what is it you are looking for?
Have you ever noticed the rollercoaster you are on with your mind? We all unconsciously and continuously judge our experience with “likes” and “don’t likes”, things that we run toward and away from, all that defines us and “other”… as if those things were somehow fixed and permanent.
As I find myself running toward some object of desire (like a good cup of coffee or a specific feeling of peace after a long walk) or running away from a fear or discomfort (worries about my business, the state of the world, or a searing discomfort in some confrontation)… I often wonder, “What is it I am looking for?” Another way to say that is:
”What is it I am moving away from?” or “What is it that is somehow not enough?”
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Today my day has been “productive”, filled with many of the things that I think of as “positive” in my world. A long walk, some of it while listening to a conversation on our sense of “self”; a good long meditation sit of 40 minutes or so with a teacher I’ve recently begun listening to; a few hours of administrative and design work; a healthy lunch from some food I made yesterday; some cleaning; some simple pleasures like a good cup of coffee. All of that since I woke up at 6 am - now 7 hours of conscious effort toward “goodness”.
Somehow there are still moments when I am unsure that this is enough. Do you know what I mean?
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Outside a mix of snow, sleet and rain soaks the trunks and branches of winter-barren trees in my side yard.
I can widen my vision to shift past my computer screen and into the wide world. When I remember to do this I also am reminded to step out of the feeling that I am in my head and instead drop into my body.
When my eyes close and I allow myself to let go of the notion that “I” exist solely inside my brain, all becomes a kaleidoscope of experience, and my sense of “me” expands out into the universe, atom by atom. All of the “positive” and “negative” stuff falls away and I simply feel the resonant experience of this thing called life.
I have so many tools at my fingertips for “betterment”, tools like breath and movement and cold exposure and whole food…. intermittent fasting and probiotics and early morning sunrise walks. It all has helped me build the framework for an experience that is, let’s say, less tinged with unnecessary suffering.
But the baseline of discomfort, that somehow something is “off”or not quite “there”, is still present, always lurking around the corner or under the surface of my thoughts. Do you know what I mean?
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Some of our greatest minds and teachers have offered for us to drop the fixations, the likes, the dislikes, and see what it is to rest and allow our experience to be just as it is. What does that mean?
Just that. Give it a try.
Pause and drop your attention into your body. Notice how there are no hard edges in your actual awareness of self, it is fuzzy clouds of sensation, tingling, sharpness, heat, coolness, sounds come and go, thoughts come and go… and occasionally we get truly hooked to something: pain, anger, desire, fear, a need to control…
And then in all of it, we just keep relaxing with what our experience is. Even the pain, allow it in. Even the sorrow and grief, make room. The anxiety and tentativeness, they are also welcome. As we welcome and allow, we do not covet and we do not push away. All of the good and bad, the like and dislike, even those things that hook us in… lose their power, and they come and go with much more freedom.
When I am able to get close to this sense, the world opens up like a flower, endlessly unfolding in the undulations and iterations in which it arises moment by moment. In these periods where I am less fixated, there is the faintest sense that I am genuinely “ok” with anything that arises into my experience. Being “ok” is not the same as being nihilistic. It is a sense that the underlying ground of my mind, the underlying state of the world… is actually something I don’t need to try to control too much or at all. Because any attempt to control is actually in vain. And anyway the basic ground of it… just is. There is nowhere to “get to”. No salvation from the present moment.
Things will arise and they will fall away. That goes for all of us, for our thoughts and ideas, for the things we care about and value. It will all have its moment and then the moment will one day pass.
My sense is that if we fixate less on what we will never be able to control (virtually everything except maybe our reactions), and instead open ourselves to the bounty and abundance of the present moment, this deeper sense of discomfort just below the surface will soften and lose its power.
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When we are able to do this, we discover that whatever it was we were “looking for” is already here. A deep sense of contentment, of allowing, of peace with whatever arises. It is a peace that doesn’t negate a need for action at times. It is a sense of contentment that doesn’t negate our joy or grief or anger. But instead it makes space for those things without getting hooked or fixated.
It is a sense that we are enough. This is enough. We don’t need to be pushed and pulled around by our rollercoaster of thoughts, but we can rest and witness them come and go. We can be and open. We can exist in a state of natural unfettered contentment.
Do you know what I mean?