The Keys to the Kingdom…and the shed, and our first place

I had a lot of keys. 

And sometimes I could even tell you where they were from. 

This one was the key to the garage under the office. Remember? Maybe 1990? 1991? I’d say.

And this one from the Yale lock to the front door of our first house. The one we painted yellow.

That one?

The key to my shed. Well, it used to be my shed until we moved. That was what, ten years ago now?

Ok. What about this one? 

Hmmm…No idea.

And on and on it could go. 

I collected keys over the years. Keys for every lock that I ever encountered. Always certain to open the door. I carried them all around with me; even organised them in a nifty wallet for a while like my father once did, until they grew to become something like a medieval mace; a lump of shiny brass and rusty steel, the size of a fist. 

It will come as no surprise to you that I have also collected meditation techniques over the years. 

In a sense, I’ve been looking for the right key. After all, meditation is like a key. At least that is how it first appears. A key that will allow us to pass beyond the looping, earthbound mind. A key that will open a door that we believe is closed to us. A special key that will open a special lock.

I have kept these meditation techniques on bookshelves and in notebooks, in sock drawers and odd boxes, organised and sometimes not. Just like keys, I have rattled them in the lock, the mind with its endless tumblers and combinations, pressing my shoulder against the silent, unyielding door.

We will all do it. There will be times when we strain against the lock, threatening to break the key, shoving and pushing against the door. But even then, in our frustration as the weeks turn to months and the months to years, we know somehow that the lock will not open and the door will not give way to force or discipline, or even our unwavering, unasked for commitment. 

And so we might take a different approach once in a while. I remember some locks which would seem to open only if my hands were very soft, if I exerted absolutely no force, or pretended to myself that I had no intention of opening the door at all. Sort of crept up on it, and took it by surprise. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. In meditation, the lock- the mind- is too smart for all that. It can see you coming from a long way back. You can’t pretend or trick your way in.

So we look for another key. Then another. And so it goes.

True, there are many keys to choose from. A bewildering choice it seems. And despite all that is written about meditation as a practice, a thing that takes practise, we will keep collecting “keys” just to see if maybe this time… 

Most of us are familiar with the struggle that goes on, the mind playing a solo game of Twister. Struggling to find a way, a way it recognises, a way on its own terms, and only on its own terms. Ensnared in the circle of its own logic, endlessly defending all it understands and clings to, insisting that there is a lock, that the door is closed to us, and only the mind can find the key to open that door.

And underneath all of the minds play, more subtly, there is perhaps another strategy being played out, one that favours the maintenance of who we think we are as against who we might truly be. By this constant search for the right key maybe we can put off stepping through that doorway, turn away from the sense of the rolling ocean of consciousness that lies beneath the mind, maybe we can hold on to all we have, all we believe ourselves to be. Well, it’s an interesting idea, isn’t it?

The truth is that there is no one special key. True, there will be a technique that we enjoy, that settles the mind and which sits within a tradition of truth and spiritual wisdom which brings beauty and insight. A mechanism which will take us to the door, but will perhaps leave us just short, awaiting some final surrender beyond technique, beyond practice, beyond even our sincere desire.

And of course, when we get there we will find that the door is open. It always was. There is no lock: no push or shove required. All that is required is to be still, quiet for a while, true and trusting in yourself as enough, and simply let it all be just as it is. There is no trick, or muscular discipline. There is no need of heroism, or suffering. Only an open, humble heart, patiently waiting in the silence.

Eventually I stopped carrying the keys around, then one day, for no reason, I just left them behind somewhere, without even a backward glance. You don’t think...? No forget it.