, continue to unfold, to blossom, to deepen, to widen.  After all it was the Atman’s life not his.  The Atman’s many lifetimes, its many journeys, including the current 72 years and counting journey, had been that it would realize its destiny, which was to awaken.

He was proud to have been the Atman’s vehicle, and, as it happened, its final vehicle.  He, that biology, would die one day, but the Atman would not.  Nor would the Atman ever be born into that world of form again, not as the subtle body that had been him, and all of the other beings that that subtle body as him had been over the centuries.  The Atman’s task was complete now, its mission accomplished, the deed done.

At the same time, he was well aware that he was one of the rare ones to have actually experienced the awakening of the Atman.  It was said to take thousand, even millions of incarnations, as both insentient and sentient beings, that is as objects and then as living organisms, for the Atman to awaken in a person.  That it had occurred in his lifetime was humbling indeed.

But with that came a responsibility; he was responsible for maintaining the awakened state of the Atman in him, for all too easily it could be smothered over by the outside world, the world of the senses, the forest, and the thinking mind and egoic self, and the workings of his physical body.  Accordingly, he would not permit that to happen.  Accordingly, he would maintain the awakened state of the Atman in him, faithfully.

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One thing remained now.  His life was for that one thing only, the awakened Atman.

The Atman was not up in the clouds somewhere apart from him.  Rather was it right there within him.  To be with it he need only go there.

The Atman was eternal, unchanging, constant, abiding, reliable, whereas the thinking mind, egoic self, and physical body were not eternal, were ever changing, were not constant, were transient, were non abiding, were unreliable, and would die one day.