Just For One Moment

For just this moment, drop everything.

Drop your future and all the thinking about it. Drop your past, all the words and story that has accumulated over your lifetime.

Drop all your thinking. Drop all the words that come into your head. Don't touch them, let them pass.

Remember it is just for this moment. They are not going anywhere. 

Drop trying to get somewhere or achieve something. Drop wanting, clinging, desiring. 

Just for this moment. 

Allow your mind to empty itself of all worry, tension, expectation, anticipation.

Drop trying to understand, to be understood. Just be empty of all thoughts and all things.

Drop it all.

What is left? What is there when everything is dropped?

The mind will arise and a thought will come in. Drop it.

The mind will have some commentary, some opinion. Drop it.

What is there? Space. Emptiness.

Who is aware of this?

That which cannot be dropped.

The Path Opens Up

If I just sit and watch the birds, my mind wants to commentate. It wants to generate meaning and it wants to tell stories. 

None of this is bad, it just is the nature of the mind. It makes noise.

The problem begins when the noise that the mind makes starts to be taken for "the truth", or "the way that it is", or "the way I am". At that moment, I am no longer connected to life. I am now connected to my interpretation of life - not life itself.

Most of us have become mesmerized by the internal monologue. It has become reality for us. It has become the 'master interpreter' through which we get our experience of life. As we grow older it becomes more and more re-inforced and most of us get trapped inside of our story and can't get out.

 

Because the internal monologue can be non-stop, we can quite possibly live in a perpetual reaction to what our story is telling us about reality. This can be exhausting. The internal monologue wants us to look for things to validate our story, which in turn strengthens our ego - our false sense of self. Over time, we accrete a mental/emotional prison that we can't get out of. We have sealed ourselves in.

To get out of the prison is to stop living in reaction to the internal monologue. We must pull awareness away from identifying with our thoughts. Thoughts are necessary, but they are a tool apart from who we are. We use thoughts. Thoughts should not use us. Hear the internal monologue within and recognize it as not who you are. That is a first step and it is a quantum leap. 

From there, much is revealed and the path opens up.