OK, here’s a revolutionary proposition: no matter what we feel or what is happening, how about we start from where we are? How about we relax and let everything be just as it is without trying to change a thing? Wow, how crazy is that? To resist nothing, to abstain from the urge to manipulate things to some imagined better state, like, ‘I should be better at meditation by now. Why do I still have so many thoughts? Why do I still get so upset after all these years of practice?’ Or, ‘Why am I always so anxious and afraid for the future or regretful of the past?’
Living through a filter of ‘shoulds’ is a second-hand way to live. It is like reading the menu and never getting the meal. When a should arises, watch to see how it is always attached to an image of oneself. It isn’t that we can’t use intelligence to understand a situation and, if necessary, make changes, but that is very different from dealing with life through the idea of a should or shouldn’t be that way. True intelligence, creativity and compassion for oneself and others are available when we have the courage to meet whatever is arising, no matter how uncomfortable, in the present moment, without judgment.
Here’s a question: When listening, sensing, feeling, right now, or reading these words, where is the should?
This was wonderful to read, Mike. I did relax and accept, until " if necessary make a change" . That threw me right back into anxiety.
Jan,
That is not an unfamiliar reaction for anyone quetioning the impact of presence in the midst of everyday life. Our conditioning is so (apparently) deeply rooted and the synergy between thought and feeling is sticky, like velcro...it would seem impossible to be free of it. But we have a couple of things going for us. Primarily, we have the fact that we are conscious. You would not even be able to report on your anxiety unless there was something noticing that state. What sees our mental/emotional states is the apect of consciousness that precedes thought...awareness. Awareness is the immutable, indestructable, uncreated aspect of existence and is the source of intelligence, creativity and love. Thought, when informed by awareness, is intelligence.
I am not big on the word, 'practice', because it so readily implies a 'practicer', but there is a practice that I have found valuable in bringing intelligent action to difficult situations and relationships: make your suffering into an opportunity. The next time something uncomfortable (anxiety) arises, watch it; in a way, listen to it. Listen to your resistence without resisting. Just let it all be. This is the art of making a conscious shift from the constricted space of our thought/habits to the uncreated, open space of aware presence. What I have found is, in that open space, aggravation has no purchase; it loses momentum and allows for intelligence to come to the fore. It takes patience and devotion but it works. It is, in the end, the ultimate medicine.
OK, all for now.
All love,
Mike