VBT – Meditation 89.2
Don’t Exclude
BELOVED, AT THIS MOMENT LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, BE INCLUDED.
The basic point is to remember inclusiveness. Don’t exclude. This is the key for this sutra – inclusiveness, include. Include and grow. Include and expand. Try it with your body, and then try it with the outside world also.
Sitting under a tree, look at the tree, then close your eyes and feel that the tree is within you. Look at the sky, then close your eyes and feel that the sky is within you. Look at the rising sun, then close your eyes and feel that the sun is rising within you. Feel more inclusive.
A tremendous experience will happen to you. When you feel that the tree is within you, immediately you will feel more young, more fresh. And this is not imagination, because the tree and you both belong to the earth. You both are rooted in the same earth and ultimately rooted in the same existence. So when you feel that the tree is within you, the tree IS within you – this is not an imagination – and immediately you will feel the effect. The tree’s aliveness, the greenery, the freshness, the breeze passing through it, will be felt within you in your heart. Include more and more existence and don’t exclude.
In many ways, many world teachers have been teaching this. Jesus says, ‘Love your enemy as yourself.’ This is an experiment in inclusiveness. Freud used to say, ‘Why should I love my enemy as myself? He is my enemy, so why should I love him as myself? And how can I love?’ His question seems relevant, but he is not aware of why Jesus says to love your enemy as yourself. It is not for any social politics, not for any change in society, not to create a better society, but to give you an expanded feeling of being and consciousness.
If you can include the enemy within yourself, he cannot harm you. That doesn’t mean that he cannot kill you: he can kill you, but he cannot harm you. The harm comes when you exclude him. The moment you exclude him, you become the ego, separate, alone, cut off from existence. If you include the enemy within you, then everything is included. When the enemy can be included, then why not the tree and why not the sky?
The emphasis for the enemy is that if you can include the enemy in your being, you can include everything; then there is no need to exclude anything. If you feel that your enemy is included within you, then even your enemy will give you vitality, energy. He cannot be harmful to you. He can kill you, but even while he is murdering you, he cannot harm you. That harm comes from your own mind when you exclude.
But the case with us is totally diametrically opposite – even friends are not included. Enemies are excluded, and even friends are not included. Even your lover, your beloveds, are not included. While being with your lover, you are not merging with him or her. You remain separate, you control yourself.
You don’t want to lose your identity. Because of this, love has become impossible.
Unless you lose identity how can you love? You want to remain yourself, and your lover wants to remain himself, and no one is ready to merge, no one is ready to include. Both exclude, both are bracketed in themselves: there is no meeting, no merging, no communion. If even lovers are not included, then it is bound to be that your existence is the poorest possible. You are alone, poor, a beggar. With the whole existence included, you are the emperor.
So remember this: make it a style of life to include. Not only meditation, but a style of life, a way of living. Try to include more and more. The more you include, the more you expand, the more your boundaries recede to the very corners of existence. One day only you are; the whole existence is included. This is the ultimate of all religious experience.
BELOVED AT THIS MOMENT LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, BE INCLUDED.
Tags: Don’t Exclude
