“Directly discover your own state. Remain without any doubt. Achieve confidence in self-liberation.” Garab Dorje

This week, we focus on the first sentence of Garab Dorje’s Three Statements that Strike the Essential Point. But in order to do so, we must rely upon everything experienced, cultivated, noticed, equilibrized and realized over the last year and half of this online meditation training and practice.

Discovery requires using all the sense-data of one’s inner and seemingly external experience. Through opening to the ongoing (and never turned off) senses and sensorial displays of any moment, any moment can be one of Presence and present-moment Awareness, of “Awareness in its seat”.

Did you know that every arising emotion, thought or thinking process, or meditative quality on or off the cushion -all of them- are states? From an awareness point of view, one cycles through countless states through each day. Moods are states, frames of mind are states, craving is a state, satiety is a state; gratitude, appreciation, fear, doubt, love or anger are states. Meditative states are states, as well.

When Garab Dorje instructs: “directly discover your own state,” one must begin with present moment awareness. How to accomplish that or at least enter that practice? By noticing -the sensations of any moment, any emotion arising, any ricochet in the cognitive mind, or noticing the peace, tranquility, alertness, dullness, restlessness, ease, or centerless center of a unified state. Each moment is a plethora of qualities, a mandala. Notice any of it. Notice more of it. Drop in, contemplate, and meditate.