The Big Question

Some of us are dealing with fear.
Some of us are dealing with anger.
Some of us are dealing with hurt.

The big question is:
Can I hold presence in the face of this?
Can I watch it without reacting to it?

Who is the watcher?

The Key

We are born.
We live.
We die.
We never possess anything.
We live in a material illusion.
If we believe the illusion, we suffer.
If we realize the nature of the illusion,
We are free.

A Human Life

There is a strong desire to fill every moment with something significant.
I think especially in this culture there is this need to do something important.
But life is mostly a mere matter of simply perceiving.
What if that was enough?
What is a human life?
What is a human life supposed to look like?
What if every life wasn’t measured on some kind of moral or value-driven scale?
What if every life simply was left alone to be what it was?
No more pressure. No more fakery. No more unease. No more anxiety.
Can the mind be free of the one who wants more?
Can the mind be free of the judge who condemns and measures?
Can the mind be free?

Letting Go

A good deal of anxiety comes from internal conflict and contradiction within myself.
When I stop and take a good look within, I find that there is this push-pull taking place—go this way, go that way. Do this, do that.

I'm trying to accomplish multiple thing at once and not doing any of them.
I'm looking to someone to give me advice or direction. Some authority will tell me. Someone else knows better than I do.
This cycle has to be broken to come back to balance.
There's freedom in letting go. 

To do that, first I become aware of the insane pattern. Then I discard it.
The key is in seeing the madness of that pattern. If I think that there's some validity to it, some value to it, then I won't let it go and my mind continuously chews on it and tries to solve the problem.

Letting go doesn't mean giving up.
Letting go is like preparing a garden for planting only the seeds of what you want to flourish.

The Narrative

Today I had an insight into freedom from the past and the narrative of the ego.
The key is seeing the false as false and not mistaking it for truth.
The ego and it’s narrative is false. A fiction.
Reality is freedom from the ego. But the ego is trying to make itself—the identity—the center of reality.
It is overlaying its story over reality by trying to get all my attention mainly through desire or fear.
But one the game is seen—the pattern recognized—it’s quite clear. And once recognized, it must not be touched. It must be allowed to dissolve in the light of awareness.

Meeting Life

One thing I am doing is watching my internal narrative.

It is the first authority that shapes my worldview. 

And whether it is “right” or “wrong” doesn’t matter because I’m not interested in having a worldview.

I’m interested in life as it is apart from my intellectual image of it. 

Because, right or wrong, my thought-image of the world is not the world. 

I find that meeting the world without an image is to see it, interact with it, sanely, peacefully as it is without any distortion of my beliefs, prejudices, dogmas, etc. 

It is something that has to be done to be understood. Like walking on a tightrope or riding a bike. 

Only then can the actual reality of it be felt.

Seeing The Reaction

Every moment the ego reveals itself through the story that is being told in reaction to the environment. This is the internal monologue.

When the mind is noisy, every moment is filled with the ego’s narration and reaction to the world and the people in it.

There is an all-pervading assumption, a conditioned story that exists about the world and everything in it which colors the reaction. It is “the way things are” and “the way I am.” These assumptions are held and accepted as fact without question. 

Through meditation, seeing, and vigilance, more energy is claimed and put into awareness. Then, the all-pervading assumptions begins to crumble, the conditioning is exposed, a once great authority begins to fail. 

Then the reactions don’t carry their weight anymore, they are questioned the instant they arise.

The awareness then has enough power to choose what is true and what is false.

Then reality is seen for what it truly is.  

Be Okay

Be okay with imperfection.
Be okay with broken-ness.
Be okay with things that can’t be fixed.
Be okay with open-endedness.
Be okay with the mess.
Be okay with chaos.

There is this idea of Perfection.
That we must attain to avoid feeling bad.
Our future must be perfect.
And our past is never perfect.
It is filled with memories of a hundred thousand imperfections.

In trying to fix the future, the mind is like a juggler with too many sharp knives in the air.
In trying to fix the past, the mind is like a dog chasing its tail.

Be okay with things as they are.
Let go.
And relax.

Acceptance

The mind-body is my connection to this world.
It’s the device I use to sense reality.
But when it suffers, how can I let it go?
Acceptance.
To come into the moment and accept what is.
The moment is so much better than what is being said in my head.
Acceptance releases resistance in the body and allows it to heal.
Acceptance is letting go.

A Different Relationship to Thinking

It is interesting how I can look at the content of my mind.

How I can look at the thoughts in my head and the emotions in my body.

In watching the content of my mind, I have discovered that I have an evolving relationship to thinking.

There is one kind of thinking that is involuntary. 

It is the thinking that is going on when I am lost in the narrative of my mind, and I am reacting to it as if I was watching an engrossing movie. When the movie is engrossing, I am unaware that I am in a movie theater, surrounded by people, in some city on earth, hurtling through space. I am having emotional responses to the movie—which is a phantom of light and sound.

When I am in this state in life, I am lost in a thought-stream that is an ongoing narrative about “me.” Mostly about what has happened to “me,” what will happen to “me,” and how do I feel about all those things.

The emotions feel like they are along for the ride. They simply react.

There is another kind of thinking when I am aware and consciously using thinking. 

These are the times I am aware that I am in a theater, surrounded by people, watching a movie which is a made up story told by actors—a phantom of light and sound.

I am not connected to thinking the same way as I am when I am lost in thought. 

Rather, I am there. I am awake. I am present and accounted for. I am alive.

When I am lost in thought, then the thinking is using me.

Instead of me using the thinking.

A very different relationship to thinking.