As a teacher and a coach, I hear people saying, with great conviction, “I just can’t go on like this.” And we do. We do go on, living, thinking and behaving in ways that are familiar and often extremely limiting.
Isn’t it clear by now, that there are powerful forces holding us in place, forces inside us, forces that are part of our conditioned mind, that do not want us to change?
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What this requires, in my own experience, is learning first of all, how to let go of the conditioned mind. Just for a few moments. To recognize the natural state of presence that is here, when we simply relax and let go.
It does not take a lot of effort to simply rest in presence, to discover that you are still alive, still conscious, when you allow your entire mind to just relax, for a few seconds. And then for longer. We really can discover, for ourselves, in an immediate way, an existence that is not limited by the mind. Until we have this direct experience, we will be struggling endlessly within the same beliefs, perceptions and thoughts that are what created our dilemmas in the first place.
This is not about throwing the mind away. We need our discriminating intelligence, we need to draw distinctions. This faculty is critical, for our evolution, for being a fully functioning human being.
But we also need to understand, in a visceral way, the limits of our thinking. Where thinking will not, and cannot take us. What happens when we fall back onto our thinking mind, and ask it for what it can never deliver: freedom, clarity, guidance, compassion, and wisdom.
Once we have learned how to rest in this moment, and let go, then we can begin to inquire, to question our own mind, from a different place. A place that does not judge, that does not insist that we find relief from our suffering, right now.
We all know how our conditioned mind operates-our egoic conditioning. It wants to feel better-now! It wants answers, techniques, strategies, tools. It wants to fix, and manage and control.
The way of genuine transformation is not this way. It is a way that asks us if we really want to know the truth. It asks us to slow down and listen to ourselves, to find out what our heart’s desire is. What we really want. What is calling us. What is beckoning to us. What the real possibility is, that is waiting for us, that has always been waiting for us.
When people stop, when they take the time, when they honor themselves enough to listen to their heart’s desire, they speak of it with words like this:
Clarity, Openness, Aliveness, Fulfillment, Love, Intimacy, Freedom.
These are the qualities of our real self, our authentic being. They are what emerge when we rest in presence. Presence is the field, the open ground, from which our authentic being emerges. Sometimes suddenly, often very slowly. We begin to find our authentic voice. We are able to hear our real ‘No’ from inside. We no longer need everyone to approve of us, or understand us.
We realize we are not in control of our life, that we never have been. That we can make a powerful commitment to this authentic way of being, this freedom and this love. We can choose to align ourselves with this, in each moment, rather than giving all our attention and energy to our conditioned mind.
These are clear choices, that reveal themselves in the heart of this practice. Coming together, we can support each other in these choices, we can enter a field of consciousness where all of this is being recognized and acknowledged, moment to moment.
I am not who I think I am
Whenever I relax and fall back into the openness of presence, I can simply rest here, without needing to change anything.
I do have the power to question my own mind
I do have the power to support others in real, lasting transformation
We can do this together
Each moment is a new moment, another opportunity to let go of what I believe and open to what is true, what is alive, what is natural and uncontrived
