Reclaimed Your Territory
Meditation is an effort to attain inner emptiness, inner nothingness. Nothingness means no-thing-ness. It does not mean that nothing is there, it simply means that all the things that were there have been thrown out. You are there and for the first time, because things are no more there, you have a vastness.
It is really a miracle to create meditation, but once the miracle happens one is surprised that in this small body one is carrying the whole sky, the whole of eternity, an infinity. And that is our truth, that is the meaning of Hiltrud. Hil means battle, trud means truth — battle for truth. Meditation is a battle for truth — your inner truth, your authenticity, your real being. But for that many things have to be dropped. To know the real, to know the true, all that is false has to be dropped.
It is a battle because the false has lived so long inside you that it is not going to leave you easily; it will make every effort to remain there. It is like a guest who has lived for so long in your house that you have forgotten he is a guest. He has also forgotten; in fact he is behaving like the host. He may have thrown the host outside because of course when the guest comes the host respects him, gives him everything that is good in the house, the best place to lie down, and everything.
If the guest goes on remaining there it is bound to happen one day or other that he will feel that “I am the master and you are the slave, because, look, I live in the most beautiful space of the house, the best room, I eat the best food. Of course I am the master and you are just a slave.” That’s what has happened: the host has become a guest and the guest has become the host. Everything is upside-down.
Your consciousness is the host and your mind is just a guest. Thoughts come and go, you remain. Anger comes and goes, you remain. Greed comes and goes, you remain. The only thing that remains is your being. All things come and go. How many things have come and gone? But when they are there they behave as if they are the master.
The meditator has to fight a real battle to make the mind understand what its place is, to put the mind in its place, to bring it to its senses and show it that it is just a guest, not a host; it is not the master. The meditator has to reclaim from the mind the territory which it has possessed for long, maybe for millions of lives. The battle is because the mind will not budge an inch unless you do all that you can doc If you are really intent, if you put all your energy into it, only then can you throw it away. Meditation has to be something very intensive, very passionate, total. The moment it is total the mind knows that it Is defeated. And once the mind knows it is defeated, it becomes a beautiful slave; otherwise it is an ugly master.
The moment you have reclaimed your territory, your space, your truth, your being, you are a king, a queen; otherwise one is a beggar.
